Impact of Maternal Employment on Socio-Emotional Development of Preschool Children

The modern industrial world has seen a dramatic increase in the number of employed women. The adaptive changes that follow have brought about modifications in the child rearing practices of today's women. In the midst of the eternal rat race to combine work and home, we are actually sacrificing the most important gift we could give our children, i.e. the time truly spent with them. The present study, thus aims to focus on the impact of maternal employment and the amount of quality time spent with the child on the socio emotional development of the preschool children. A questionnaire and an interview schedule were used to assess the amount of quality time spent by themother with the child. Correlation method was used to find the relation of the amount of quality time and the socio emotional competence of the preschool children. Results suggest that the two parameters are positively correlated. The length of the working hours did not relate significantly to the amount of quality time spent by the mother. The results agam emphasize that the most important thing that oneneeds to do for nurturing one's child is to spend quality time with him/her. The findings could be put to use by academicians, policy makers, educationists, social workers, administrators, researchers, theorists, teachers to evolve practices for enhancing the quality of child care and school environments provided to these children to nullify the negative outcomes of the maternal employment.