Women's Work Involvement and Experience of New Motherhood

Author(s): Nancy Pistrang

Source: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 46, No. 2 (May, 1984), pp. 433-447
Published by: National Council on Family Relations
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/352475
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 Women's Work Involvement and Experience
of New Motherhood

NANCY PISTRANG
University College Hospital, London

Interviews were conducted with 63 nonworking and 42 working mothers who had a first
baby aged 5 to 9 months. The relationship between previous work involvement-the im-
portance of work in women's lives prior to pregnancy-and the experience of first-time
motherhood was examined. Two predictions were made: (a) for women who did not work
after their baby was born, previous work involvement was expected to be negatively related
to the quality of their experience of motherhood; (b) for women who did work, previous
work involvement was expected to be positively related to the quality of motherhood ex-
periences. Several dimensions of the experience of new motherhood were assessed. The
findings for nonworking mothers generally supported the first prediction: high-work-
involved women tended to report greater irritability, decreased marital intimacy, higher
costs of motherhood, greater depression, and lower self-esteem than did low-work-in-
volved women. The findings for working mothers did not support the second prediction:
work involvement was generally unrelated to motherhood experiences. The findings sug-
gest that paid employment has psychological importance for many mothers of infants and
that work involvement should be considered as an individual difference variable in research
on new motherhood.

In recent years women's traditional roles as wives
and mothers have been vigorously challenged.
Educational opportunities for women have ex-
panded, and increasing numbers of women have
entered professional occupations traditionally
defined as appropriate for men only. Partly as a
result of increased career aspirations, many
women are waiting longer before having children,
and a growing proportion of women expect to re-
main childless (Van Dusen and Sheldon, 1976;
This study is based on the author's doctoral dissertation
and was supported by a UCLA Graduate Division
Research Grant and a Mabel Wilson Richards Scholar-
ship. Debbie Borys, Mary Carey, and Randi Freidland
assisted with the interviews. Barbara Henker, Anne
Peplau, and other UCLA colleagues too numerous to
mention gave valuable help at all stages of the research.
I am especially grateful for Chris Barker's statistical and
editorial contributions. This study was presented in part
at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological
Society, York, England, April 1982.
Senior Clinical Psychologist, Jules Thorn Day Hospital,
4 St. Pancras Way, London NW1 OPE, England.
Grossman, 1981; Wilkie, 1981). As the popular
literature indicates, the decision about whether or
when to have a child is fraught with conflict for at
least some career-oriented women (Whelan, 1975;
Fabe and Wikler, 1979). Furthermore, increasing
numbers of women are returning to the labor
force when their children are young: in 1960, only
19% of married women with children under 6
were employed, as contrasted with 45% in 1980
(U.S. Department of Commerce, 1981). Recent
studies indicate that many middle-class women
are choosing to return to work when their children
are infants (Hock, 1978, 1980; Jimenez, 1978), al-
though no statistical data on this population are
available.
How do women's attitudes toward work and
their decisions about working after childbirth af-
fect their experiences of new motherhood? For ex-
ample, do career-oriented women have more diffi-
culties adjusting to new motherhood? Do women
who return to work shortly after childbirth ex-
perience more stress than nonworking mothers?
Although numerous studies have examined
women's experience of the first year of mother-

