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Author: Lee, Hyun Jung
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Lee, Hyun Jung
Relationships Between Mothers' Working Conditions and Young Children's Home Environments and Early Development
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007.
Also: http://gradworks.umi.com/33/01/3301176.html
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)
Keyword(s): Child Development; Home Environment; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Job Satisfaction; Maternal Employment; Motor and Social Development (MSD); Working Conditions

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The purpose of this study was to examine relations between various aspects of maternal working conditions, including hours worked, number of jobs, total earnings, availability of benefits, occupational complexity, work schedule, and job satisfaction, and young children's (ages 0 to 47 months) motor, social, and cognitive development. This study also investigated whether maternal working conditions are related to the quality of home environments for young children indicated by the level of cognitive stimulation and emotional support provided by mothers at home. In addition, this study explored whether the cognitive and emotional home environments mediate relationships between maternal working conditions and young children's development. Testing whether the relationships between maternal working conditions and young children's development differ by family poverty and mothers' marital status was the final objective of this study. The study analyzed data from two samples of working mothers with young children (N = 699; N = 613) extracted from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and the NLSY mother-child data sets. The data sets are longitudinal and intergenerational and include extensive information on maternal background, such as employment, education, and poverty status, and developmental assessments of the mothers' children. The main statistical method was multiple regression analysis.

Study results indicated that of the work variables only job dissatisfaction was statistically significant, and it was negatively related to young children's development. Testing the relationship between maternal working conditions and the quality of the cognitive and emotional home environments of young children revealed that working fewer hours, compared to working full-time, was associated with more enriched cognitively simulating home environments and that total earnings were positively related to the level of mothers' emotional support at home. Results also showed that availability of benefits is a predictor of the quality of home environments. Availability of a flexible hours benefit was positively related to the level of cognitive stimulation that mothers provided to their children. However, mothers who had a paid sick and vacation days combined benefit available were found to provide less cognitively stimulating home environments. The cognitive and emotional home environments did not mediate the relation between job dissatisfaction and young children's development. None of the interactions between maternal working conditions and marital and poverty status met the criteria for statistical significance.

The findings of the study are discussed in terms of implications for social policy and social work intervention. Based on the results of the study, directions for future research are briefly discussed.

Bibliography Citation
Lee, Hyun Jung. Relationships Between Mothers' Working Conditions and Young Children's Home Environments and Early Development. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007..