Work and Motherhood: Transition to Parenthood and Women's Employment

From a sample of 30 husband-wife couples, three groups were defined by wives' postpartum employment status and compared in the attitudes they had expressed toward work and motherhood when making the transition to parenthood one year earlier, when all women in the sample had been employed full-time. Greater work commitment during pregnancy was shown by women who retained their full-time employment status. The mothers of these full-time working women themselves had worked but later in their daughters' childhood than did mothers of women in the part-time work and homemaker groups. Husbands were less likely than wives to endorse their wives' working for financial reasons, possibly due to perceptions of threat to their masculine role.