The Effect of Changes in Maternal Employment and Family Composition on Children's Behaviour. Working Paper Series. W-02-3-2E

Recent research suggests that changing maternal employment and family composition are associated with children's behavioural development. This report assesses whether, and if so to what extent, changes in these areas may affect the behavioural development of children, using information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). The study investigates how maternal employment, employment transitions, and spells of unemployment, are related to children's behavioural development from 1994 to 1998. The analysis focuses on the quality of maternal jobs using, for example, number of hours worked per week. As well, the report also investigates how changes in family composition such as becoming a lone parent family or entering into new two parent families, may affect children's behavioural development. Three behavioural scales are used in the paper as dependent variables: indirect aggression, emotional disorder-anxiety and conduct disorder-physical aggression. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, evidence is found to support the existing literature, although it is relatively weak. Maternal employment, in particular the number of employment transitions (expressed as periods of unemployment), is found to be associated with higher levels of behaviour problems in children, particularly for indirect aggression behaviour. As well, stable family composition is associated with relatively better behaviour scores. Family composition which changes over time tends to be associated with relatively worse behaviour scores for children. More research and analysis of this area is necessary to uncover the complex interplay of the variables. A bibliography is included. (Contains 13 tables and 3 endnotes.)