The relationship between maternal employment history and young adults' perceptions of work and family

This study focused on the impact of maternal employment and gender on egalitarianism, career and family plans, and perceptions of family relationships in young adults. One hundred twenty-one undergraduate students were divided into three groups based on their maternal employment status: full-time, part-time, and nonworking. They were administered a series of tasks designed to assess their attitudes toward maternal employment, views of sex roles, perceptions of the quality of their relationship with their own parents, and plans for working and raising a family. The measures differed in their level of directness in an attempt to reveal less accessible thoughts and feelings. Maternal employment was related to perceptions of greater benefits and fewer costs of maternal employment for children, paternal dissatisfaction with working, regrets about maternal employment, and more strained father-child relations. For the most part, subjects did not differ as a function of maternal employment status on measures of egalitarianism and career and family plans. Contrary to expectations, maternal employment status generally did not have a different impact depending on gender, and directness of measure did not appear to be a factor in most cases. Overall, gender seemed to influence responses more clearly than maternal employment status. Women were more positive about the consequences of maternal employment for children, more egalitarian, more positive about their relationship with their parents, especially their mothers, and less conflicted about separation issues. Men and women were both fairly traditional in their role expectations when describing career and family plans. Secondary analyses of the role of divorce and child care arrangements revealed qualifications of the effects of maternal employment and suggested interesting avenues for further research. The study pointed out important differences between general attitudes toward maternal employment and views of one's own family experiences, the complexity of maternal employment effects, the enduring influence of gender, and the need to design creative, multivariate approaches to examining maternal employment.