on them. In addition, the accompanying social
changes operate to modify the effects of maternal em-
ployment on the family and children.
For example, attitudes about women’s roles have
changed markedly over the years. The decrease in
gender-role traditionalism is one of the factors that
has led to the increased employment of mothers. The
increased entry of mothers into the labor force itself,
however, has also affected attitudes about gender
roles. As more mothers seek employment, maternal
employment has become more acceptable. In addi-
tion, it has affected the division of labor in the home.
In dual-earner families, more than three-fourths of
the mothers work full-time, thus decreasing the
amount of time available for housework and child
care. Studies of the family division of labor have long
shown that when mothers work, fathers help more
with housework and child care. In 1997 James T.
Bond, Ellen Galinsky, and Jennifer E. Swanberg con-
ducted a national-sample study to replicate a study
from twenty years earlier. The new study found that
fathers had become more active in household tasks
and child care over the years. Although employed
married mothers still do more housework and child
care than their husbands, the difference has de-
creased. Attitudes have also changed. Not only is
there more acceptance of mothers working, but there
is also more acceptance of fathers helping with house-
work and child care. These changes, in turn, have
modified the effects of employment on children and
the stress on mothers. Research by Lois Hoffman and
Lise Youngblade has shown that more active partici-
pation of fathers in child care and the resultant
higher morale of the mothers have positive effects on
children’s academic performance and social adjust-
ment.
School-Age Children
Most of the research over the years has compared
school-age children of employed and nonemployed
mothers in terms of academic and social competence.
The results have failed to confirm the once widely
held belief that mothers’ employment would have
negative effects on children. Indeed, effects seem
mainly positive. The results, however, have not been
the same across gender and social class. The most
consistent pattern of positive outcomes has been for
daughters of employed mothers.
In an extensive 1999 study, Hoffman and Young-
blade examined how the mother’s employment status
affected child outcomes and then focused on why
these effects occur. Daughters with employed moth-
ers were found to have better academic and social
skills, more independence, and a greater sense of effi-
cacy, a view that their own actions are important de-
terminants of what happens to them. Having an
employed mother itself was related to the daughter’s
view that women are competent, and this was en-
hanced when there was a less traditional division of
labor between parents. The view that women are com-
petent increased the girls’ sense of efficacy, and effica-
cy predicted social and academic competence. In
addition, the data indicated that employed mothers
across social class, mothers’ marital status, and ethnic-
ity, were less likely to use authoritarian and coercive
discipline. This discipline style was particularly harm-
ful for girls and was associated with a low sense of effi-
cacy and shy, withdrawn behavior. Thus the
employment status of mothers was linked to family ef-
fects that helped explain child outcomes.
Although the finding of higher scores on various
cognitive and social adjustment measures for daugh-
ters of employed mothers has been consistent over
the years, the results for sons have been mixed. Some
of the earlier studies found higher academic scores
for sons of employed mothers, others found no differ-
ence, and a few found lower scores for sons, but only
in the middle class. In the study by Hoffman and
Youngblade, children with working mothers scored
higher on all cognitive measures across gender, socio-
economic status, ethnicity, and mothers’ marital sta-
tus. The researchers suggested that the differences
between the earlier studies and their own 1999 study
reflected the change in fathers’ roles over the dec-
ades.
Nevertheless, while the sons of employed moth-
ers in the middle class obtained higher cognitive
scores, they did not show better social adjustment. In
fact, ratings by teachers and peers indicated that, in
the middle class, sons of employed mothers who
worked full-time engaged in more acting-out and ag-
gressive behavior at school. This pattern was in con-
trast to sons of employed mothers in the blue-collar
class and in poverty who showed less acting-out be-
havior, less aggression, and better social adjustment
generally. An explanation for this class difference
given by the researchers was that, although full-time
homemakers across class used more authoritarian dis-
cipline than employed mothers, the discipline in the
middle class was rarely harsh or severe. In the lower
socioeconomic groups, and particularly among poor
single mothers, this was not the case and harsh disci-
pline was more common for full-time homemakers,
though, paradoxically, so was permissiveness.
In addition, in the blue-collar and poverty classes,
employed mothers were more likely than full-time
homemakers to use a style of control developmental
psychologists call ‘‘authoritative.’’ Authoritative par-
enting is a style where parents support their control438 WORKING FAMILIES