http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2702-6986
ABSTRACT
Combining motherhood and paid work presents a significant challenge for many women. We asked 2388 working New Zealand mothers of infants about their biggest highlight and challenge since the birth of their child. Thematic analysis revealed the top three reported highlights were Enjoyment of the Child (40%), Child Development (29%) and Attributes of the Child (16%). The top three challenges included Time Management (24%), difficulties with maternal role and responsibilities (21%) and work-related challenges (18%). Using logistic regression, working was more likely to be reported as a challenge by mothers who worked longer hours, returned to work when their infants were younger, had greater household incomes, or expressed concern about negative career consequences if they stayed on leave. Working was less likely to be reported as a challenge for mothers whose infants had health or developmental problems and who ‘wanted to get out of the house’. Practical implications are explored.
KEYWORDS:
Introduction
The decision about whether to return to paid work following the birth of an infant is a difficult one for many women. Using primarily interview data, researchers have repeatedly identified a ‘successful woman’ ideology and an ‘intensive mothering’ ideology (Hays Citation1996; Lupton and Schmied Citation2002; Kahu and Morgan Citation2007). These often conflicting notions of motherhood are based on Hays’ (Citation1996) historical analysis of views on parenting, child rearing books and interviews with 38 American mothers. The successful mother ideology portrays paid work as vital for maternal well-being and good citizenship, in contrast to the intensive mother ideology, which views mothering as labour intensive, emotionally absorbing, financially expensive and child centred (Hays Citation1996). In the intensive mother ideology, the mother is viewed as the primary attachment figure regardless of whether they work away from home or not (Green Citation2015).
These two key ideologies were also found in the discourses of 11 New Zealand (NZ) mothers of infants who had previously been in full-time work (Kahu and Morgan Citation2007). The women in Kahu and Morgan's study saw themselves as co-providers for the family and as economically independent. However, many also expressed an intensive mother discourse, seeing themselves as the main caregivers, with motherhood forming an essential part of their identity.
Finding a balance between the roles of ‘modern’ woman/mother and paid worker is argued to be a key part of what makes motherhood today difficult for many women. Ladge and Greenberger (Citation2015) note that ‘a new mother is often questioning who she is and how effective she can be as a mother and a working professional’ (p. 977). Juggling these two identities often leads to mothers attempting to ‘do it all’ which Green (Citation2015) argues is, in part, because they have internalised motherhood's ‘unreasonable expectations’ (p. 200).
The scarcity hypothesis predicts that mothers will experience an increase in stress upon returning to work due to having a scarcity of resources (Goode Citation1960). That is, their limited resources of time and energy are insufficient to fulfil the increased responsibilities associated with both parenting and working, making it difficult to achieve a balance between the two roles. In line with this, it is perhaps not surprising that a mother's decision to combine parenting and paid work is frequently accompanied by considerable maternal anxiety and guilt (Green Citation2015), much of which centres on concern about the time mothers have to spend with their children (Parker and Wang Citation2013).
This increased conflict between work and family life and the lack of resources to manage both can lead to a decline in psychological well-being, a reduction in work and family life satisfaction and lower organisational commitment (Brough and O’Driscoll Citation2005).
However, at the other end of the spectrum, researchers have also described the enhancement hypothesis, which paints the return to work in a more positive light (eg Sieber Citation1974; Marks Citation1977). Here participation in the workforce is associated with enhanced well-being by providing benefits such as improved self-esteem, financial security, reengagement with society and social networks, and a break from parenting (Polach Citation2003; Wills and Brauer Citation2012; Berger Citation2013). This hypothesis is more in keeping with the successful mother ideology.
In reality, it is likely that many mothers encounter aspects of both the scarcity and enhancement scenarios upon combining parenting and paid work. However, for each mother, one of the two hypotheses may apply to a greater extent, depending on the interplay between the particular stressors and supports which mothers may experience both at home and at work (Hyde et al. Citation1995). Therefore, it is worth examining factors that influence the likelihood that a mother will experience (the combination of) paid work and motherhood as either beneficial or challenging.
