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Title: Home Alone: The Impact of Maternal Employment on Delinquency
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Vander Ven, Thomas Michael
Cullen, Francis T.
Carrozza, Mark A.
Wright, John Paul
Home Alone: The Impact of Maternal Employment on Delinquency
Social Problems 48,2 (May 2001): 236-257.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sp.2001.48.2.236
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: University of California Press
Keyword(s): Behavioral Problems; Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Children, Behavioral Development; Delinquency/Gang Activity; Employment; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Maternal Employment; Mothers

Recently, conservative commentators and parenting experts have been outspoken about the potential negative effects of maternal employment. Specifically, there appears to be a pervasive belief that delinquency is one unfortunate consequence of maternal work. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we examine whether the occupational status of mothers has criminogenic effects on their children. After tracing the effects of work hours and occupational conditions through risk factors to delinquency, we find that the characteristics of maternal work have relatively little or no influence on delinquency, but do have a slight (and complex) indirect effect through the delinquency pathway 'supervision'. This general pattern holds regardless of whether early maternal employment (i.e., work occurring when children were in the pre-school years) or current maternal employment is considered. Our findings contradict the view that maternal employment causes child behavioral problems.
Bibliography Citation
Vander Ven, Thomas Michael, Francis T. Cullen, Mark A. Carrozza and John Paul Wright. "Home Alone: The Impact of Maternal Employment on Delinquency." Social Problems 48,2 (May 2001): 236-257.