As Father's Day approaches, a report outlining the results of a poll of the nation's fathers conducted by the 1111 Job Bank (www.1111.com.tw, 1111
The report said the poll showed nearly 52 percent of those polled wanted to change their jobs because they felt they had little spare time to spend with their kids.
About 50 percent of the pollees thought raising children would affect their job prospects, while 47 percent were worried about getting laid off. The poll revealed that many fathers were deeply concerned about their families and jobs in the shadow of the weak economy and high unemployment rate.
The job bank quizzed fathers over 30 years old via the Internet, compiling 2,120 completed questionnaires. Thirty-one percent of the polled fathers are currently unemployed, while 44 percent have been searching for new jobs for more than six months, according to the report.
A surprising 51.5 percent of working fathers were worried about the possibility of suddenly losing their jobs, while just over 84 percent of the pollees were pessimistic about their job opportunities, the report said.
Only 37.6 percent of the fathers were able to come home to dinner with their family on a regular basis.
The average father said he had to socialize with business contacts after work an average of nearly two days a week. The report interpreted these results as being indicative of the near impossibility for professional working fathers to eat dinner with their children on a daily basis.
When it came to spending time with their children, 38.4 percent of the pollees said they spent less than one hour a day with their kids, and 24 percent of the fathers spent one to two hours a day with their kids.
According to the report, only 16.11 percent of the fathers spent two to three hours a day with their children, while most fathers complained that they could only spend significant amounts of time with their kids during the weekend.
The final question in the poll asked fathers to evaluate themselves as parents by assigning themselves a score from 1 to 100, with 100 denoting a "perfect" father. The average mark fathers gave themselves was 69, which the report said showed most fathers were not satisfied with their performance as parents.
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