Do women's provider-role attitudes moderate the links between work and family?

Abstract

The authors examined the links between mothers' work qualities and their individual well-being and marital quality, as well as adolescent daughters' and sons' gender-role attitudes, as a function of mothers' provider-role attitudes, in 134 dual-earner families. In home interviews, mothers described their work, provider-role attitudes, family relationships, and mental health; their offspring reported gender-role attitudes. Women's attitudes about breadwinning were coded into main-secondary, coprovider, and ambivalent coprovider groups. Mothers' provider-role attitudes moderated the links between status indicators and mothers' depression, marital conflict, and daughters' gender-role attitudes. For example, depression and marital conflict were negatively related to coprovider mothers' earnings and occupational prestige. The same was not true for main-secondary and ambivalent coprovider mothers. These findings underscore the importance of considering employed women's interpretation of their work roles when exploring work-family links.