Brough and O’Driscoll (Citation2005) argue that a current limitation of the existing models of work and family conflict is their failure to consider the different life phases of working parents. They argue that the work-life balance experiences of parents with an infant are qualitatively different from those with older children. Returning to work within the first year of a child's life is increasingly seen as normative in many western countries (eg Han et al. Citation2008), and is expected by employers and legislators/policy-makers. Thus, it is important to have a contemporary understanding of the factors associated with the challenges employed mothers of infants face. This information may help smooth such transitions and achieve greater perceived work-life balance (Brough and O’Driscoll Citation2005).
To date most of the more recent research on working mothers have been qualitative and conducted with small samples of women, providing the opportunity to examine in-depth the challenges faced by some working mothers with infants (eg Hays Citation1996; Brough and O’Driscoll Citation2005; Kahu and Morgan Citation2007). However, as these samples are typically small, the findings are hard to generalise across diverse populations. While four large quantitative studies have been conducted exploring the challenges that working mothers with infants experience, these studies are all based on data collected more than 10 years ago (between 1988 and 2004): three of these were conducted in the United States (US) (Chatterji and Markowitz Citation2005, Citation2012; Chatterji et al. Citation2013) and one in Australia (Cooklin et al. Citation2011). The parental leave policies that existed in those countries at the time the data were collected are likely to have influenced the experiences of the women who participated in these four studies, and both countries, particularly the US, have historically had very different approaches to maternity leave compared to NZ. Indeed, when comparing the generosity of parental leave policies across 21 high-income countries in 2009, NZ's policies were ranked 12th, outranking the US considerably (ranked 20th), and slightly better than Australia (ranked 13th) (Ray et al. Citation2009). Additionally, Ray et al.'s cross country comparison was conducted at a period in time when both the US and the Australia did not provide any government paid parental leave: Australia was offering 54 months unpaid leave and the US, only 24 weeks.
Despite differences in paid parental leave policies, the results from the four nationally representative studies of working mothers with infants cited above show a number of consistent findings. For instance, mothers who were employed while their infants were aged between three months and one-year old were at increased risk of depressive symptoms, poor health and parenting stress (Chatterji and Markowitz Citation2005, Citation2012; Cooklin et al. Citation2011; Chatterji et al. Citation2013). These findings emerged when controlling for related factors such as maternal age, education, income, marital status, prior depression, number of children and child gender. However, none of these large studies have been conducted based on mothers of infants born within the last decade, and none have used an NZ sample.
The New Zealand context
At the political level, in NZ and in many other western countries, women are encouraged to return to work after the birth of a child with the view that this has multiple economic advantages (Kahu and Morgan Citation2007). This drive to get mothers to return to work is reflected in wider NZ trends. In 2014, approximately 55% of partnered NZ mothers and 30% of single mothers who had children below two years of age were in paid work, representing an estimated 11% increase over a 10-year period since 2004 (Flynn and Harris Citation2015).
Aims of the present study
The aims of this study are: (1) to investigate the main highlights and challenges reported by working NZ mothers of 9-month-old infants, using a large, diverse and contemporary sample; (2) to examine the extent to which work is raised as the main highlight or a challenge for mothers in this sample, and, if applicable, (3) to explore the circumstances that may make some working NZ mothers of infants more likely to report work as a main challenge and/or a main highlight experienced during the first nine months of their infants’ lives. This research is important because, if we can identify the factors that are associated with positive and negative experiences of paid work for mothers of infants, then supportive strategies may be put in place to help promote positive outcomes for mothers returning to the workforce.
In order to explore the circumstances that may influence employment being viewed as a challenge or a highlight with working mothers, we drew on Belsky’s (Citation1984) process model of the determinants of parenting. Belsky's well-cited model identifies various factors that combine to influence parenting behaviours. These include characteristics of the child, such as their temperament; characteristics of the parent, such as their personality; social sources of stress or support, including the quality of the relationship between parents, and lastly, work factors. We adapted this model to shift the focus away from how these individual (child and parent) and contextual factors influence parenting and child development, to examine how they influence maternal outcomes, specifically the degree of difficulty in returning to work.
The current study also builds on the work of Corkin, Dando, et al. (Citation2016) and Corkin, Peterson, et al. (Citation2017) who reported on the highlights and challenges of being an NZ mother of a nine month old in a sample of approximately 6500 mothers. The current study looks at the highlights and challenges of working mothers.
