Maternal Employment: Investigating the Links Among Family and Job Characteristics, Emotional States, Social Supports, and Child Rearing Practices
Canada, Katherine Ann
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69662
Description
Title
Maternal Employment: Investigating the Links Among Family and Job Characteristics, Emotional States, Social Supports, and Child Rearing Practices
Author(s)
Canada, Katherine Ann
Issue Date
1985
Department of Study
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Psychology, Developmental
Abstract
Maternal employment research has been hindered by the lack of an adequate conceptual model representing the process through which maternal employment may influence children's development. To develop such a model, the present study investigated (1) the stress associated with the incompatibility between work and family roles as a possible mediator of this process, (2) employed mothers' satisfactions with social supports as another possible mediator, and (3) the relationships among maternal employment characteristics, emotional state variables, satisfactions with social supports, and child rearing practices (e.g., relying on rewards and physical punishments).
Subjects were 482 married women who were employed as R.N.'s and L.P.N.'s and who had at least one child under age 18. In addition to assessing emotional states, satisfactions with social supports, and child rearing practices, the questionnaires the women completed assessed their family structures (e.g., marital status, number & ages of children) and job structures (e.g., income, tenure at present job, work shift).
Factor analyses were used to create the assessments of work-home incompatibility, guilt, and satisfactions with social supports. Cronbach's alpha for these scales ranged from .71 to .87. Test-retest reliabilities, obtained from 31 women who completed the questionnaire 3 months after the initial completion, ranged from .68 to .74. Several possible models representing the relationships among the maternal employment characteristics, satisfactions with social supports, emotional states, and child rearing practices were proposed. Canonical correlations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses tested the appropriateness of the models. The results revealed relationships between the structural aspects of a woman's job and family, her emotional states, and her functioning as a parent. Specifically, the analyses suggested that maternal employment characteristics directly and indirectly, via their relationship with work-home incompatibility, influence reliance on physical punishments as a child rearing practice.
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