Mothers’ Nonstandard Work Schedules and Children’s Behavior Problems: Divergent Patterns by Maternal Education

Increasing evidence has demonstrated that nonstandard work schedules are more prevalent among the less-educated population, and mothers’ nonstandard work schedules have adverse influences on children’s development. Yet, we have known relatively little about how such impacts differ across the educational distribution. Analyses using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study revealed that mothers’ nonstandard work schedules were associated with increased behavior problems among children, which was consistent across types of nonstandard schedules. Moreover, a “pattern of disadvantage” existed because such relationships were primarily limited to children born to mothers without high school education, a “truly disadvantaged” group in the contemporary United States. Comparisons in mothers’ well-being and family dynamics across educational groups suggested that the least-educated mothers not only had worse physical and mental health but also experienced elevated work-family conflicts on multiple dimensions. Decomposition analyses indicated that these intermediary pathways could account for a relatively small proportion of adverse influences of nonstandard work schedules among children of mothers without high school education. These findings suggest that children born to the least-educated mothers experience compounded disadvantages that may reinforce the intergenerational transmission of disadvantages and “diverging destinies” of American children.