May 1984 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 433

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hood (e.g., Shereshefsky and Yarrow, 1973;
Russell, 1974; Hobbs and Cole, 1976; Leifer,
1977; Oakley, 1980), they rarely have addressed
these questions. Furthermore, the substantial
literature on maternal employment has focused
primarily on the effects of employment on the
child rather than on the mother herself (Etaugh,
1974; Hoffman and Nye, 1974).
A few studies, however, suggest that women
who have had careers or who have enjoyed work-
ing may find new motherhood particularly stress-
ful: in leaving work to become a mother, these
women may lose a role that provides personal
satisfaction. LeMasters (1957) found that women
who had extensive professional work experience
reported "extensive or severe crisis" in adjusting
to their first child. However, these findings are
based on a very small sample of professional
women, and the definition of "extensive or severe
crisis" is unclear. In a series of Swedish studies by
Nilsson and colleagues (Nilsson and Almgren,
1970; Uddenberg, 1974; Uddenberg and Nilsson,
1975), women with emotional difficulties at four
to six months postpartum were more likely to
report that motherhood was not a "primary aim"
of their life and that they missed their previous
professional work. Unfortunately, the authors in-
terpret these data in terms of underlying per-
sonality problems (e.g., "poor identification with
the feminine role"), dismissing the possibility that
"normal" women may miss work. Oakley (1980)
suggests that leaving work may be construed as a
loss or a gain and that women who experience it as
a loss may have less positive experiences of
motherhood. While her data lend some support to
this idea, she did not assess women's attitudes
toward work in any depth.
In contrast, two additional studies found that
career women may have more positive mother-
hood experiences. Jimenez (1978) found that "job
oriented" women tended to be better adjusted
than other women at six weeks postpartum. She
suggests that successful employment and repro-
ductive experiences may represent a general style
of good coping. The inconsistency between
Jimenez's finding and other studies may be partly
explained by differences in the time of postpartum
assessment: Jimenez assessed adjustment at six
weeks, while other studies assessed adjustment at
four months or later. It is possible that job-
oriented women begin to miss their jobs and ex-
perience the "losses" only after several months at
home with the baby. In another study Hock
(1978) found that neither "career orientation"
nor postpartum work status were related to mater-
nal satisfaction at three months postpartum.
However, Hock's data suggest that maternal satis-
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faction may be determined by the degree of con-
gruence between postpartum work status and per-
ception of the infant's need for exclusive maternal
care. That is, working mothers who perceive no
infant distress due to separation are likely to view
motherhood as satisfying. Unfortunately, the
study is limited in that it used only one outcome
measure, the Appropriate Closeness factor of the
Maternal Attitudes Scale (Cohler et al., 1970),
which only indirectly measures maternal satisfac-
tion.
It is difficult to draw any conclusions from the
available literature because it has several major
shortcomings. First, attitudes toward work tend
to be poorly defined and measured. Most of the
studies seem to be concerned with what occupa-
tional psychologists call "job involvement" or
"work involvement"-the degree to which a per-
son sees work as an important part of his or her
life (Rabinowitz and Hall, 1977; Warr et al.,
1979)-although the way this is measured varies
from study to study. A second problem is the
tendency to use a single, unidimensional measure
of adjustment to motherhood, such as depression
or degree of "crisis." It is probable that women's
experiences of new motherhood are multidimen-
sional (a few studies support this: Westbrook,
1979; Steffensmeier, 1982; Weinberg and
Richardson, 1981) and that attitudes toward work
affect some dimensions of motherhood experi-
ences and not others.
Finally, the literature says little about new
mothers who return to work. It seems likely that
the relationship between a woman's previous
work involvement and her experience of mother-
hood will depend on whether or not she continues
to work after her baby is born. High-work-
involved women may have a stressful experience
of motherhood only if they give up work; if they
continue to work, they may feel more satisfied,
since they have not given up a role that they value.
For low-work-involved women, the opposite may
be true: they may be better off if they stop work-
ing since they have less personal interest in work
and, therefore, may experience combining work
and motherhood as a burden. A few studies of
working women support this idea: women who
are personally committed to work tend to report
greater satisfaction with their "life planning" and
greater marital satisfaction than do women who
work out of necessity or who see work as a burden
(Orden and Bradburn, 1969; Safilios-Rothschild,
1970; Fuchs, 1971). Research on work involve-
ment and unemployment, focusing primarily on
men, also supports this idea. Among the em-
ployed, high work involvement has been found to
be associated with good mental health; for the un-
May 1984
employed, however, it has been associated with
poor mental health. That is, mental health is
higher if the individual's employment status is
congruent with his interest in work (Warr, 1978;
Stafford et al., 1980).
The present study examined the relationship be-
tween women's work involvement prior to preg-
nancy and their experience of new motherhood in
detail. It was hypothesized that this relationship
would be moderated by women's postpartum
work status. Two specific predictions were made:
1. For women who do not work after their
babies are born, previous work involvement was
expected to be negatively related to the quality of
the experience of motherhood. That is, high-
work-involved women were expected to have less
positive experiences of motherhood than low-
work-involved women. The study examined the
underlying assumption of this hypothesis-that,
for high-work-involved women, giving up work
involves the loss of an important source of satis-
faction-by developing a measure of the psycho-
logical loss of leaving work.
2. For women who continue to work after their
babies are born, previous work involvement was
expected to be positively related to the quality of
motherhood experiences. That is, high-work-in-
volved women were expected to have more posi-
tive experiences of motherhood than low-work-
involved women.
A secondary aim of the study was to provide a
more fine-grained, multidimensional assessment
of the experience of new motherhood. It was
thought likely that work involvement would not
show the hypothesized relationships for all dimen-
sions of motherhood experiences. Thus, this
aspect of the study was exploratory.
A final aim was to examine whether the pre-
dicted relationships between work involvement
and motherhood experiences were explained by
other variables. Several variables that were ex-
pected to correlate with work involvement were
examined: demographic variables, specifically,
length of time worked, age, education, and in-
come; satisfaction with work; and sex-role atti-
tudes.
METHOD
Participants
Participants were 105 women who had given
birth to their first child within the last 5 to 9
months. The lower limit of 5 months was chosen
as a result of pilot interviews, which suggested
that the psychological impact of leaving one's job
might not be felt in the early postpartum months.
The upper limit of 9 months was set in order to in-
crease the homogeneity of the sample.
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Mothers were eligible for the study if they had
worked immediately prior to becoming pregnant.
Work was defined as paid employment, including
self-employment, for at least 20 hours per week.
Several additional criteria for eligibility were
established in order to increase the sample's
homogeneity. All participants (a) were married
and living with their husbands; (b) had at least a
high school education; (c) had no other children
(e.g., adopted children) living in the home; (d)
were not currently pregnant; and (e) had babies
who had no physical problems (e.g., premature
babies who had required more than a brief
hospital stay were excluded).
Women were recruited from the greater Los
Angeles area through newspaper articles, letters in
pediatricians' offices, and announcements at
Lamaze classes and at YMCA Mother-Infant
classes. Participants were predominantly white
(93%) and college-educated (35% had completed
high school only, 40% were college graduates,
and 26% had a graduate degree). They ranged in
age from 22 to 40, with a mean age of 29. Their
babies ranged in age from 20 to 40 weeks (approx-
imately 5 to 9 months), with a mean age of 31
weeks (approximately 7 months). The average
participant had been married 4 years and was
satisfied with her marriage (the mean Locke-
Wallace score was 113). Participants had worked
for an average of 7 years prior to pregnancy, in a
wide variety of occupations. However, the sample
was heavily weighted towards women in profes-
sional and administrative/managerial jobs: 50%7
had professional jobs (school teachers were the
single largest professional group, composing 16%
of the sample), and another 24% had administra-
tive or managerial positions.
