Work and Family Transitions Project (WFTP) #1

National Institute of Mental Health FIRST Award

When the initial project began in the mid 1990s, census bureau projections indicated that by 1995, two-thirds of women with pre-school aged children would be employed outside of the home (Ahlburg & DeVita, 1992).   Moreover, mothers with children under a year had become an increasingly large subgroup of working mothers with approximately 44% of women returning to the labor force within six months following the birth of their first child (O'Connell, 1989).   Couples with infants faced the most difficult challenges in managing the demands of work and family life for a number of reasons: 1) infant care is especially costly and hard to find, 2) the daily demands of caring for an infant are high, and 3) employed new mothers are still recovering, both physically and emotionally, from pregnancy and birth (Piotrkowski, Hughes, Pleck, Kessler-Sklar, & Staines, 1993).   Furthermore, given the fact that approximately 38% of families in the United States fall into lower income ranges (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1988), an important question was how do couples with fewer financial resources and less access to family-friendly workplaces manage to care for their infants and hold down full-time jobs?   Little was known about how the return to paid work within the first year of a child's birth affected mothers' and fathers' psychological well-being and marital relationships.   In addition, more research was needed that examined what "family-friendly" workplace policies were available to working-class employees and how these institutional supports actually assist parents in the transition back to work after the birth of a child.

Thus the goal of the first proposed research project was to examine how both the transition to parenthood and the return of mothers to paid employment within six months of their child's birth affected the psychological well-being and marital relationships of working-class women and men.   It was expected that there would be great variability in how families experienced these multiple transitions; thus, an aim of this research was to determine what factors were most predictive of mothers' and fathers' well-being and marital relationship during these life changes.   Specifically, the objectives of this research were:

1. to examine how women's and men's well-being and marital relationships change as they become new parents and, soon thereafter, return to a dual-earner lifestyle,



2. to identify those factors that mediate the effects of these multiple transitions on mothers' and fathers' psychological well-being; factors such as social support, gender ideology, access to quality child care, expectations about parenthood, quality of the marital relationship, 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 mothers' and fathers' psychological well-being and marital quality as they cope with multiple transitions.

The study involved five occasions of measurement for 150 working-class women and their husbands experiencing the transition to parenthood and subsequent return to the work force within the first 6 months of the child's birth.   Variability in women's experiences of the transition back to work was a key aspect of this research since an aim was to identify those factors that have the greatest impact on new parents' mental health as they juggle the demands of parenthood and work.   The first interview took place in the third trimester of pregnancy.   At that time, data on psychological well-being, the marital relationship, gender-role attitudes, the division of labor, parental work situations, work place policies, and future work plans were gathered from both wives and husbands.   The second interview took place after the baby was born but prior to the mother's return to work; the time 1 interview was replicated along with additional questions about the transition to parenthood, child temperament, and changes in roles and responsibilities for both spouses.   The third interview occurred one month after parents' return to paid employment.   The fourth interview, a mail survey, was sent when the child was six months old.   Thus, a "natural" experiment occurred whereby we could examine not only what work and family factors influence mothers' well-being upon return to paid work, but also examine those factors that predict which mothers were employed six months postpartum and which mothers were not.   Finally, a one year follow-up was conducted to determine the long term effects of both positive and negative transitions on women's psychological health and family relationships.