Single Mothers Want to Work, Need Skills, Child Care

Unemployed single mothers would prefer to work, but often lack the job skills or child care to do so, according to a study by nurse-researcher at Case Western Reserve University.

"The motivation for employment is already present," says JoAnne Youngblut, associate dean for research at CWRU's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing.

She believes that support for educational improvement and child care may be more effective in increasing employment of single mothers than cutting welfare benefits.

Youngblut began studying single mothers of low-birthweight preschoolers between the ages of 3 and 5 in 1993. She wanted to identify mother, child, and family factors that might influence employment of these single mothers.

The researcher noted that some research studies show mothers who are not doing what they want in terms of their employment suffer more from depression and may not parent as well.

"Women who are upset with their life circumstances are not going to have the emotional energy to give to their child in nurturing and emotional stimulation," she said. "The women we interviewed thought they had more freedom being employed. They could buy things for their children, and were not as dependent on receiving child support from the father."

Youngblut studied 121 female-headed single-parent families. She selected study subjects from birth records and from neonatal intensive care unit records at University Hospitals of Cleveland, MetroHealth Medical Center, and Fairview General Hospital.

More than three-fourths had completed high school, and their average age was 29.5 years. Almost half of the women studied had been employed at some point, but only one-third were employed when they were interviewed. Most had never been married, and had an average of two children, although some had as many as seven.

Half of the mothers had given birth to preterm infants and the other half had delivered full-term infants. Twenty-eight percent were employed, and half of this group had low-birthweight infants.

In 1992, Youngblut received $1.2 million from the National Institutes of Health National Institute for Nursing Research to study the effects of maternal employment on the development of healthy, low-birthweight infants. In 1993, she received a supplemental grant of $100,000 from NIH's Office of Research on Women's Health to investigate similar issues in single-parent families.

Although numerous studies have looked at factors related to married mothers' employment, few have studied those related to single mothers' employment. Yet U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that single-parent families headed by women with children under the age of 18 increased 25 percent between 1980 and 1991. Single mothers and their children make up 41.2 percent of those receiving federal welfare benefits.

The study showed that the delivery of low-birthweight infants was not related to the single mother's employment status, number of hours employed per week, or employment history. Several factors, however, were predictive of unemployment, the researcher said.

If a mother has never been married, has a greater number of children, receives more federal income, and has a less positive attitude toward employment, she was less likely to be employed.

Mothers who were employed tended to have significantly more education, more positive attitudes toward working women, and were more satisfied with their employment decision than nonemployed mothers.

Youngblut said that 96 percent of the employed and nonemployed women in the study expressed a preference for wanting to be employed.

Of the mothers who had been employed prior to the birth of their child, she found that prematurity did not have an effect on whether the mothers returned to jobs. This matched the findings in her earlier studies of two-parent families.

"The more children the mother had, the less likely she was employed," Youngblut said.

Youngblut hypothesizes that women who bear more children may be more home-oriented and less interested in employment. They may also feel that their child care costs would exceed their take-home wages.

During the study, the women were asked how many hours they wanted to be employed, and this was contrasted with the number of hours they actually were employed. Forty-five of the 77 nonemployed women wanted to work more than half time.

"Most of the mothers wanted to be employed but were not," she said. "This kind of inconsistency does affect a child's development. The more consistency there is between the mother's desire to work and her working status, the better the child does."