Forty-two mothers were currently working and
63 were not. Women were categorized as working
if they were engaged in paid employment, in-
cluding self-employment, for at least 8 hours per
week. (The 8-hour-per-week criterion was chosen
because a pilot study indicated that many mothers
of infants who resume employment do so on a
limited basis). The mean number of hours worked
per week was 20; only 8 of the 42 working mothers
were working full-time. Most mothers left their
babies with other caretakers while they worked:
25 left the babies with paid caretakers, nine left
the babies with fathers or relatives, and eight
mothers worked at home or took their babies to
work with them. Working and nonworking
mothers did not differ statistically in age, educa-
tion, income prior to pregnancy, or number of
years worked prior to pregnancy. However, work-
ing mothers tended to be more highly involved in
work prior to pregnancy and to have more liberal
sex-role attitudes than nonworking mothers.
435
Procedure
Participants were interviewed in their homes by
the author or by a female research assistant. The
interview, which typically lasted about two hours,
was structured and followed a standardized se-
quence of oral questions interspersed with written
questionnaires. The introductory section con-
sisted of open-ended questions designed to estab-
lish rapport and to give participants permission to
talk about both positive and negative experiences
of motherhood. Because of the cultural norm to
emphasize the positive side of motherhood,
several questions were designed to normalize the
dissatisfactions and difficulties new mothers may
face. The measures described below are a subset
of the total interview (for the complete set of
measures, see Pistrang, 1982).
Independent Measures
Demographic variables. These included age,
education (coded into five categories: high school
only, some college, college graduate, some
graduate school, graduate degree), number of
years worked prior to pregnancy, and woman's
income prior to pregnancy.
Work Involvement scale. This measure assessed
the respondent's psychological involvement in
work-i.e., the degree to which she saw her job as
an important part of her life prior to her preg-
nancy. Because no single, appropriate measure of
work involvement was found in the literature,
items were brought together from several sources
and pretested in pilot interviews. Several ques-
tions were adapted from Lodahl and Kejner's
(1965) Job Involvement Scale; others were
adapted from studies focusing specifically on
women and work (Jimenez, 1978; Thornton and
Camburn, 1979). Seven of the items were rated on
a 6-point scale ranging from "disagree strongly"
to "agree strongly" (e.g., "To me, my work was
only a small part of who I was"). One item
("Overall, compared to your other activities, how
important was your work to you?") was rated on
a 5-point scale, and the final item ("Did you see
your work more as a job or more as a career?")
required a dichotomous response. These items
were drawn from a larger item pool using a reli-
ability analysis procedure in which items with low
item-total correlations were discarded. The result-
ing 9-item scale had a coefficient alpha of .87.
Working. Participants were categorized as
either working or not working at the time of the
interview. Working was defined as any form of
paid employment for at least 8 hours per week.
Work Satisfaction scale. This measure assessed
the degree to which the respondent obtained
specific satisfactions or psychological rewards
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from her work prior to pregnancy. The items were
drawn from studies of job satisfaction (Gurin et
al., 1960; Porter, 1963; Smith et al., 1969; Dun-
nette et al., cited in Robinson et al., 1974). Sam-
ple items include: "Gave me a sense of accom-
plishment," "made me feel useful," "gave me an
opportunity for self-expression" (each item was
rated on a 5-point scale, ranging from "never" to
"very often"). This scale also was subjected to
item analysis, and the resulting 25-item scale had a
coefficient alpha of .94.
This scale was developed for the present study
in order to have comparable measures of the satis-
factions obtained from work and motherhood
(i.e., it tapped satisfactions that might be derived
from any job, whether paid or unpaid). A
Motherhood Satisfaction scale (see below), with
items identical to the Work Satisfaction scale,
allowed a direct comparison of the work and
mother roles. Work Satisfaction and Motherhood
Satisfaction were separated in the interview by
several other measures to minimize the possibility
that answers on the first would influence those on
the second. These two scales were used to com-
pute the Psychological Loss of Work measure.
Psychological Loss of Work. This variable
measured the extent to which nonworking
mothers experienced leaving work as a psycho-
logical loss. It was computed by subtracting
Motherhood Satisfaction from Work Satisfaction
and, thus, represents the degree to which the
satisfactions provided by work were greater than
or less than those provided by motherhood. A
high score means that the psychological rewards
of work were not replaced by motherhood-in
other words, that the woman experienced a high
degree of loss. It should be noted that this mea-
sure tapped only satisfactions that could be ob-
tained from both work and motherhood; it did
not measure any unique rewards of motherhood
that may have replaced those of work.
Sex-role Attitudes. The Attitudes Toward
Women scale (Spence and Helmreich, 1972) was
used to measure sex-role attitudes, that is, beliefs
about appropriate role behaviors for men and
women. The short form consists of 15 statements
about rights and roles of women in such areas as
vocational and educational activities, sexual and
dating behavior, and marital relationships; each
statement is rated on a 4-point scale from "agree
strongly" to "disagree strongly." The total score
indicates the degree to which the respondent holds
traditional or liberal views about sex roles; high
scores indicate profeminist, liberal responses.
Dependent Measures
Four questionnaires assessed aspects of
May 1984
women's experiences as new mothers. These
measures were developed specifically for this
study in order to obtain a fine-grained, multi-
dimensional assessment of women's experiences
of first-time motherhood. Each questionnaire was
factor analyzed in order to examine its underlying
structure and to form reliable scales. Factor ex-
traction was by the principal factor method. The
criterion for terminating the extraction was the
"scree" test (Harman, 1976); all factors had
eigenvalues greater than 1.00. Rotation was by the
varimax procedure. Factor scores were calculated
using the method of unit weighting (Comrey,
1973). To be included on a factor, an item was re-
quired to have a loading of .35 or more and to
load on one factor only.
Changes in Self-perception. This questionnaire
assessed changes in the woman's feelings about
herself since her baby was born. Items were drawn
from Steffensmeier (1982) and from pilot inter-
view data. The questionnaire consists of 20 adjec-
tives (10 positive and 10 negative). For each adjec-
tive, the respondent rated how she felt now com-
pared with before her baby was born on a 5-point
scale ranging from "a lot less" to "a lot more."
Two factors were extracted from this question-
naire:
Factor 1: Irritability. This factor expresses
changes in mood and well-being. The items
with the highest loadings are concerned with
feeling irritated, moody and grouchy (e.g.,
"How grouchy do you feel now compared to
before your baby was born?"). A high score
on this scale indicates that the respondent re-
ported increases in feeling irritated, moody,
etc., since her baby was born. Coefficient
alpha for this 10-item scale was .83.
Factor 2: Feeling Important. This factor ex-
presses changes in self-concept. The items
with the highest factor loadings are con-
cerned with feeling important, needed, and
self-confident (e.g., "How important do you
feel now, compared to before your baby was
born?"). A high score indicates that the re-
spondent reported increases in feeling impor-
tant, needed, etc. Coefficient alpha for this
7-item scale was .79.
Life Changes. This questionnaire assessed ways
in which the woman's life had changed as a result
of having a baby. Items were adapted from
several studies (Hobbs, 1965; Hoffman, 1978;
Westbrook, 1979; Steffensmeier, 1982). For each
of the 20 items, the respondent rated the degree to
which there had been a change, using the same
5-point scale described above. One factor was ex-
tracted from this questionnaire (a second factor
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was eliminated because of low internal consisten-
cy):
Factor 1: Marital Intimacy. The items loading
on this factor are concerned with changes in
the woman's relationship with her husband
since the baby was born (e.g., "How close I
feel to my husband," "How much my hus-
band and I get on each other's nerves").
Women scoring high on this factor reported
more positive and fewer negative changes in
their marriage. Coefficient alpha for this
8-item scale was .80.
Experiences as a Mother. This questionnaire
asked about a variety of pleasures and frustra-
tions that new mothers may experience. Again
items were drawn from several studies (Russell,
1974; Hoffman, 1978; Westbrook, 1979; Steffens-
meier, 1982) and from pilot interview data. The
questionnaire consists of 29 items, balanced for
positive and negative wording. The respondent
rated the degree to which she had experienced
