Recent research is reviewed to consider the effects of the mother's employment on the child in the twoparent family. This work deals mainly with maternal employment during the child's preschool years. Because of the difficulties in measuring enduring traits in young children, and because neither previous nor current research has revealed clear differences between children in dual. wage and single-wage families, attention is also given to the effects on the family processes that mediate child outcomes: the psychological well-being of the parents, their marital relationship, the father's role, and parent-child interaction. The influence of maternal employment on these variables, as well as on child outcomes, is found to be dependent on the attitudes of the parents, the number of hours the mother is employed, social support, and the child's gender.

Research findings in child development are reviewed to shed light on female achievement motives. It is suggested that females have high needs for affiliation which influence their achievement motives and behavior, sometimes enhancing and sometimes blocking them. Since girls as compared to boys have less encouragement for independence, more parental protectiveness, less pressure for establishing an identity separate from the mother, and less mother‐child conflict which highlights this separation, they engage in less independent exploration of their environments. As a result they develop neither adequate skills nor confidence but continue to be dependent upon others. Thus while boys learn effectance through mastery, the effectiveness of girls is contingent on elicting the help of others. Affective relationships are paramount in females and much of their achievement behavior is motivated by a desire to please. If achievement threatens affiliation, performance may be sacrificed or anxiety may result.

Data from a national survey of the value of children to parents were analyzed to (a)report the satisfactions of parenthood perceived by married American couples in the childbearing years, (b) test the adequacy of the kloffman and Hoffman (1973) need-based category scheme for conceptualizing the value of children, and (c) examine subgroup diff(~rences to test the hypothesis that groups with fewer alternative means for satisfying a particular need will value children more highly for this quality. Results indicated that the Hoffman and Hoffman (1973) scheme was adequate with some modifications. In both structured and unstructured questions, the two most important values were Primary Group Ties and Stimulation and Fun. The alternatives hypothesis received some support: Groups with less access to economic resources (less educated and blacks) gave more importance to economic-utility values than did others; women with traditional sex-role definitions gave more importance to adult status than did others; unemployed women gave more to fun and stimulation; Jews and nonaffiliated more to immortality; urban residents more to purpose in life. The alternatives hypothesis alone did not work as well in other cases, particularly achievement, probably because the intensity of the need was not considered in this analysis.

A sample of elderly parents in the state of Florida was contrasted with a national sample of parents in their childbearing years with respect to the satisfactions and dissatisfactions of having children. For both groups, children were most commonly seen as satisfying the needs for love and companionship and fun and stimulation. The Older group was more likely than the younger to report that children fill economic-utility needs. The older group was also more likely to indicate that there were no disadvantages to having children, and they were less likely to specifically mention disadvantages such as restrictions on freedom or financial costs. This study found that elderly parents are actually more likely to be giving financial help to their children than receiving it, and that contact with children was frequent despite geographical barriers.

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