Method
Participants
Participants consisted of 2388 employed mothers (age: M = 31.19, SD = 5.25) participating in the Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) study (n = 6384). GUiNZ is a multidisciplinary longitudinal study of 6822 demographically diverse children born in NZ between 25 April 2009 and 25 March 2010 (Morton et al. Citation2014). A full description of the study's design and approach to recruitment strategy can be found in Morton et al. (Citation2013, Citation2014). In summary, pregnant mothers were recruited and selected from a specific geographical area covered by three District Health Board regions with no inclusion or exclusion criteria applied (Morton et al. Citation2013). The women who participated were comparable to NZ parents on key measures, specifically maternal age, ethnicity, parity and socioeconomic indicators (Morton et al. Citation2015).
Demographic information for the current sub-sample of working mothers in GUINZ cohort is presented in and . In the current sample, mothers worked between 1 and 90 hours per week (M = 27.71, SD = 14.27) and when asked to select the reasons why they returned to work from 12 possible options (a maximum of 6 responses were allowed) the most endorsed reasons were: they needed the money (71%) and they enjoyed working (46%). Of those who took parental leave, mothers took an average of 3.4 months (SD = 1.56) paid parental leave and 6.29 months (SD = 2.54) total parental leave. The average age of infants when their mothers returned to work was 5.4 months (SD = 2.15). Upon meeting certain requirements, mothers in the present study were entitled to 52 weeks of parental leave. For the first 14 weeks, they were paid up to $504.10 per week.
Table 1. Frequency of demographic characteristics of the working mothers (N = 2388) and the mothers who selected work as their biggest challenge.
Table 2. Means, standard deviations and ranges of demographic variables of the statistically significant predictors of 2388 mothers reporting work as the biggest challenge during the first nine months of their infants’ lives.
Procedure
In this study, we analyse data that were collected during a 90-minute face-to-face Computer Assisted Personal Interview with mothers when their infants were approximately nine months old. Each highly trained interviewer read aloud each survey question. For each quantitative question, or set of questions, the mother was given a response card with the possible response options. The mothers’ responses were then entered by the interviewer into a laptop computer. At the end of this quantitative survey, mothers were asked the following open-ended qualitative questions, with no further prompting: Could you tell me, first of all, in one or two sentences what has been the biggest (1) highlight and (2) challenge since your baby arrived? Responses to these questions were typed verbatim by the interviewer into the laptop computer. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted on the data gathered. The current authors were involved in the analysis of the data, but not in the individual data collection.
Measures
and describe the 36 predictor variables used in the quantitative analysis. describes the single item questions (which were mostly child and mother demographics), along with the response scale and the period of administration. describes the multi-item scales used, along with the scale author, an example item, response scale and period of assessment. The multi-item scales were all taken from well-validated tools. Mean scores were derived for the following multi-item scales: personality, child temperament, parenting satisfaction, and maternal and partner involvement. For the remaining variables, item scores were summed together and the total scores divided into quartiles to form variables, except for depression where the recommended cutoff score was used (not depressed = scores <13, depressed = 13+), maternal and partner involvement (not involved = 1, 2, involved = 3,4) and deprivation (quintiles).
Table 3. Description of the single item predictors used in the current study and their period of administration.
Table 4. Description of the multi-item predictors used in the current study and their period or administration and their reliability (Cronbach's alpha).
Qualitative analysis and inter-rater reliability
Following the guidelines defined by Braun and Clarke (Citation2006), the first four authors used thematic analysis to examine the highlights and challenges reported by the mothers in response to the two open-ended questions. These authors initially read all of the mothers’ responses to the highlights and challenge questions. Each generated their own list of categories. They then collaborated to group similar categories together until a final list of categories and their definitions had been agreed. Three of the authors then conducted practice coding sessions to refine the coding scheme before conducting inter-coder-reliability checks.
Despite asking for the mothers’ biggest highlight or challenge, many mothers reported more than one challenge or highlight (48%, M = 1.68). Therefore, each idea unit or challenge was coded to one category only and multiple instances of the same category within an individual mother's response were coded only once. There was one exception to this, which we describe below.