each item on a 5-point scale, ranging from "not at
all" to "a lot." Two factors were extracted:
Factor 1: Traditional Pleasures of Motherhood.
The items loading on this factor describe a
variety of pleasures that may be obtained
from motherhood. The factor was labeled
"traditional pleasures" because most of the
items represent stereotypical pleasures (e.g.,
"Having a baby makes me feel fulfilled as a
woman" and "I get satisfaction from know-
ing that I'm continuing the family line").
Coefficient alpha for this 10-item factor was
.84.
Factor 2: Costs of Motherhood. This factor
comprises items describing psychological
costs, or personal sacrifices, of the mother
role. An underlying dimension seems to be
the conflict between motherhood and one's
own individuality and self-fulfillment (e.g.,
"Being a mother interferes with fulfilling
myself as an individual," "Since becoming a
mother, I feel that I've lost some of my in-
dividuality"). A high score indicates greater
personal cost experienced in the mother role.
This 7-item factor had a coefficient alpha of
.74.
Motherhood Satisfaction. This measure as-
sessed the degree to which a woman obtained spe-
cific psychological rewards or satisfactions from
the daily activities of caring for her baby. It was
derived from measures of work satisfaction (see
above), and was designed to tap satisfactions ob-
tainable from work and motherhood-e.g.,
"gives me a sense of accomplishment," "makes
437
me feel useful," "gives me an opportunity for
self-expression" (each item was rated on a 5-point
scale ranging from "never" to "very often"). The
items are identical to those of the Work Satisfac-
tion measure, allowing a direct comparison of the
work and mother roles. Factor analysis showed
Motherhood Satisfaction to have a unidimension-
al structure. Coefficient alpha for this 25-item
scale was .92.
Depression. The Depression scale of the Profile
of Mood States (McNair et al., 1971) was used as
a self-report measure of depression. The Depres-
sion scale consists of 15 adjectives, each rated on a
5-point scale ranging from "not at all" to "ex-
tremely." While the entire POMS was admini-
stered, data from the Depression scale alone are
reported here because Depression is most relevant
to the new-motherhood literature. Furthermore,
there was a high correlation between Depression
and the other POMS scales: the corrected item-
total correlation for Depression was .81.
The mean Depression score for the present sam-
ple was very low (6.4 out of a possible 60 points),
and the distribution of scores showed a "floor"
effect. A square-root transformation was per-
formed on Depression to normalize its distribu-
tion; this transformed score was used in later
analyses.
Self-esteem. The short form of the Rosenberg
(1965) Self-Esteem Scale was administered. This
consists of 10 items concerned with liking and/or
approving of the self (i.e., the "self-acceptance"
aspect of self-esteem; see Robinson and Shaver,
1973).
Intercorrelations of dependent measures. To
examine whether the intercorrelations among the
above eight outcome variables justified reducing
them to a smaller number of factors, all eight vari-
ables were factor analyzed. The best solution
yielded two factors, accounting for 58% of the
variance. While this shows substantial overlap
among variables, it was decided to retain the
original variables because much of the conceptual
clarity and psychological subtlety was lost in using
the second-order factors.
RESULTS
Work Involvement and Working as Predictors of
Motherhood Experiences
The central aim of the study was to examine
how previous work involvement and postpartum
work status relate to the experience of new
motherhood. It was hypothesized that the effect
of Work Involvement would differ for nonwork-
ing and working mothers: (a) for nonworking
mothers previous work involvement was expected
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to be negatively related to the quality of
motherhood experiences; (b) for working mothers
previous work involvement was expected to be
positively related to the quality of motherhood ex-
periences. Multiple regression analysis was used to
test these hypotheses for each of the eight out-
come variables. The predictor variables were
Work Involvement, Working, and the Work In-
volvement x Working interaction.
There are four possible models for the data,
which are illustrated in Figure 1: (a) an effect for
Work Involvement, no effect for Working; (b) an
effect for Working, no effect for Work Involve-
ment; (c) a linear effect including Work Involve-
ment and Working but no interaction (an additive
model); and (d) a model in which the effect of
Work Involvement differs for working and non-
working mothers (an interactive model). The task
of the regression analysis was to find the simplest
explanatory equation for each outcome variable.
A hierarchical regression procedure was used;
the dichotomous Working variable and the inter-
action term were entered using a standard dummy
variable procedure (see Cohen and Cohen, 1975).
Variables were entered into the regression equa-
tion in the following order: Working Involve-
ment, Working, and the interaction term. If the
addition of the interaction term caused a signifi-
cant increase in the variance accounted for, in-
dicating that the regression lines differed for
working and nonworking mothers, then the two
regression lines were examined separately. If the
interaction term was nonsignificant, a stepwise
regression procedure was used to select the best
regression equation (Darlington, 1968; Cohen and
Cohen, 1975). The data from the multiple regres-
sion analyses are presented in the Table; they are
illustrated in Figure 2.
Five of the eight outcome variables-Irritabili-
ty, Marital Intimacy, Costs of Motherhood,
Depression, and Self-esteem-all showed the
same pattern. For these variables, the best regres-
sion equation comprised Work Involvement,
Working, and the interaction term. That is, the
regression lines differed for nonworking and
working mothers. For the nonworking mothers,
Work Involvement was positively correlated with
Irritability (r = .34, p < .01), Costs of Mother-
hood (r = .39, p < .01) and Depression (r = .50,
p < .001) and negatively correlated with Marital
Intimacy (r = -.41, p < .001) and Self-esteem
(r = -.45, p < .001). That is, among the non-
working mothers, high-work-involved (HWI)
women tended to feel more irritable and de-
pressed, to have lower self-esteem, and to report
greater costs of motherhood and more negative
changes in their marriages than low-work-
May 1984
FIGURE 1. EXAMPLES OF THE FOUR REGRESSION MODELS
Model 1: Effect for Work Involvement only
POSITIVE WORKING AND
MOTHERHOOD NONWORKING
EXPERIENCES MOTHERS
(PME)
WORK INVOLVEMENT (Wl)
Model 3: Additive model
WORKING
NONWORKING
WI
involved (LWI) women. These data support the
first prediction of the study. For working
mothers, however, there was no significant rela-
tionship between Work Involvement and any of
these outcome variables, failing to support the
second prediction of the study.
The remaining three outcome variables-Feel-
ing Important, Motherhood Satisfaction, and
Traditional Pleasures of Motherhood-showed
no interaction effect between Work Involvement
and Working. For Feeling Important, the equa-
tion that best described the data included Work
Involvement and Working, without the interac-
tion term. There was a main effect for Working
(r = .26, p < .01): working mothers tended to
feel more important than nonworking mothers.
When Working was controlled for, Work In-
volvement added significantly to the equation
(F[1,102] = 6.95, p < .01); LWI women tended
to feel more important than HWI women. Thus,
for this variable the data for nonworking mothers
are consistent with the first prediction of the
study. However, working mothers showed the
same pattern as nonworking mothers, contrary to
the second prediction. For the outcome variable
of Motherhood Satisfaction, the best regression
equation included only Work Involvement. Work
Involvement correlated negatively with Mother-
hood Satisfaction (r = -.28, p < .01); that is,
HWI women tended to report less satisfaction
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Model 2: Effect for Working only
PME
NONWORKING
WORKING
Wl
Model 4: Interactive model
PME
WORKING
NONWORKING
Wl
from the mother role than did LWI women,
regardless of whether they were working or not.
Again, these data support the first prediction but
not the second, since the regression line for work-
ing mothers was identical to that for nonworking
mothers. For the remaining outcome variable,
Traditional Pleasures of Motherhood, neither
Work Involvement nor Working explained a sig-
nificant proportion of the variance.
Psychological Loss of Work as a
Predictor Variable
An underlying assumption of the study was
that, for nonworking mothers, high work involve-
ment would be associated with less positive ex-
periences of motherhood because HWI women
would experience leaving work as a loss. To test
this assumption, the variable Psychological Loss
of Work (subsequently referred to as Loss) was
examined.
Loss and Work Involvement were substantially
correlated (r = .54, p < .001), lending support
for the validity of the Work Involvement scale.
However, the correlation was not high enough to
suggest that there was complete overlap of predic-
tive power between the variables; thus, examining
Loss as an additional predictor variable appeared
justified.
Loss was examined as a predictor variable for
six of the eight outcome variables. Motherhood
439
TABLE. MULTIPLE REGRESSION ANALYSES OF OUTCOME VARIABLES ON WORK INVOLVEMENT
AND WORKING

