Abstract
Objectives
Among children, poor socio-emotional functioning leads to poor health and well-being during childhood and later in life, and so understanding its social determinants is important. This study’s objective is to examine how maternal employment influences children’s socio-emotional outcomes in an Australian sample of families with two biological parents, testing the mediating role of maternal mental health, parenting practices, and parental income.
Methods
We analyze six waves of panel data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 7524 children, 29,701 observations) using random-effect models.
Results
Children of employed mothers display better socio-emotional outcomes than children of non-employed mothers, though the effect magnitude is only moderate. Associations are stronger for internalizing than externalizing problems, and not mediated by parental mental health, parenting practices, or household income.
Conclusions
Our findings can inform sociopolitical debates on the social value of maternal labor force participation and its impacts on children. They suggest that incentivizing maternal employment should bear no detrimental consequences on their children’s socio-emotional functioning. The different associations found for children’s internalizing and externalizing problems stress the value of distinguishing these constructs.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (Project No. CE140100027), and uses unit record data from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The study is conducted in partnership between the Department of Social Services (DSS), the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the ARC, DSS, AIFS, or the ABS.
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Salimiha, A., Perales, F. & Baxter, J. Maternal employment and children’s socio-emotional outcomes: an Australian longitudinal study. Int J Public Health 63, 1089–1098 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-018-1132-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-018-1132-4