Any highlight or challenge statement that mentioned work was also selected out for later subsequent secondary analysis, in which the researchers made a judgement as to whether participating in paid work was depicted positively or negatively in that statement, and hence assigned a secondary code of ‘work-positive’ or ‘work-negative’. For example, mothers who reported challenges such as ‘adjusting to drudgery of life at home compared to life in the work place’ or ‘not being in control as I use to be at work’ were coded in the primary analysis as challenges with autonomy, but following this, such statements were also selected out for possible secondary coding as they referred to work. In the secondary analysis, these statements were coded as work positive, reflecting the fact that work was mentioned in positive terms compared to home life or motherhood. In contrast, a response to the challenge question that was selected out for secondary coding was coded as work-negative if it mentioned work and encompassed ideas such as having challenges fulfilling familial roles while working, and concerns about being away from the baby while at work. Examples of work-negative challenge statements included: ‘the emotional struggle of being a working mum’; ‘balancing work and family’; ‘having to leave the baby when he was so little when I had to go back to work’.
To check inter-coder reliability of the data coding, three researchers coded a sample of 167 of the mothers’ reported highlights and challenges (allocating both primary codes and where applicable a secondary code) (2.6% of the current sample). The researchers discussed any differences in coding that occurred until consensus on the coding of each sample item was reached. For the highlight codes, two of the three researchers attained 90% inter-coder reliability from coding 100 reported highlights and they proceeded to code the rest of the data. For the challenges, two researchers coded 1% of the sample and obtained 92% agreement. A further 100 challenges were coded by one of these researchers and a third researcher. These two researchers obtained 89% inter-coder reliability for the challenges, and then proceeded to code the remaining highlights and challenges in the full datasets (N = 6383). Each coded half of each dataset.
Quantitative analysis
We drew on Belsky’s (Citation1984) model of the determinants of parenting to help select appropriate child, maternal and social support variables associated with employment being viewed as a major challenge or a highlight. These variables were then categorised in keeping with other studies using the GUiNZ dataset and to ensure the linearity of the independent variables and the log odds assumption was met in our subsequent logistic regression.
However, as less than 0.5% of our sample mother reported returning to work as a highlight, we were only able to explore in our logistic regression factors that were associated with mothers reporting returning to work as a challenge.
Using SPSS version 22, variables in our model that emerged as significantly associated with reporting returning to work as a challenge (using an alpha level of .05 in individual chi-square analyses) were identified. Correlations between these variables were examined to screen possible multicollinearity (Field Citation2013). Only two variables, age of baby when mother returned to work and total parental leave length, were highly correlated (r[1392] = .78, p < .001) and hence total leave length was excluded from the logistic regression analysis (Field Citation2013). A correlation matrix of the variables entered in the final logistic regression (with list wise deletion for missing data) is given in Table S2: most of the correlations were less than .1 with the highest being .39).
As the reasons for not returning to work were non-independent (with participants being able to select up to six reasons) we ran five separate regression models, entering only one reason for returning to work in each model, in addition to running a regression model with all reasons modelled simultaneously.
Results
Thematic analysis
The categories of the highlights and challenges reported by working parents are described in and along with the frequency of reporting each category, respectively. The top five highlights for working mothers related to Enjoyment of the Child (40%, N = 950), Child Development (29%, N = 698), Attributes of the Child (15%, N = 370), Positive Effects on the Family (14.2%, N = 340) and Sibling Interactions (14.0%, N = 335). The remaining highlights all had less than 6% endorsement.
Table 5. Final coding scheme developed for coding of highlights reported by mothers in the current study and the frequency of reporting by working mothers.
Table 6. Final coding scheme developed for coding of challenges reported by mothers in the current study and the percentage of working mothers reporting each category.
The top four challenges reported by working mothers were: Time Management (24%, N = 581), which involved statements about juggling multiple tasks (but no direct reference given to work); Maternal Role (22%, N = 518); Work-Related Time Management and Work-life Balance issues (14.8%, N = 356); Sleep Deprivation (14.5%, N = 349). The remaining challenges all had less than 8% endorsement.