Zero-order F for Overall

Predictor Variable r R2 Increase in R2 F Betaa
Irritability
Work involvement .12 .02 1.63 1.63 .02
Workingb - .06 .03 1.20 1.42 .73
Work involvement x working -.08 .07 5.22* 2.72* -.03

Marital Intimacy
Work involvement -.22* .05 5.35* 5.35* -.03
Working .01 .06 .75 3.04* -.73
Work involvement x working .01 .10 4.34* 3.54* .03

Costs of Motherhood
Work involvement .12 .01 1.41 1.41 .03
Working -.18 .07 5.61* 3.54* .80
Work involvement x working -.19 .13 6.92** 4.81** -.04

Depression
Work involvement .29* * .08 9.18** 9.18** -.09
Working .14 .09 .38 4.75** 3.34
Work involvement x working .11 .18 12.04*** 7.53*** -.10

Self-esteem
Work involvement -.23* .05 5.39* 5.39* -.26
Working -.03 .05 .15 2.75 -9.26
Work involvement x working .00 .15 10.89*** 5.65*** .31

Feeling Importantc
Working .26** .07 7.36** 7.36** .40
Work involvement -.15 .13 6.95** 7.37*** -.02
Work involvement x working .22* .14 1.78 5.54***

Motherhood Satisfaction
Work involvement -.28** .08 8.79** 8.79** -.44
Working .05 .10 2.24 5.57**
Work involvement x working -.01 .10 .25 3.78*

Traditional Pleasures of Motherhood

Work involvement -.08 .01 .68 .68
Working .09 .02 1.38 1.03
Work involvement x working .04 .02 .20 .75

Note: N ranges from 103 to 105, depending on missing data.

