This research uses data from the 1988 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Merged Child-Mother, to investigate the association between married mothers' employment and their reports of marital conflict and marital happiness in continuously married families with children and in mother-stepfather families. For continuously married families with children, the findings indicate a nonsignificant trend that is consistent with role strain perspectives. For mother-stepfather families, there is a significant trend in which mothers' full-time employment is associated with higher marital quality when there are more children in the household. These findings are interpreted in light of the distributive justice perspective's emphasis on the meanings of roles and the importance of spouses' perceptions of equity for marital quality. In the last 30 years, married women with children have moved into the work force and remained there in increasing numbers. In 1990, 59% of married women with preschool children and 74% of married women with children between the ages of 6 and 17 years were employed (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). Fourteen percent of all children who are living with two parents live in mother-stepfather families, where maternal employment is even more common (Thomson, 1994; U.S Bureau of the Census, 1992). Thus, a significant majority of continuously married mothers and mothers in mother-stepfather families find themselves trying to balance the demands of work, parenting, and marital roles. Research suggests that work may have positive, as well as negative, effects on the marital relationships of continuously married mothers, but virtually nothing is known about how the employment of mothers in mother-stepfather families affects their marital relationships. The research presented here investigates the relationship between married mothers' work and their reports of marital quality in continuously married families and in motherstepfather families. It provides further insights into the impact of two major social changes-the large scale labor force participation of married mothers and the increased number of stepfamilies--on family life. This study focuses on mothers rather than fathers or stepfathers for several reasons. First, although the normativeness of dual-earner families with children has changed the nature of family life in recent decades, change is most apparent in women's lives and family roles because families continue to be organized according to traditional, gendered expectations of behavior (Ferree, 1990; Thompson & Walker, 1989). Although there is evidence that wives' employment and earnings may increase husbands' household participation Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska, 711 Oldfather Hall, P.O. Box 880324, Lincoln, NE 68588 (srogers@ unlinfo.unl.edu). Key Words: family size, marital quality, parenthood, remarriage, work. (Blair & Lichter, 1991; Ishii-Kuntz & Coltrane, 1992), traditional, gendered arrangements are intransigent. In dual-earner couples husbands consistently participate less than wives in household work and childcare (Blair & Lichter, 1991; Brayfield, 1995; Coltrane & Ishii-Kuntz, 1992; Hochschild, 1989). And even in couples with more education and more egalitarian gender ideologies, household tasks continue to be largely apportioned according to traditional gender roles (Blair & Lichter, 1991). These same patterns also hold in remarried families, though remarried husbands do somewhat more household work than their continuously married, male counterparts (Ishii-Kuntz & Coltrane,1992). Second, research indicates that in dual-earner families with children it is the women who express dissatisfaction with the increased demands they face from work and family roles (Booth, Johnson, White, & Edwards, 1984; Hochschild, 1989; Hoffman, 1989). Because wives initiate divorce more frequently than husbands and conflicts over gender roles and the household division of labor are frequently cited areas of marital dissatisfaction and causes for divorce (Hochschild, 1989; Kitson & Sussman, 1982), the effects of mothers' employment have implications for the stability as well as for the quality of marital relationships. …