With respect to the secondary coding of any statement to do with work, less than 0.5% of our sample of mothers mentioned work as a highlight (either work positive or work negative) and hence mentioning work as a highlight was not analysed further. With respect to the secondary coding of any challenges referring to work, the work-negative category was mentioned by 18% of the sample and work-positive by 2% of the sample. Closer examination of the work-negative valence category revealed that the majority of those responses (81%) were also coded in the thematic analysis as being challenges associated with ‘work-related time and work-life balance issues.’
Only the mothers’ work-negative responses to the biggest challenges question had sufficient endorsement (18%) to examine further. Therefore, subsequent analyses focused solely on the predictors of negative work challenges. No other challenge themes were entered in the model.
Descriptive statistics
The demographic characteristics of all the working mothers and the mothers who mentioned work among their biggest challenges since the birth of their child are given in .
Inferential statistics
Preliminary chi-square analyses revealed 14 statistically significant predictors (alpha level ≤.05) of work being the biggest negative challenge for mothers of infants. The significant predictors for work being the biggest challenge included the following child characteristics: child age when mother returned to work (χ2[2] = 20.11, p < .001), child negative affect (χ2[3] = 7.92, p < .05), parity (χ2[1] = 5.72, p = .02) and having health or developmental problems (χ 2[1] = 11.19, p < .01. With respect to the maternal characteristics, the only significant predictor of work being a challenge was the level of involvement with the child (χ 2[1] = 13.05, p < .001).
The following maternal reasons for returning to work were also associated with work being a challenge: used up their total parental leave (χ 2[1] = 7.19, p = .01), used up paid parental leave (χ 2[1] = 11.76, p < .01), needed the money (χ 2[1] = 9.80, p < .01), feared negative career consequences from remaining on leave (χ 2[1] = 4.17, p = .04), wanted to get out of the house (χ 2[1] = 29.34, p < .001) and missed the company at work (χ 2[1] = 9.66, p < .01).
Finally, the social support/stressors and environment factors associated with returning to work being a challenge were: partner involvement with the child (χ 2[1] = 5.76, p = .02), lack of family stress, (χ 2[3] = 9.25, p = .03) household income (χ 2[4] = 11.53, p = .02) and the work characteristic of number of hours worked (χ 2[4] = 119.00, p < .001). The correlations between all 15 significant predictor variables proposed for use in the study in line with our theoretical framework are given in Supplementary Table S1: all correlations are less than .4.
Multivariable binary logistic regression analysis
shows the variables that were significantly associated with work being mentioned negatively as one of the biggest challenges (the full table is given in supplementary Table S2). The models shown include all the reasons for not returning to work modelled simultaneously as only one difference was found when the reasons for returning to work were modelled individually in five separate regressions. The difference is noted in the table and described below.
Table 7. Binary multivariable logistic regression showing the statistically significant predictors of the likelihood of working mothers describing employment as the biggest challenge during the first nine months of their infants’ lives (N = 1918).
The regression analysis resulted in a reduction of sample size from 2338 working mothers to 1918 due to list wise deletion of missing data on a number of predictors. The predictors with more than 5% of data missing were: household income (9.1%), age of baby when the mother returned to work (11%) and reasons for returning to work (10%). All other variables had less than 1% of data missing.
Child characteristics
The odds of mothers reporting work as a negative challenge were higher when the mother had more than one child (OR = 1.34) and higher when the child did not have health or developmental problems (OR = 2.26). In contrast, the odds were lower (OR = .50) when the infants were at least six months old compared to less than three months old.
Environmental support/stressors
Mothers who had higher household incomes (over $NZ 50,000) had increasingly higher odds (OR = 1.49–2.03) of reporting work as the biggest challenge compared to those with household incomes less than $NZ 50,000.
Work characteristics
Mothers who worked over 20 hours a week had increasingly higher odds of reporting working as the biggest challenge (OR 2.94–5.04) compared to those who worked fewer than 10 hours a week. The odds of mothers reporting working as the biggest challenge were also higher when they feared negative career outcomes from staying on leave (OR = 1.49), but lower when they reported wanting to get out of the house (OR = .54) or missing the company at work (OR = .54). Note, however, that missing the company at work was only found to be significant when run as part of the separate logistic regression.
