Beliefs About the Consequences of Maternal Employment for Children

Abstract

A 24-item scale was developed to measure Beliefs about the Consequences of Maternal Employment for Children (BACMEC), including beliefs about both benefits (1 3 items) and costs (1 1 items). Studies of five samples ( n = 3 7 5 ) demonstrate that the total BACMEC scale and its subscales are highly reliable and have good convergent, divergent, and concurrent validity. Scores on the Costs Subscale predicted greater sex-role traditionalism, women's employment status (not employed), and an older age of child at which mother's employment was deemed acceptable. Benefits scores predicted women's employment status (employed) and work hours (longer), younger age of child when maternal work is acceptable, and greater support for policies to aid working parents. The scales were not susceptible to a social desirability bias. Suggestions are provided for the use of the BACMEC scale in future research concerning ernployment and families.The substantial increase in women's labor force participation over the past few decades is now a familiar social phenomenon. The most dramatic change in women's labor force activity has occurred among married women with children in the home. Sixty percent of married mothers with school-age children were in the labor force in March 1984, compared with 40% in 1970 (Hayghe, 1984). Furthermore, it is no longer the case that

Cross-ethnic Applicability of the Gender-based Attitudes Toward Marriage and Child Rearing Scales

“…Although working-class couples are about as likely as professionalclass couples to share family work, an ideology of separate spheres is more evident in the lower economic strata (Coltrane, 2000;Press & Townsley, 1998). Moreover, nonemployed married women hold more stereotyped views than employed women do, and their husbands and children hold more traditional views than their counterparts in motheremployed families (Hoffman & Kloska, 1995;Greenberger, Goldberg, Crawford, & Ganger, 1988). More stereotyped gender attitudes are also consistently found to correlate with fewer years of schooling (Glass, 1992), a relationship that tends to hold across different racial and ethnic groups (Hoffman & Kloska, 1995;Oropesa, 1996).…”

Child care before 6 months of age: a qualitative study of mothers' decisions and feelings about employment and non‐maternal care

“…The 'early child care' sample To assess whether these 207 mothers differed from the pool of 405 from which they came, a series of group comparisons was conducted on factors found to be related to child care ): child's gender, birth order and birth weight; maternal age; mother's and partner's educational level; mother's and partner's occupational status (CASOC; Elias, Halstead, & Prandy, 1993); mother's, partner's and family income; whether the delivery was assisted; mother's general health and post-natal depression; lone motherhood; maternal ethnicity and mother-tongue (English or not); maternal and paternal beliefs in the benefits and costs of maternal employment (short form of Beliefs About Consequences of Maternal Employment for Children; BACMEC, Greenberger, Goldberg, Crawford, & Granger, 1988; maternal and paternal traditional or progressive child rearing attitudes (Schaefer & Edgarton, 1985). Categorical indicators were compared using w 2 tests and continuous indicators using t-tests.…”

Structural and process features in three types of child care for children from high and low income families

“…Family level variables at one month of age include maternal education, partner present or absent, number of children in the family, and maternal beliefs about the costs and benefits of maternal employment (Greenberger, Goldberg, Crawford, & Granger, 1988 …”

“…Family level variables at one month of age include maternal education, partner present or absent, number of children in the family, and maternal beliefs about the costs and benefits of maternal employment (Greenberger, Goldberg, Crawford, & Granger, 1988). Child level variables include gender, racial/ethnic group, maternal report of child global temperament at 6 months (scores range from 1-5 with higher scores reflecting a more difficult temperament; Carey & McDevitt, 1978), two developmental scales administered at 15 months of age, the Bayley Mental Development Index (Bayley, 1969) and the McArthur Communicative Developmental Inventories (CDI; Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Thal, & Reilly, 1991).…”