CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, May 3rd 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

From Workplace to Home:
How Maternal Job Demands affect Cognitive and Non-cognitive
Early Child Development

Gundula Zoch

Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Oldenburg
Research Fellow, Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, Bamberg

Increased maternal employment and modernised labour market have altered the physical and psychological challenges for mothers, yet, evidence on the role of job demands for child development remains limited.

This presentation provides initial evidence whether and how maternal job demands are associated with early child development in Germany.

Drawing on theories on early dynamic skill production, status attainment, time-availability and work-family conflict, we formulate contrasting hypotheses on the link between higher job strain and child development as well as its mediators and moderators.

We utilize longitudinal data from the Newborn Cohort of the National Educational Panel Study, and its link with administrative records on mothers’ employment biographies (NEPS-SC1-ADIAB, person-years ≈ 5300) and the BIBB/BAuA-job-exposure matrix, measuring occupational physical and psychosocial work strain.

We examine cognitive as well as non-cognitive child development during the first ten years after birth using linear regressions, thereby exploring potential mediating factors such as parent-child interaction and quality.

Finally, we exploit occupational changes in our longitudinal data and assess the impact of altered job demands on child development over time using fixed-effects models.

To find out more (personal website)

 Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!