First-year maternal employment and child development in the first 7 years
By: Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Wen-Jui Han, and Jane Waldfogel
Contributors: Han, Wen-Jui, 1968-; Waldfogel, Jane
Series: Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development -- serial no. 296, vol. 75, no. 2, 2010; Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development -- v. 75, no. 2.
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Boston, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 147
Subjects: Working mothers; Longitudinal studies; Child development; Parental influences; Children of working parents; Work and family; Berufstätigkeit; Kind; Entwicklung; Mutter; Kind <0-7 Jahre>
Other titles: First-year maternal employment and child development in the first seven years; First-year maternal employment
Description: Using data from the first two phases of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, the links between maternal employment in the first 12 months of life and cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes for children at age 3, age 4.5, and first grade are examined. Families in which mothers worked full time (55%), part time (23%) or did not work in the first year (22%) are compared. Most families involved non-Hispanic White children although some analyses did involve African-American children. Structural equation modeling results indicated that, on average, the associations between first-year maternal employment and later cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes are neutral because negative effects, where present, are offset by positive effects. The results confirmed that maternal employment in the first year of life may confer both advantages and disadvantages and that for the average non-Hispanic White child those effects balance each other.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 130-142).

Also issued online.
Table of contents: title: Introduction. Methods; title: What distinguishes women who work full-time, part-time, or not at all in the 1st year? --; title: First-year maternal employment and child cognitive development --; title: First-year maternal employment and child social and emotional development --; title: Associations between 1st-year maternal employment and income, home environment, and child care --; title: Structural equation modeling analyses of the links between 1st-year maternal employment and child development.