Pursuing multiple callings : the implications of balancing career and motherhood for women and the church

Investigators have uncovered several benefits of assuming the multiple roles of career and motherhood. Despite many positive outcomes, additional studies have demonstrated potential for negative outcomes. Mediators and moderators of employed mothers' experiences include work- family fit, womanhood ideologies, role quality, and spousal support. Spirituality, through viewing one's roles as callings, has also been suggested as a potential mediator/moderator. With many Christian mothers pursuing careers they perceive as spiritual callings, the church can play an important role in helping women embrace their callings and reap benefits in the form of well-being. Church communities that acknowledge the possibility of multiple callings for women, ask for input from female congregants, and actively implement expressions of support are proposed as potential ways to help. Contemporary literature highlights the opportunity for individuals to reap benefits from assuming multiple roles. In 1983, Thoits found that the greater the number of identities an individual possesses (stemming from multiple roles) the less psychological distress reported. In another expansive literature review, Crosby (I991) concluded that women who juggle multiple roles are generally better-adjusted and less prone to depression than other women. This is promising news, as many women take on the challenge of balancing multiple roles, including motherhood and career. In 2006, 70.9% of women in the United States with children under the age of 18 were employed (United States Department of Labor, 2007). Workforce participation rates of married mothers and mothers with children under the age of six were also high, at 68.6% and 63.5%, respectively. In addition, 75.6% of employed mothers were employed full-time. While there are many potential benefits to taking on the multiple roles of career and motherhood, researchers have also demonstrated that individuals assuming multiple roles frequently experience interrole conflict. Interrale conflict was defined by Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) as a specific type of conflict that arises when responsibilities from different domains of one's life produce sets of pressures that are in some sense incompatible. In addition to this objective definition, interrole conflict has been defined as containing a significant subjective component. Generally based on ideologies for each role, intenole conflict can also be understood as conflict that arises when one's internally perceived demands or standards for a role are not met due to striving to meet the perceived demands for another role (Polasky & Holahan, 1998). The potential for interrole conflict may be even higher for women than for men, as women who enter the workforce often continue to assume primary responsibility for their other culturally-defined gender roles, parenting and homemaking (Reddin, 1997). Greenberger and O'Neil (I993) studied role conflict in employed mothers and fathers of preschool children who were married to an employed spouse. They noted that the mothers had stronger commitments to parenting and, correspondingly, experienced greater role strain, anxiety, and depression. In another study of work-parent conflict, Simon (1995) found that, of their 40 married participants, more women (75%) than men (40%) described experiencing interrole conflict between the employment and parenting realms. Additional factors, such as single parenthood and blended family circumstances, may increase even further the potential for interrole conflict, although these factors have not been explicitly addressed through research. It should also be acknowledged that the issues may differ depending on the ages of the children. In the following sections, the literature on both the positive and negative outcomes of balancing multiple roles-specifically balancing the roles of career and motherhood-is discussed, as are proposed moderators (factors affecting the magnitude of the outcome effect) and mediators (vehicles for the outcome effect) of the balancing process. …