ABSTRACT

Many low-income women face precarious or low-quality employment, and studies show that low-quality maternal employment is linked with poorer outcomes for children. This study examines whether maternal multiple job holding, an understudied facet of employment quality, is associated with children’s behavior in early childhood. Multiple job holding may affect parental time, well-being or income, all of which may influence child behavior. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=2013), a longitudinal birth cohort study of low-income families, this study employs three methodological techniques – simple change, residualized change, and fixed effects models – to address selection bias and identify lower and upper bounds on the true association. Findings are suggestive of an association between maternal multiple job holding and child behavior problems, but the association is not robust across all methodological approaches. Although mothers with multiple jobs work longer hours on average than mothers with one job, analyses suggest that long work hours do not drive the observed associations between multiple job holding and child behavior.

摘要

许多低收入妇女面临不稳定或低质量的就业，研究表明，低质量的孕产妇就业与孩子的较差结果有关。本研究调查了母亲身兼数职，这是就业质量的一个未被充分研究的方面，是否与儿童早期的行为有关。身兼数职可能会影响育儿时间、幸福感或收入，所有这些都可能影响孩子的行为。使用来自脆弱家庭和儿童福祉研究的数据 ( N=2013)，一项针对低收入家庭的纵向出生队列研究，这项研究采用三种方法学技术——简单变化、残差变化和固定效应模型——来解决选择偏差并确定真实关联的下限和上限。调查结果表明母亲从事多项工作与儿童行为问题之间存在关联，但这种关联在所有方法论方法中都不稳健。尽管从事多项工作的母亲平均工作时间比从事一份工作的母亲更长，但分析表明，长时间的工作并不会推动观察到的多份工作与儿童行为之间的关联。