Go to Work, Fight Off Depression

Moms who work outside the home are less likely to be depressed.

Image: iStockphoto

Working outside the home can be great for a mom—so long as she doesn’t expect to be able to balance her life at the office and her family life perfectly, finds researcher Katrina Leupp, a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle.

After analyzing survey results from 1,600 married women ages 22 to 30, and then revisiting them when they turned 40, Leupp concluded that young women who went back to work after having kids—rather than staying home to raise them—were much more likely to fight off feelings of depression, as long as they cut themselves some slack about not being able to do both without a hitch, according to a National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, published August 20 and presented Saturday at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Las Vegas.

"The findings really point to the mismatch between women's expectations about their ability to balance work and family. Women still do the bulk of household labor and childcare, even when they're employed full time," Leupp said in a statement. "Women who go into employment expecting it to be difficult—'I'm going to have to work full time and do the laundry at night'—but who are accepting of that are less likely to be frustrated than women who expect things to be more equal with their partners."

According to 2006 statistics cited in the study, about 65 percent of the mothers of young children and 80 percent of women with children over age 5 are employed, reports US News & World Report.

A separate study by the University of Toronto released in March showed that women and men internalize work-related stress differently. “Frequent work contact is associated with more feelings of guilt and distress among women only,” said Paul Glavin, a University of Toronto researcher and lead author of the study.

All the more reason, Leupp argued, that women should go into working motherhood with the right expectations.

The takeaway for working moms is to temper their optimism about juggling parenthood and employment and not to blame themselves if they struggle. "Recognize that if it feels difficult, it's because it is difficult," she said. “Women are sold a story that they can do it all, but most workplaces are still designed for employees without childcare responsibilities.”

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