C. Muller
Feb 1, 1995
Citations
19
Influential Citations
246
Citations
Quality indicators
Journal
Journal of Marriage and Family
Abstract
Of women in the labor force, it is the mothers with children at home whose numbers have grown the fastest in recent decades. In 1987, 71% of mothers with husbands present in the household and children between the ages of 6 and 17 years and 57% of those with husbands present and children under 6 were employed. In 1973 (roughly the year the students in this study were born), those figures were only 50% and 33%, respectively (U.S. Department of Labor, 1989). The research on the effects of maternal employment on the child indicate mixed results. In a review of research on maternal employment and children's achievement for the National Academy of Sciences, Heyns (1982) concluded that "the children of working mothers differ very little from the children of non-working mothers [on achievement]" (p. 238). Another review published 2 years before found that there were measurable differences in academic performance and other measures of children's well-being depending on maternal employment status (Hoffman, 1980). Each has maintained and elaborated her position since (Heyns & Catsambis, 1986; Hoffman, 1989). Surely if maternal employment makes a difference to the child it is likely to be exhibited in the parent-child relationships. Nock and Kingston (1988), for example, found differences in the amount of time parents spend with their children depending on maternal employment status, although the differences were most pronounced for parents of preschoolers and in non-child-centered time. Parents may interact with their child differently, and may in particular be involved in their child's education differently, depending on the employment of the mother outside the home. Involvement in education is likely to be very important for school-age children. We have very little knowledge about how the relationships between parents and adolescents are influenced by the amount of time the mother spends at work outside the home, and how that may influence the critical transition of the child from elementary to high school. This article examines two questions: First, does maternal employment status make a difference in how parents are involved with their eighth-grade adolescent child, and, if so, how? Second, in what ways does parent involvement intervene in the relationship between maternal employment and mathematics achievement of the adolescent child? A better understanding of the ways in which maternal employment makes a difference in parent-child relationships, and of which relationships are important for the child's academic development, will allow us to evaluate how the needs of families are changing. Parent involvement in a child's education is known to make a difference in the child's achievement (Epstein, 1991; Fehrmann, Keith, & Reimers, 1987; Lareau, 1989; Muller, 1993a; Stevenson & Baker, 1987). Yet the results of those studies suggest that there are many different ways for parents to be involved with their child. And parents may become involved differently depending on the resources available to them (Baker & Stevenson, 1986; Lareau, 1989; Muller, 1993a). Lareau and Muller each suggested that not all forms of parent involvement have the same consequences for the child. Moreover, children of different ages may need different kinds of involvement from parents. As students get older, a style of "managing" the school career is increasingly important. As Baker and Stevenson (1986) stated, "parents must...help [their child] move skillfully through the [school] organization" (p. 157). This may mean reaching out to the school or developing strategies from home. To study parent involvement in education is to identify one aspect of the process by which family background makes a difference in a child's academic success. Coleman (1988) suggested that family background "is analytically separable into at least three different components: financial capital, human capital, and social capital" (p. S109). Financial capital may be measured by family income or wealth, human capital is best measured by the level of parents' education, and social capital has to do with the relations among actors, in this case among parents and children. …