From infancy, work can affect our lives. Typically, father was missing from home from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and, in recent years, many mothers have become nine-to-fivers. When work dominates a parent's life, then late homecomings and weekend work can have even more serious effects on a couple and family relationships.

There is no intention here to suggest that parents should not be working. It is not the quantity but the quality of the time parents spend with children that matters for their children's overall development. However, when parents are absent the quality of childminding may have telling effects on children's wellbeing.

It is when parents make work more important than their relationships that personal, couple and family problems will arise. Furthermore, because children tend to imitate their parents, they will develop similar unhealthy attitudes to work or they may rebel and become apathetic around work.

Many individuals in a couple relationship complain of their partner's career being more important than the relationship. A good number of adults have told me stories of their childhoods, when parents were either unavailable or approaches to them were met by "go away, I'm busy right now".

Parents who run a family business in or near the home often develop the illusion of "being there" for their children; they can be shocked when confronted with the reality that mere physical presence is not nearly enough for children (or adults) to feel loved, wanted, and secure.

Equally, parents who are absent from the home due to overworking may be upset when either partner or offspring complain of feeling invisible and unloved. These adults believe that "being the breadwinner" is a means of showing love.

Emotional security is a product of the presence of affection, warmth, friendship, affirmation, encouragement, interest in play and social outings. There have to be frequent sincere and genuine interactions for the formation of relationships and self-esteem.

Apart from partners or children feeling rejected when work appears to count more than they do, work preference can lead to children associating their own sense of self with work. Children will do anything to gain the love of their parents and "becoming the hard-worker" can be a means to getting "well earned" attention.

The problem is that these children will believe they must always "be busy" in order to offset any possibilities of criticism from their workaholic parents. They may grow into the women I have helped who will never let their partners "catch" them sitting having a cup of coffee or leafing through a magazine. They learned that protection at a young age and are now projecting the work expectation of their parents onto their partners.

The fact that most people marry or live with partners who emotionally resemble the parent who most influenced them reinforces the work ethic modelled in their homes of origin. I have also worked with men who had huge difficulties in letting go of their role as "bread-winners" - dreading subconsciously that rejection would follow.

It is a sad development when adult's or children's worth lies in behaviour and not in their unique and awesome being. Depending on the intensity of the work ethic, children will develop major anxiety about work, at home and in school. Parents often defend themselves by claiming that they never said verbally to their children they should work so hard, but actions always speak louder than words. It is the parents' own over-involvement in work that children imitate.

To be fair to parents, work places have neither been couple or family-friendly. Neither have school and health boards been family-friendly, as appointments are made during working times.

While some, minimal, progress has been made in these areas, considerably more friendliness is required to redress the imbalance. Society is constantly shouting about the sanctity and vital value of the family, but it rarely puts flesh on its words.

Adults and those who are parents can certainly address their own attitudes to work and be sure that they see their own person as infinitely more important than any product - and that couple and family relationships vastly outweigh productivity.

Dr Tony Humphreys is a consultant clinical psychologist.