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Mothers' Part‐Time Employment: Child, Parent, and Family Outcomes
Author(s) -
Buehler Cheryl,
O'Brien Marion,
Walls Jill K.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of family theory and review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.454
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1756-2589
pISSN - 1756-2570
DOI - 10.1111/j.1756-2589.2011.00110.x
Subject(s) - coping (psychology) , psychology , perspective (graphical) , developmental psychology , working time , full time , variety (cybernetics) , interpretation (philosophy) , social psychology , work (physics) , clinical psychology , economics , economic growth , mechanical engineering , artificial intelligence , computer science , engineering , programming language
This article examines mothers' part‐time employment, comparing working part‐time with full‐time employment and not working at all. Our analysis is organized around 2 paradigmatic views of maternal employment, 1 centered on the adaptive nature of mothers' part‐time employment and the other on the detrimental nature of mothers' part‐time employment. In each perspective, a variety of theories have been used to shape the literature, influencing the choice of research questions and interpretation of findings. These theories include stress and coping, life course, role, family systems, ecological, and feminist theory. In general, findings support part‐time employment as an adaptive strategy. As an exception, mothers employed full‐time had better marital quality and performed less household and child‐care work than did mothers employed part‐time. We also document limitations regarding attention to diverse familial outcomes in subgroups of mothers or families and to potentially important selection factors.