Discussion
Working mothers seem to experience similar highlights to non-working mothers, with the top five highlights reported by working mothers being the same as those reported in the full cohort of nearly 6500 mothers (Corkin, Peterson, et al. Citation2017). However, the top five challenges reported by mothers differed between working mothers and the full cohort. For working mothers, the top five challenges were: time management, maternal role and responsibility, work-related time/work-life balance, sleep deprivation and child health. Whereas the top five challenges reported by the full cohort of mothers were maternal role and responsibility, time management, sleep deprivation and child health and loss of autonomy (Corkin, Peterson, et al. Citation2017). The key difference was that working mothers in the current study placed time management as their top concern, and unlike the non-working mothers, mentioned work-related time issues and work-life balance as one of their top five challenges, endorsed by 14.4% of the working mothers, whereas in the full cohort it was endorsed by only 6% if the sample.
This greater focus on time management and work-related time issues by working mothers is in keeping with the scarcity of resources hypothesis (Goode Citation1960), with the majority of mothers’ statements referring directly to struggling with general ‘time management’ or ‘balancing’ or ‘juggling’ multiple things. Arguably, the Sleep Deprivation category, which was the 4th most cited challenge, may be partly related to this as well, as one mother notes her biggest challenge was ‘waking up so very early to get ready for work and preparing the family’. This suggests that working mothers of infants may get even less sleep due to having too many jobs to complete in a limited time period.
The second most endorsed challenge by working mothers (maternal role) has strong parallels with the intensive mothering ideology (Hays Citation1996) and the often cited ‘maternal guilt’ (Green Citation2015). Many of the comments in this category referred to the pressures of wanting to be a good parent and concern about doing the role well, meeting their child's needs and sharing their attention equally.
In contrast, the most endorsed highlight ‘Enjoyment of the child’ may reflect a key impetus that inspires working mothers to keep going despite the multiple challenges. As one mother said ‘Even when I’m dog tired I can't believe how gorgeous he is’. The remaining top five highlights were all broadly related either to the successful development of the child or to the contentment of the family. This suggests that these highlights may be offering some kind of reward or compensation for the intensive mothering approach, which places the children's and family's needs over and above those of the mother. As Green (Citation2015) said, ‘Simply put, Kids come first! Period’ (p. 198).
Our results found that while some child characteristics (age, health/developmental problems), environmental supports/stressors (household income) and work characteristics (hours worked and reasons for returning to work) were related to the likelihood of reporting work as a negative challenge, no effect was found for maternal characteristics or social support/stressors. This latter finding suggests that the background of the mother and the social supports available to a mother make little difference to the likelihood of reporting work as the biggest challenge and that work is perceived as challenging by a wide demographic of women with very different social support networks.
To some extent, the lack of findings for social support runs counter to the widely supported stress-buffering hypothesis that posits that the availability of social support reduces the link between stressful life events and depression (Cobb Citation1976; Cohen and McKay Citation1984). It may be that factors that create greater levels of workload for mothers, such as the number of hours worked or the age of an infant, influence the degree to which work is experienced as a challenging life event (measured in our study), while the role of social support is to then buffer the risk that these stressors will cause depression.
With respect to the significant predictors of increased work-related challenges, two work-related factors were found to be particularly important. Those who worked 20 hours or more per week had higher odds of reporting working as a negative challenge compared to those who worked fewer than 10 hours a week, and mothers were more likely to report work as a challenge when they feared negative career outcomes for staying on leave. Taken together, these findings suggest that businesses should communicate to their employees that taking parental leave (and potentially returning to part-time work and working less than 20 hours) will not be held against them in terms of their career development.
While the finding above that working 20–40 hours a week is increasingly challenging and hints at the need for more flexible working arrangements, somewhat contradictory to this, we did not find effects for the type of worker or type of work schedule on the likelihood of reporting work as a challenge. Several studies have found that working irregular hours or evening shifts did have adverse effects on maternal depression, parenting effectiveness and infant outcomes (Grzywacz et al. Citation2010; Han Citation2005; Skafida Citation2012; Wills and Brauer Citation2012; Chatterji et al. Citation2013). It may be that in the present study, we were unable to distinguish whether irregular work hours had been arranged for the convenience of mothers or their employers.
