Some Implications of Maternal Employment for the Mother and the Family

The current paper explores the relation of mothers' employment status to a variety of factors relevant to the home environment, particularly those that may directly affect the emotional and cognitive development of children in these families. The results are based on secondary analyses of data from two independent studies--one of parents of preschool children, the other of families of elementary school children. Because issues pertaining to mothers' employment status were incidental to the main thrust of these studies, this report cannot do justice to more complex models of the linkages between work and family contexts. Most notably, our data sets do not include many of the factors hypothesized to moderate the interface between work and family situ- ations. Rather, it is hoped that these secondary analyses can contribute added information concerning the global relationship of maternal employment to some parent and family characteristics critical to children's healthy emotional development, while at the same time underlining some of the special needs of mothers who work outside the home.