Effect of Maternal Employment on Adolescents' Development

Abstract

With the emergence of a new economic pattern, increasing opportunities for education, rising standard of living and increased modernization, women from the middle and upper class families have also started coming out of their traditional role ofa home maker to join the work force. The number of working women has been increasing year by year. The increasing number of women in the work force has created a number of problems to their children and paved way for controversies regarding maternal employment and child development. There is a general feeling that the maternal employment brings emotional deprivation to the school age children (Khan & Hassan, 2012).Adolescence is one of the important periods of life. It is characterized by numerous problems. With the demands of globalization, the nature and number of challenges have become still more compared to the yesteryears. Family, which plays an important role in the personality development of adolescents, is undergoing structural, emotional and interactional transformations. The contributions of mothers in shaping the personality of their children cannot be ignored. But an unprecedented number of women, especially mothers are entering the labor force either due to economic necessity or in search of identity. This has led to radical shift in the traditional role of mother as a 'care taker' to a 'bread earner' and has altered child rearing goals and practices.Quite a large number of empirical studies have yielded conflicting evidences regarding the impact of maternal employment on their children (Hangal & Aminabhavi, 2007). Based on previous research works, especially two theories regarding the impact of maternal employment have been emerged i.e., the guilt-over protection theory and the neglected theory. According to the first theory, the employed mother feels guilty about leaving her children and tries to compensate with love and over protection. The second theory presumes that the dual role creates role strain and leads to child neglect (Hangal et ah, 2007).Adjustment is defined as a process which helps in making a compromise between the individual's own need and the demands of the environment. A well-adjusted person is considered to be guided by long term satisfaction of needs and to maintain a harmonious and satisfying relationship with his environment. Muni and Panigrahi (1998) reported that children of working mothers were better adjusted in the classroom setting than those of non-working mothers. Maternal employment was not a burden rather it was an asset for children.The concept of achievement is characterized by a desire to attain a high standard of excellence and to accomplish the unique objectives. In such a situation individual shows concern with competition with standard of excellence. Achievement motive is a drive aroused by inducing a situation 'ego-involvement' and it varies from person to person, group to group and is open to cultural influences.The emotional maturity refers how much a person is emotionally mature, i.e., the capacity ofa person to withstand different emotional conditions of life. One of the attribute of maturity is a firm sense of reality and is characterized by person's flexibility and adaptability. Individual's emotional maturity finds its genesis in his/her mother. An emotionally mature child has the capacity to make effective adjustment with himself, members of his family, and his peers in the school, society and culture. Sharma (1986) has revealed that the children of non- working mothers were found to be more excited, tender hearted, sensitive, dependent and more protective and Rane (1986) found that neurotic disorders were located in the children of working mothers.Self-esteem is a concept that a person has regarding his own self which consists of any evaluation that he/she makes of himself or whatever feeling he has about himself. The present attempt, takes into account personally-perceived self and socially-perceived self-adopting suitable statistical procedures. …