aBeta weights are given for variables in the best equation.
bWorking was coded as a dummy variable: 0 = not working, 1 = working.
cFor this variable, the analysis with Working entered first is shown because this was the best equation; see text.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Satisfaction was excluded because it was used to
compute Loss, and Traditional Pleasures of
Motherhood was excluded because of its concep-
tual similarity to Motherhood Satisfaction.
Analyses examined to what extent Loss predicted
experiences of motherhood for nonworking
women, and to what extent Loss and Work In-
volvement were overlapping predictors.
Loss explained a significant proportion of the
variance in all six outcome variables. It correlated
positively with Irritability (r = .37, p < .01),
Costs of Motherhood (r = .32, p < .01) and
Depression (r = .34, p < .01) and negatively with
Feeling Important (r = -.48, p < .001), Marital
Intimacy (r = -.34, p < .01), and Self-esteem
(r = -.25), p < .05). That is, women who ob-
tained high Loss scores tended to feel more ir-
ritable and less important, to report more negative
changes in their marriage and greater costs of
motherhood, and to feel more depressed and have
lower self-esteem. On the whole, however, Work
Involvement was a more useful predictor than
Loss. For four of the six outcome variables, Work
Involvement explained a significant amount of the
variance over and above Loss (average increase in
R2 was .10). Loss added to the variance explained
by Work Involvement for only one outcome vari-
able, Feeling Important (increase in R2 was .14).
Other Predictor Variables
In order to clarify the relationship between
work involvement and motherhood experiences,

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FIGURE 2. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORK INVOLVEMENT AND OUTCOME VARIABLES FOR
WORKING AND NONWORKING MOTHERS

