Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Children’s parenting and home environments are the primary mechanism through which family economic conditions are transferred to children’s developmental outcomes (Becker, 1993). Family economic resources allow parents to invest in the physical and psychosocial characteristics of the home environment, as well as contribute to their parenting characteristics and behaviors (Becker 1993; Conger, Rueter, & Conger, 2000; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; McLoyd, 1998). Among low-income families, mothers’ employment experiences play a dominant role in determining family economic conditions. Understanding the responsiveness of parenting and home environments to changes in maternal employment experiences informs our understanding of how parental employment may have repercussions for children’s most proximal developmental contexts.

The goal of this paper is to assess how shifts in the intensity and quality of economically disadvantaged mothers’ working experiences are associated with their parenting and home environments. Conceptual models suggest that low-quality or high-intensity maternal work may have negative implications due to greater stress imposed on working mothers. This stress may transfer into mother’s parenting and the home environment, leading to less sensitive and cognitively stimulating parenting and reduced physical and psychosocial characteristics of the home environment. Increases in maternal work quality may lead to improvements in maternal parenting as well as greater physical and psychosocial investments in the home environment. While increases in the intensity of maternal work may lead to greater physical investments in the home environment, it may also be detrimental to parenting and psychosocial investments in the home environments due to the greater stress imposed on mothers by more hours spent working.

Data were drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a prospective longitudinal study following children born in 1991 in 10 urban and rural sites in the U.S. The analytic sample consisted of children in low-income households during early childhood (n = 528). Measures of maternal employment, parenting, and home environments were collected at four time-points during early childhood: 6 months, 15 months, 3 years, and 4 ½ years old. At these time-points, mothers reported on their current weekly hours employed and hourly wages. Maternal sensitivity and cognitive stimulation were rated through direct observations of maternal-child interactions. The physical and psychosocial characteristics of the home environment was assessed with maternal reports and interview observations of households and mother-child interactions. Models controlled for a host of selection characteristics of mothers and families.

Multilevel models assessing within-family effects found that increases in maternal work hours during early childhood were associated with decreases in the quality of children’s home environments, particularly the psychosocial characteristics of the home. Similarly, increases in maternal income from work was associated with reduced maternal sensitivity and quality of the home environment. Conversely, average maternal work hours and income from work over early childhood was associated with greater levels of maternal cognitive stimulation and sensitivity, as well as higher quality home environments, by the time children were preparing to enter kindergarten. Results will be discussed in relation to current economic and policy contexts facing low-income workers and families.