Balancing work and family in the first four and a half years of life

This dissertation reports on two longitudinal secondary analyses of data collected by the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (n = 1,073 children in study 1 and n = 500 in study 2). These used individual growth models to investigate how maternal employment and work/family attitudes, and children's childcare effected maternal responsiveness (study 1) and mothers' perceptions of the rewards and strains of their work/family roles (study 2), controlling for maternal, child, family, and childcare characteristics.;Study one showed that when their children were six months old mothers who worked part-time soon after birth were more responsive on average than unemployed mothers, who in turn were more responsive than mothers employed full-time. Over time responsiveness declined more rapidly for nonworking mothers than employed mothers. By 54 months mothers who never worked were less responsive than mothers who worked (full or part-time). Mothers who believed more strongly that employment was beneficial were less responsive at 6 months on average than mothers who did not, and this difference was larger for African American mothers than for White or Latina mothers.;Study two investigated effects of employment on mothers. Mothers who had partners and who worked many hours felt more strains on average than mothers who worked few hours at six months. Mothers who did not have partners and who worked few hours felt more strains than mothers who worked many hours across all ages.;Also, mothers who were highly internally motivated to work were less strained on average at six months after childbirth than mothers who were less motivated, but they became more strained over time. Conversely, mothers who were less motivated were more strained initially, but their strain declined over time. Mothers who believed strongly that employment was beneficial to their families felt on average less strained at six months after childbirth than mothers who believed it less strongly. Mothers who believed that employment was risky felt more strained than mothers who did not.;Findings suggest that more longitudinal research is needed in the future in order to fully investigate change over time in the complex relationship between maternal employment and family life.