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Abstract
Women's return to work after maternity leave represents an important developmental transition. Intentional self-regulation can help women successfully master this transition. In a longitudinal study with three waves of measurement waves (5, 11, and 24 weeks after re-entry; N = 267), self-efficacy beliefs and self-regulatory strategies (selection, optimization, compensation; SOC) predicted better work adjustment over time. Most importantly, contextual characteristics interacted with intentional self-regulation: for mothers who worked only a very small number of hours, who had many family obligations and who reported high levels of stress at work, it was particularly adaptive to make use of self-regulatory strategies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was made possible by two grants to the first author from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant-Nr.: 10000-112548/1, Grant-Nr.: PP00P1_123530). The authors gratefully acknowledge this support. In addition, the authors wish to thank Heather Fuchs for her helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.