Early Maternal Employment and Family Wellbeing

Detrimental effects [on mothers of six-month olds] of working outside the home are attenuated by the time the child is 4.5 years old.

In Early Maternal Employment and Family Wellbeing (NBER Working Paper No. 17212), authors Pinka Chatterji, Sara Markowitz, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn study the effects of mothers' work outside the home on maternal depression, self-reported health status, parenting stress, and parenting quality. They find that among mothers of 6-month old babies, working mothers report higher stress and more symptoms of depression than non-working mothers. Working mothers also report less good health than their non-working peers.

On average, an increase of ten hours of work -- that is, a 40 percent increase in the average work hours for the employed mothers -- is associated with an increase of 6 to 9 percent in a depression score used by the authors. Hours of work do not appear to have any effect on the quality of parenting at six months, though; in this study, "parenting quality" is measured by ratings assigned by "trained observers" watching videotape of each mother interacting with her child in five semi-structured play situations at home and in laboratories.

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