Buehler,Cheryl, Marion O’Brien, Kevin M. Swartout & Nan Zhou. 2014. Maternal Employment and Parenting Through Middle Childhood: Contextualizing Factors. Journal of Marriage and Family. 76:1025-1046.
The relationship between maternal work hour status and parenting is an important research topic. The authors use data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N=1364) to examine maternal work hour status and parenting from infancy through middle childhood. Parenting is measured by sensitivity and learning opportunities of children. Work hour status was conceptualized as nonemployment, part time, and full time. Both variables are considered as time-varying variables. After adjusting for covariates, the authors discover that mothers employed part time had higher sensitivity scores and higher provision of child learning opportunity scores than did mothers who were not employed. These differences characterized families during early childhood rather than middle childhood. Mothers’ provision of child learning opportunities was greater when was employed full time during early childhood compared with those with part-time job. In addition to child age, mothers’ ethnic minority status and partner status moderated the association between maternal work hour status and mothers’ parenting. In general, the findings supported ideas forwarded by role expansionist theory which argues that multiple roles are beneficial for individual and relationship health, but the benefits are constrained by some external situation.