It is difficult to generalize about students in stepfamilies. Those whose mothers are employed part-time are similar to students in intact families. Others have characteristics more like students in single parent families. It appears that stepfamilies may vary more than others in the extent to which they allocate family resources, including money and parental attention and interest, to the child. Our findings about after-school supervision can be translated into an important policy consideration.
Institutions vary in how they accommodate the needs of employed parents.
Schools schedule activities to facilitate involvement differently, and employers vary to the extent they allow flexibility in work schedules. The versatility of each institution may influence the involvement of parents, especially outside the home. Given the dramatic increase in labor force participation of mothers, many institutions have not kept pace with the changing needs of parents, thereby making involvement outside the home more difficult. The most striking example is the apparent lack of available opportunities for supervised after-school activities for children of employed parents. Little evidence supports the idea that parents have less interest in a relationship with their child when the mother is employed full-time or when they are not in an intact family.