WORKING CLASS WOMEN--NEGOTIATING JOBS AND PARENTHOOD

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): Mothers with infants have become an increasingly large subgroup of working women with approximately 44 percent of women returning to the labor force within six months of the birth of their first child (O'Connell, 1989). Given that approximately 38 percent of families in the United States fall into the working-class category (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1988), it is important to examine how couples with fewer financial resources and less access to family-friendly workplaces manage to care for their infants and hold down full-time jobs. The goal of the proposed longitudinal study is to examine how both the transition to parenthood and the return of mothers to paid employment within six months of their child's birth affect the psychological well-being and marital relationships of working- class women and men. The specific objectives are: (1) to examine how women's and men's well-being and marital relationships change as they experience the transitions to parenthood and back to paid employment, (2) to identify factors that mediate the effects of these multiple transitions on parents' psychological well-being; factors such as social support, gender ideology, access to quality child care, expectations about parenthood, martial quality, and characteristics of the child, (3) to examine how women's and men's work and family roles and responsibilities change across the transition to parenthood and again when new mothers return to the workforce, and (4) to determine the effects of family-friendly workplace policies on women's and men's psychological well-being. The proposed study involves five occasions of measurement for 150 working-class women and their husbands experiencing the transition to parenthood and mothers return to the work force within the first 6 months of the child's birth. The first interview will take place in the third trimester of pregnancy. The second interview will occur after the baby is born but prior to the mother's return to work. The third interview will occur within two weeks of mother's return to work and a fourth telephone interview will take place at six months postpartum for all mothers. Finally, a one year follow-up will be conducted to determine the long term effects of both positive and negative transitions on women's psychological health and family relationships.