IRRITABILITY A lot more SELF-ESTEEM High

NONWORKING
>^ -^ WORKING
No change WORKING
NONWORKING

A lot less Low

WORK INVOLVEMENT WORK INVOLVEMENT

MARITAL A lot more FEELING A lot more

INTIMACY IMPORTANT
WORKING

No change , WORKING No change NONWORKING

NONWORKING
A lot less A lot less
WORK INVOLVEMENT WORK INVOLVEMENT

MOTHERHOOD Very often

COSTS OF A lot SATISFACTION
MOTHERHOOD NONWORKING
.~/ Sometimes " WORKING AND
Moderately - NONWORKING
-~~/~'-~~~~~~ ~Never
Not at all
~~~~~~Not at al~l ~WORK INVOLVEMENT
WORK INVOLVEMENT

DEPRESSION High TRADITIONAL A lot

PLEASURES OF
MOTHERHOOD
NONWORKING Moderately WORKING AND
NONWORKING
WORKING

Low / Not at all

WORK INVOLVEMENT WORK INVOLVEMENT

several other predictor variables were examined:
(a) demographic variables: number of years
worked, age, education, and income; (b) satisfac-
tion with work; and (c) sex-role attitudes. Four of
these variables correlated significantly with Work
Involvement: Age (r = .26, p < .01), Education
(r = .32, p < .001), Work Satisfaction (r = .52,
p < .001), and Sex-role Attitudes (r = .31, p <
.01). Number of Years Worked and Income were
unrelated to Work Involvement.
No significant results were obtained for
Number of Years Worked, Age, Income, or Work
Satisfaction. These variables (and their interac-
tions with Working) did not account for a signifi-
cant amount of the variance in any of the eight
outcome variables; nor did any of these variables
add significantly to the variance explained by the
Work Involvement terms. Education contributed
weakly to the explanation of only one outcome
variable, Feeling Important.
Sex-role Attitudes, however, contributed sig-
nificantly to the explanation of three outcome
variables: it had a significant univariate correla-
tion with Feeling Important (r = -.22, p < .05),
Traditional Pleasures of Motherhood (r = -.31,
p < .01), and Motherhood Satisfaction (r = -.33,
p < .001). That is, women with more conservative
sex-role attitudes tended to feel more important
since becoming a mother, to experience more of
the traditional pleasures of motherhood, and to
derive more satisfaction from the mother role
than did women with liberal attitudes. The Sex-
role Attitudes x Working interaction was not sig-
nificant for any of these outcome variables. Ex-
amination of the usefulness of Sex-role Attitudes
and Work Involvement indicated that both pre-

May 1984 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 441

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dictor variables contributed uniquely to the vari-
ance of Feeling Important and Motherhood Satis-
faction. Sex-role Attitudes added significantly to
the R2 over and above Work Involvement, and
Work Involvement added significantly to the R2
over and above Sex-role Attitudes (for further
details, see Pistrang, 1982). Work Involvement
did not contribute to the explanation of Tradi-
tional Pleasures, when entered into the regression
equation either before or after Sex-role Attitudes.
DISCUSSION
Work Involvement and the
Experience of Motherhood
The central aim of this study was to examine the
relationship between women's previous psycho-
logical involvement in work and their first experi-
ences of becoming a mother. It was hypothesized
that the relationship between work involvement
and the quality of motherhood experiences would
depend on whether or not women continued to
work after their babies were born. For women
who stopped working, previous work involvement
was expected to be negatively related to mother-
hood experiences; for women who continued
working, previous work involvement was ex-
pected to be positively related. The findings of the
study support the first prediction but not the sec-
ond. The data for nonworking and working
mothers are discussed in turn below.
Nonworking mothers. For nonworking
mothers, high work involvement was associated
with less positive experiences of motherhood on
seven of the eight outcome variables. High-work-
involved (HWI) women tended to feel more ir-
ritable, less important, and more depressed. They
had lower self-esteem and reported greater costs
of motherhood, less intrinsic satisfaction from
motherhood, and more negative changes in their
marriage than did low-work-involved (LWI)
women. (It should be noted, however, that this
was in a context of generally low depression and
high self-esteem scores; i.e., the sample as a whole
was psychologically well adjusted.) The less
positive experiences of HWI women are consistent
with the idea that HWI women experience giving
up work as a psychological loss: they are giving up
a role that is important to them and that provides
rewards that may not be provided by mother-
hood. As Oakley (1980) has suggested, this
psychological loss may lead to depression and
lowered self-esteem. This "loss" interpretation is
supported by the data on Psychological Loss of
Work: HWI women tended to have higher Loss
scores, and higher Loss scores were associated
with less positive experiences of motherhood.
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Interview data help interpret these findings.
Most HWI nonworking mothers commented that
they missed important things that work had pro-
vided: for example, intellectual stimulation, a
feeling of independence, recognition and respect,
and a sense of accomplishment. They tended to
feel that the daily work of caring for a baby did
not make up for these losses. Most also expressed
conflict between their personal desire to work and
their feelings of responsibility as a mother: they
wanted to work, yet they felt that they should stay
at home because it was "best" for the baby.
Thus, these mothers decided to stay at home but
experienced conflict about their decision. This
conflict is similar to that described by Hock (1978;
Hock et al., 1980): career-oriented, nonworking
mothers believed that their infant's needs required
them to stay at home, which conflicted with their
own interest in working.
In contrast, LWI nonworking mothers reported
that they were content to be at home. When asked
about their reasons for working prior to preg-
nancy, most said that they had worked primarily
for financial reasons or for social contact. These
answers contrast markedly to those of HWI
women, who emphasized that they had worked
primarily for personal fulfillment. Thus, as ex-
pected, LWI women seemed more content to stop
working because work had never been an impor-
tant source of gratification.
Two cautions must be kept in mind when inter-
preting these data. First, the lack of longitudinal
data makes it impossible to establish causal rela-
tionships. Second, work involvement was assessed
retrospectively; therefore, this measure may have
been contaminated by participants' experiences of
motherhood. For example, the "grass is greener
on the other side of the fence" phenomenon
could have operated: women who had unsatisfy-
ing experiences as new mothers may have recalled
their previous job as more important and reward-
ing than they had seen it previously. However,
Hock's (1978) longitudinal study suggests that
career orientation remains stable from pregnancy
to several months postpartum. While this lends
some support to the validity of the present study,
longitudinal research is needed to replicate the
findings.
Working mothers. The data for working
mothers fail to support the hypothesis that HWI
women have more positive experiences of mother-
hood than LWI women. Work involvement was
unrelated to six of the eight outcome variables.
For the remaining two, Feeling Important and
Motherhood Satisfaction, work involvement
showed a negative relationship: LWI women
tended to feel more important and to report more
May 1984
intrinsic satisfaction from motherhood than did
HWI women.
The absence of a relationship between work in-
volvement and most of the outcome variables may
be explained by two characteristics of the sample
of working mothers. First, almost all-regardless
of previous work involvement-said that they
were working out of choice. LWI women tended
to return to work for financial reasons (e.g., "for
the extra money") or for social contact (e.g., "to
get out of the house and see people"), but very
few reported a financial necessity to work. Thus,
contrary to expectation, LWI women did not
seem to experience working as a burden.
Second, almost all working mothers-regard-
less of previous work involvement-were working
part-time. Probably because of this, most women
combined work and motherhood without great
difficulty, a finding consistent with Thomson's
(1980) data. Few women in the present study said
that working had caused major problems or time
conflicts. Had more women been working full-
time, the predicted positive relationship between
work involvement and motherhood experiences
might have been found. Some trends in the data
support this interpretation: among the 15 mothers
who worked more than 20 hours per week, low
work involvement was associated with less posi-
tive experiences of motherhood.
Contrary to prediction LWI working mothers
felt more important and reported more satisfac-
tion from motherhood than did HWI working
mothers. For these two outcome variables, work-
ing and nonworking mothers showed the same
pattern. These differences between LWI and HWI
women, regardless of postpartum work status,
may be due to different attitudes toward mother-
hood held by LWI and HWI women. It is possible
that LWI women placed a greater value on
motherhood and saw having a child as an impor-
tant life goal that was necessary for personal
fulfillment. Thus, for these women, the attain-
ment of motherhood may have led to greater posi-
tive changes in how they felt about themselves and
greater intrinsic satisfaction from motherhood.
This interpretation is lent some support by the
data on sex-role attitudes. Low work involvement
was associated with traditional sex-role attitudes,
and traditional sex-role attitudes were associated
with higher scores on Feeling Important and
