TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2012//
TI  - Have children adapted to their mothers working, or was adaptation unnecessary? Cohort effects and the relationship between maternal employment and child well-being
JO  - Social science research
A1  - Wills, Jeremiah B.
A1  - Brauer, Jonathan R.
SP  - 425
EP  - 443
VL  - 41
IS  - 2
N2  - Drawing on previous theoretical and empirical work, we posit that maternal employment influences on child well-being vary across birth cohorts. We investigate this possibility by analyzing longitudinal data from a sample of children and their mothers drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We introduce a series of age, cohort, and maternal employment interaction terms into multilevel models predicting child well-being to assess whether any potential short-term or long-term effects of early and current maternal employment vary across birth cohorts. Results indicate that maternal employment largely is inconsequential to child well-being regardless of birth cohort, with a few exceptions. For instance, children born in earlier cohorts may have experienced long-term positive effects of having an employed mother; however, as maternal employment became more commonplace in recent cohorts, these beneficial effects appear to have disappeared. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.<p />
LA  - en
SN  - 0049-089X
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2011.10.004
ID  - ref1
ER  -