Maternal Employment and Latchkey Adolescents

Social scientists who have estimated the relationship between a mother’s work hours and the probability that her children care for themselves are often limited by cross‐sectional data and use of a small number of control variables. This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a fixe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Social service review (Chicago) 2005-12, Vol.79 (4), p.602-623
Main Author: Lopoo, Leonard M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Age
Child care
Children
Data analysis
Employment
Family structure
Hours of work
Latchkey children
Mothers
Parent Child Relations
Parents
Social policy
Social services
Social welfare
Statistical significance
Teenagers
U.S.A
Welfare
Welfare policy
Work hours
Working hours
Working Mothers
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Summary:Social scientists who have estimated the relationship between a mother’s work hours and the probability that her children care for themselves are often limited by cross‐sectional data and use of a small number of control variables. This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a fixed effects logit model to ask if maternal work hours are related to the probability that adolescents spend some time at home alone after school. Results demonstrate that the relationship exists and is nonlinear: only the adolescents of mothers who work more than 30 hours per week are more likely to spend time after school with no adult present, compared with the adolescent children of mothers who are not working. This finding suggests that if social welfare policies encourage low‐income mothers to work full‐time, these policies may increase the probability that their adolescent children spend some time at home alone after school.
ISSN:0037-7961
1537-5404
DOI:10.1086/454387