NCJ Number
204745
Journal
Crime & Delinquency Volume: 50 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2004 Pages: 272-291
Date Published
April 2004
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This study examined the relationship between maternal employment and youth crime.
Abstract
Female participation in the labor force has increased markedly over the past several decades. Social commentators and others have voiced a variety of concerns over maternal employment, including the charge that maternal employment may contribute to youth crime. In this study, the authors examined whether three measures of maternal employment (number of hours usually employed, the working conditions of maternal employment, and maternal resources) had an impact on youth crime. This comprehensive measurement of maternal employment improves on past research that tended to dichotomize maternal employment into “working mother” versus “nonworking mother.” Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY); the sample included 702 adolescents and young adults who were between the ages of 15 and 19 in 1994. “Serious criminal involvement” was the dependant variable and included acts involving theft and property crimes, vandalism, and violent crimes. Results of multiple regression analysis indicated that, overall, the cumulative time spent by mothers in paid employment had no significant effect on the criminal involvement of their children. However, one measure of the working conditions of maternal employment, coercively controlled maternal work, was associated with greater criminal involvement by their children. Thus, it is not maternal participation in the work force itself, or even the number of hours mothers spend at work that contributes to youth crime. Rather, it is a mother’s employment in a coercively controlled, secondary labor market that contributes to the criminality of their children. This finding has serious implications for recent policy initiatives that have pushed thousands of mothers from welfare to the paid labor market, generally within the unskilled, secondary market. Tables, notes, references