TY - JOUR
T1 - Mothering Experiences
T2 - How Single Parenthood and Employment Structure the Emotional Valence of Parenting
AU - Meier, Ann
AU - Musick, Kelly
AU - Flood, Sarah
AU - Dunifon, Rachel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Population Association of America.
PY - 2016/6/1
Y1 - 2016/6/1
N2 - Research studies and popular accounts of parenting have documented the joys and strains of raising children. Much of the literature comparing parents with those without children indicates a happiness advantage for those without children, although recent studies have unpacked this general advantage to reveal differences by the dimension of well-being considered and important features in parents’ lives and parenting experiences. We use unique data from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 American Time Use Survey to understand emotions in mothering experiences and how these vary by key demographic factors: employment and partnership status. Assessing mothers’ emotions in a broad set of parenting activities while controlling for a rich set of person- and activity-level factors, we find that mothering experiences are generally associated with high levels of emotional well-being, although single parenthood is associated with differences in the emotional valence. Single mothers report less happiness and more sadness, stress, and fatigue in parenting than partnered mothers, and these reports are concentrated among those single mothers who are not employed. Employed single mothers are happier and less sad and stressed when parenting than single mothers who are not employed. Contrary to common assumptions about maternal employment, we find overall few negative associations between employment and mothers’ feelings regarding time with children, with the exception that employed mothers report more fatigue in parenting than those who are not employed.
AB - Research studies and popular accounts of parenting have documented the joys and strains of raising children. Much of the literature comparing parents with those without children indicates a happiness advantage for those without children, although recent studies have unpacked this general advantage to reveal differences by the dimension of well-being considered and important features in parents’ lives and parenting experiences. We use unique data from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 American Time Use Survey to understand emotions in mothering experiences and how these vary by key demographic factors: employment and partnership status. Assessing mothers’ emotions in a broad set of parenting activities while controlling for a rich set of person- and activity-level factors, we find that mothering experiences are generally associated with high levels of emotional well-being, although single parenthood is associated with differences in the emotional valence. Single mothers report less happiness and more sadness, stress, and fatigue in parenting than partnered mothers, and these reports are concentrated among those single mothers who are not employed. Employed single mothers are happier and less sad and stressed when parenting than single mothers who are not employed. Contrary to common assumptions about maternal employment, we find overall few negative associations between employment and mothers’ feelings regarding time with children, with the exception that employed mothers report more fatigue in parenting than those who are not employed.
KW - Emotional well-being
KW - Maternal employment
KW - Parenting
KW - Single mothers
KW - Time use
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84966326652&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84966326652&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s13524-016-0474-x
DO - 10.1007/s13524-016-0474-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 27150964
AN - SCOPUS:84966326652
SN - 0070-3370
VL - 53
SP - 649
EP - 674
JO - Demography
JF - Demography
IS - 3
ER -