At the contextual/environmental level, it seems that mothers most at risk of reporting work as their biggest challenge tend to come from families with greater household incomes. Mothers earning high incomes are likely to be in the higher echelon of ‘professional and high-level managerial occupations’, which tend to be demanding due to high levels of role complexity (Hyllegard and Lavin Citation1992, p. 246). While it may be that higher income mothers are in more high-powered and demanding jobs that might contribute to their struggles, it is not necessarily the case that low-income households do not also find work a significant challenge. Instead, mothers in these households may report their biggest challenge as being in another category, such as financial strain. On the other hand, it is also possible that low-income families perceive more financial benefits gained from working, including having a lower risk of living in poverty and greater independence, which potentially better enables them to provide learning resources and emotional support for their children, and this might outweigh any perceived challenges associated with working (Warr and Parry Citation1982; Vandell and Ramanan Citation1992).
In terms of child level predictors of working being the biggest challenge, our results indicate that mothers of infants older than six months find work less of a challenge compared to those with babies under three months of age. This corresponds with findings from US research using large, distinct, nationally representative samples with extensive controls (n = 1300–3500). These previous studies found that mothers who return to work before their infants are three months old are at significantly greater risk of depressive symptoms (Chatterji and Markowitz Citation2005; Chatterji and Markowitz Citation2012; Chatterji et al. Citation2013). The consistency in results suggests that earlier maternal employment has remained challenging for mothers from the late 1980s to the present day, despite increases in early maternal employment throughout this period (Flynn and Harris Citation2015).
On the positive side, our results also seem to instead suggest that work may have provided a valued break from the heightened responsibilities and workload associated with caring for an infant with health or developmental problems (Quittner et al. Citation1992; Haddock and Rattenborg Citation2003) providing partial support for the enhancement hypothesis (Marks Citation1977). That is, we found that mothers with healthy children were more likely to report work as the biggest challenge. In line with this interpretation, we found that mothers who reported having decided to return to work because they wanted to get out of the house or missed the company at work were also significantly less likely to report work as the biggest challenge than mothers who did not return. A significant (although weak) correlation (r = −.04, p < .05) between returning to work due to wanting to get out of the house and not having a child with a health or developmental problem also provides partial support for this idea.
Alternatively, since mothers in our study were asked to report the biggest challenge that they had experienced over the first nine months of their infants’ lives, our results may have occurred simply because mothers would be more likely to perceive that having an infant with health or developmental problems was their biggest challenge rather than returning to work. This interpretation is supported by the results of our quantitative analysis of the predictors of maternal challenges reported by the wider cohort, which found that, compared to mothers of health infants, the odds of mothers whose infants had developmental or health problems were five times greater for reporting of the challenge ‘Attributes of the child’, a challenge category that encompassed health and developmental concerns of the child (Corkin, Peterson, et al. Citation2017).
Practical implications
Our finding that employment was significantly less likely to be the biggest challenge for mothers when their infants were at least six months old compared to less than three months old supports the value of NZ's current year-long duration of parental leave. Yet almost three-quarters of our sample of working mothers reported needing the money as a reason for why they returned to work before their infants were nine months old. This suggests that the current amount of paid leave offered by NZ's parental leave policy (14 weeks at the time of the study, now 18 weeks) may not be enough to financially support households where one parent is on leave. Accordingly, only 30% of the 3534 mothers in the GUiNZ study who had taken some form of leave from work remained on leave at the nine-month interview (Morton et al. Citation2012). Mothers who returned to work because they feared negative career consequences if they stayed on leave were more likely to identify work as the biggest challenge, which suggests the importance of employers communicating to their employees that taking parental leave will not be held against them in terms of their career development, and establishing procedures where employees are able to safely voice concerns. It is also important for employers to support mothers of infants in being able to work part-time hours to help manage their workloads.
Finally, in our sample mothers who returned to work because they wanted to get out of the house or missed the company of work colleagues and those with infants with health or developmental problems appeared to benefit from being employed. This has potential implications for the availability of affordable, quality childcare facilities for women wanting to return to work, especially for those with children with health and developmental issues.