Motherhood Satisfaction. Although the sex-role
attitudes scale did not directly measure the degree
to which women saw motherhood as a central life
goal, other research suggests that traditional
women have such an orientation to motherhood
(Lott, 1973; Hare-Mustin and Broderick, 1979;
Thornton and Camburn, 1979).
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The relationship between traditional sex-role
attitudes and satisfaction with motherhood is con-
sistent with other studies (Gladieux, 1978; Oakley,
1980). As Oakley suggests, traditional women
may be more effectively socialized for mother-
hood than nontraditional women: there is a
"closer fit" between their attitudes about adult
womanhood and the conventional roles of wife
and mother. This closer fit may lead to greater
satisfaction as a new mother. On the other hand,
Oakley raises the possibility that traditional
women's reports of greater satisfaction are due to
an unwillingness to acknowledge dissatisfaction.
That is, because traditional women are "..
motivated to identify with the role of mother as
culturally defined" (Oakley 1980:158), they may
feel less comfortable acknowledging any dissatis-
faction. Unfortunately, there was no way of test-
ing these alternative interpretations in the present
study.
Postpartum Work Status and the
Experience of Motherhood
So far, the findings have been discussed in
terms of the influence of work involvement on
motherhood experiences. However, the results
also can be viewed in terms of the influence of
postpartum work status. That is, do working and
nonworking mothers have different experiences of
new motherhood?
Viewed from this angle, the data showed an in-
teresting pattern. There were few overall differ-
ences between working and nonworking mothers;
rather, the effects of employment depended on
the woman's previous work involvement. Among
HWI women, those who worked tended to have
more positive experiences of motherhood. Among
LWI, the opposite was true: those who did not
work tended to have more positive experiences of
motherhood. That is, HWI women tended to be
better off if they worked, while LWI women
tended to be better off if they did not work. This
pattern is consistent with Warr's (1978) and Staf-
ford et al.'s (1980) finding that the mental health
of men and young adults is higher if their employ-
ment status is congruent with their interest in
work.
These findings underline the importance of ex-
amining variables that moderate the effects of
employment. Unfortunately, research on the
psychological consequences of employment for
women has tended to treat working and nonwork-
ing women as homogeneous groups, without con-
trolling for the influence of other variables (see
review by Warr and Parry, 1982). A number of in-
tervening variables, in addition to work involve-
ment, may play a role. For example, the psycho-
443
logical consequences of employment for women
may depend partly on their satisfaction with child-
care arrangements (Nye, 1974; Belsky and Stein-
berg, 1978) and the degree to which their
husbands support their decision to work (House-
knecht and Macke, 1981). The generally positive
experiences of working mothers in the present
study may have been related to these two vari-
ables: most women were satisfied with their child-
care arrangements and perceived their husbands
as supporting their decision to work. The in-
fluence of these variables deserves further atten-
tion.
Other Predictor Variables
In order to clarify the relationship between
work involvement and motherhood experiences,
several other variables were examined: age, educa-
tion, number of years worked, income, work sat-
isfaction, and sex-role attitudes. With the excep-
tion of sex-role attitudes, these variables were
found to be poor predictors of motherhood ex-
periences.
The findings on age, education, number of
years worked, and income indicate that work in-
volvement was not simply a reflection of these
variables. While age and education correlated sig-
nificantly with work involvement, education cor-
related weakly with only one outcome variable
and age with none. Number of years worked and
income did not correlate significantly with work
involvement, nor did they relate to any of the out-
come variables. These data point to the impor-
tance of examining how women feel about their
work. Although a woman may have little educa-
tion and a low-status job, her work may be impor-
tant to her (cf. Feree, 1976; Brown and Harris,
1978; Oakley, 1980). For example, one HWI
woman was a waitress; she described her work as
". . something I took pride in. I went back to
work because I need to know I can do something
else besides being a mother." While HWI women
tended to have more education and better jobs,
the data suggest that the psychological meaning of
work went beyond these variables.
The findings on work satisfaction point to the
importance of distinguishing between psychologi-
cal involvement in work and satisfaction with
work (cf. Rabinowitz and Hall, 1977; Warr et al.,
1979). Although work satisfaction correlated sig-
nificantly with work involvement, the former was
unrelated to any of the outcome variables. During
the interviews, many women indicated that they
had been very satisfied with their jobs and ob-
tained pleasure from them, but that they did not
see work as an important part of their lives.
Although work had its rewards, it was an activity
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to which they were not particularly committed.
Thus, how women felt about stopping work
seemed to be a function of the degree to which
they viewed work as important, rather than a
function of work satisfaction.
As discussed above, the variable of sex-role atti-
tudes was useful in explaining some aspects of
motherhood experiences. It was related most
strongly to the pleasures and satisfactions of
motherhood (Feeling Important, Motherhood
Satisfaction, and Traditional Pleasures of
Motherhood). Sex-role attitudes and work in-
volvement overlapped to some extent in explain-
ing the satisfactions of motherhood, but each had
unique explanatory power as well. This finding
underlines the importance of distinguishing be-
tween attitudes about women's roles (e.g., the
belief that women have a right to work) and one's
personal feelings and behaviors in those roles
(e.g., one's own interest in working).
While work involvement and postpartum work
status were useful predictors of motherhood ex-
periences, it should be noted that their effect sizes
were fairly small. That is, these two variables ex-
plained only a moderate proportion (typically
10% to 15%) of the variance of motherhood ex-
periences. Thus, it appears that a large proportion
of the variance was explained by other variables.
Three variables that are suggested in the litera-
ture-baby's temperament (Shereshefsky and
Yarrow, 1973; Russell, 1974), whether the preg-
nancy was planned or desired (Russell, 1974;
Hobbs and Wimbish, 1977; Braverman and Roux,
1978), and marital satisfaction (Hobbs, 1968;
Russell, 1974; Westbrook, 1978)-were examined
in the present study. Baby's temperament and
desirability of the pregnancy were found to be un-
related to most aspects of motherhood experi-
ences, probably because of the restricted range of
the sample: most babies were related as "easy"
babies, and most pregnancies were desired.
Marital satisfaction was significantly related to
several outcome variables, but the causal direction
of the relationship is unclear because marital
satisfaction was assessed only after the baby was
born. While a poor marital relationship probably
makes new motherhood more stressful, an unsat-
isfying experience of new motherhood may also
have a negative impact on the marital relation-
ship. Thus, it is crucial that marital satisfaction be
assessed prior to childbirth. Other possible predic-
tor variables which were not examined in the pres-
ent study are social support (Gordon et al., 1965;
Gibaud-Wallston, 1978) and psychological adjust-
ment during pregnancy (Shereshefsky and Yar-
row, 1973; Leifer, 1977). Further research is
needed to examine the relative importance of, and
May 1984
possible interactions between, these variables and
the work-related variables examined in this study.
Conclusions
The major findings of the study indicate that
the relationship between women's previous work
involvement and the quality of their experiences
as new mothers is more complex than has been
previously suggested. There were few overall dif-
ferences between the experiences of low-work-
involved and high-work-involved women. Rather,
the effects of work involvement depended on
whether or not the woman continued to work
after her baby was born. Thus, the findings
dispute the generalization that career-oriented
women have more stressful experiences of
motherhood (LeMasters, 1957; Nilsson and
Almgren, 1970).
The study also found few overall differences in
how working and nonworking women experience
the first few months of motherhood. Women
tended to have more positive experiences of
motherhood if their work status was congruent
with their interest in working. Thus, future
research on the psychological consequences of
combining work and motherhood might benefit
from considering work involvement as a moderat-
ing variable, rather than treating working and
nonworking mothers as homogeneous groups.
Finally, the results suggest that paid employ-
ment has psychological importance for many
mothers of infants. Most research on new mother-
hood has failed to examine how women feel about
giving up work or about combining work and
motherhood; an implicit assumption is that new
mothers are happy to leave work because their
primary commitment is to the family. The present
study suggests that this assumption may be true
for some women but certainly not all and that in-
dividual differences in women's work involve-
ment must be taken into account.
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