Internal and external constraints on mothers' employment: Some implications for policy (original) (raw)

This paper reports on the findings and policy implications of a study, using both qualitative and quantitative methods, to investigate mothers' decision-making with respect to the interlinked issues of the care of their preschool children and their own employment. Mothers were found to have both internal and external constraints to their decisions. In the three areas of childcare, working time and finances, both personal identities and external circumstances limited mothers' choices. However, neither external circumstances nor identities were fixed. Behaviour and identities therefore adjusted to each other, giving rise to feedback effects at both the individual and the social level. While the constraints of identity limit the direct effectiveness of some policies, positive feedback enhances the long-term effectiveness of others. In particular, the "policy multiplier", the ratio of indirect to direct effects, is likely to be greater for enabling policies that lift existing constraints than for coercive polices that impose new constraints on mothers' behaviour. The paper examines the implications of such feedback effects for developing policy that expands the choices available to mothers in the short-term, reduces the costs of motherhood and meets the government's longterm objectives of reducing child poverty and increasing employment.

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