Juggling jobs and the kids: maternal multiple job holding and child behavior

Many low-income women face precarious or low-quality employment, and studies show that low-quality maternal employment is linked with poorer outcomes for children. This study examines whether maternal multiple job holding, an understudied facet of employment quality, is associated with children’s behavior in early childhood. Multiple job holding may affect parental time, well-being or income, all of which may influence child behavior. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=2013), a longitudinal birth cohort study of low-income families, this study employs three methodological techniques–simple change, residualized change, and fixed effects models–to address selection bias and identify lower and upper bounds on the true association. Findings are suggestive of an association between maternal multiple job holding and child behavior problems, but the association is not robust across all methodological approaches. Although mothers with multiple jobs work longer hours on average than mothers with one job, analyses suggest that long work hours do not drive the observed associations between multiple job holding and child behavior.