Maternal employment and perceptions of young children: Bronfenbrenner et al. revisited

Abstract

238 mothers and 116 fathers provided checklist descriptions of their 3-4-year-old's behavior; a smaller sample of parents and teachers also assessed the child's behavior 2 years later. There was no evidence of a key finding from a related study by Bronfenbrenner, Alvarez, and Henderson linking part-time employment with more positive maternal perceptions of sons. Indeed, maternal employment (typically, conditioned by mothers' level of education and child gender) was more strongly associated with fathers' and teachers' perceptions of children than with mothers' perceptions, and, in some cases, especially with fathers' and teachers' perceptions of daughters. Fathers perceived their 5-6-year-old as having more problem behaviors when mothers were currently employed full time; fathers and teachers viewed children's behavior as more problematic when less-educated mothers had been employed during more years of the child's lifetime. Interpreting these and other findings, we emphasize differences between samples and changes in the ecology of family life. This study underscores the notion that socially "relevant" research is likely to be highly responsive to time and social context.