ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we shift the focus from workers to workers’ children. We further narrow the focus to workers who are mothers. We explore whether maternal employment creates a mismatch with the developmental needs of children. We use the term mismatch to refer to the degree of correspondence between demands of the workplace and needs of workers-and in this case the children as well. Although the research on maternal employment has found no widespread negative implications for children’s development, and indeed finds effects ranging from negative to neutral to positive, recent research has indicated that maternal employment may pose a mismatch with developmental needs at two ends of the age continuum-infancy and adolescence-although only for specific groups of families.