Strengths and limitations
Our study contributes to the maternal employment literature by examining the highlights and challenges of working mothers of infants in a large, diverse and contemporary NZ sample. Our study considered a wide variety of factors associated with the increased likelihood of mothers of infants reporting key challenges relating to work. We also examined whether findings from previous research investigating the situation faced by working mothers in other countries (predominantly the US, a developed country with anomalous parental leave policies to NZ) were applicable to the experience of NZ working mothers. We also were able to compare the challenges mothers reported with findings from other (smaller scale) qualitative studies.
By using open-ended question, we were able to capture the single or few key challenges experienced by mothers during this period. While this may mean that fewer work-related comments were given, it allowed us to contrast the experience of work as a challenge relative to all other challenges mothers in our study associated with parenting an infant. Additionally, the collection of qualitative data in this study allowed each mother to freely recall and describe their greatest challenges, without being limited to predetermined categories.
The present study also had several limitations. Firstly, we were unable to capture information from mothers who may have found it difficult to combine work and parenting, but not considered it to be their biggest challenge. Therefore, our results should not be interpreted as meaning that mothers who did not identify work-related challenges as their biggest challenge did not experience such challenges. Additionally, results could be biased due to recency effects, as mothers reported the biggest challenge and highlight experienced since the birth of their child. These problems could have been exacerbated by possible fatigue and boredom since mothers reported their biggest challenges and highlights at the end of a 90-minute interview. Responses may have also been biased with more talkative mothers reporting a greater number of different challenges (Peterson et al. Citation2014).
The study was additionally limited by its cross-sectional design, and may be biased by common-method variance. This is because the majority of the data in this study on the mother and the child were collected via mother report at the nine-month interview (Field Citation2013).
Conclusion
To conclude, we found that working mothers endorsed elements of both the scarcity and enhancement hypotheses, indicating that they struggled to balance the demand of work and family and, in keeping with the intensive mothering discourse, worried about adequately fulfilling their maternal role. We found that the greatest influences on work being challenging for NZ mothers with young children were working a greater number of hours and having a younger infant. On the other hand, work appears to function as a protective factor for mothers with children with health or developmental problems or those who wish to have a break from home life and missed adult company. These factors could be targeted at both the policy and organisational levels in order to support mothers of infants in their transition to employment and to assist them in achieving and maintaining a balance between the dual roles of mother and employee. Finally, we highlighted some of the positive sides of being a parent of an infant with our working mothers reporting in particular on the sheer enjoyment of having a child, of watching their child grow and develop and seeing the positive impact having a baby has on their family. These positive experiences to some extent seem to help make some of the challenges all worthwhile.
Table S1. Correlation Matrix of the Significant Predictors in the Final Model of Mothers Work Related Challenges
Download MS Word (18.8 KB)Table S2. Binary Multivariable Logistic Regression Predicting the Likelihood of Working Mothers Describing Employment as the Biggest Challenge during the First Nine Months of their Infants’ Lives (N = 1918)
Download MS Word (19 KB)Acknowledgements
The study has been designed and conducted by the Growing Up in New Zealand study team, led by the University of Auckland. The authors acknowledge the contributions of the original study investigators: Susan M.B. Morton, Polly E. Atatoa Carr, Cameron C. Grant, Arier C. Lee, Dinusha K. Bandara, Jatender Mohal, Jennifer M. Kinloch, Johanna M. Schmidt, Mary R. Hedges, Vivienne C. Ivory, Te Kani R. Kingi, Renee Liang, Lana M. Perese, Elizabeth R.Peterson, Jan E. Pryor, Elaine Reese, Elizabeth M. Robinson, Karen E. Waldie, Clare R. Wall. The views reported in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Growing Up in New Zealand Investigators’. Growing Up in New Zealand has been funded by the New Zealand Ministries of Social Development, Health, Education, Justice and Pacific Island Affairs; the former Ministry of Science Innovation and the former Department of Labour (now both part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment); the former Ministry of Women’s Affairs (now the Ministry for Women); the Department of Corrections; the Families Commission (now known as the Social Policy Evaluation and Research Unit); Te Puni Kokiri; New Zealand Police; Sport New Zealand; the Housing New Zealand Corporation; and the former Mental Health Commission, The University of Auckland and Auckland UniServices Limited. Other support for the study has been provided by the NZ Health Research Council, Statistics New Zealand, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and the Office of Ethnic Affairs.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Elizabeth R. Peterson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2702-6986
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