Like Mother, Like Daughter?: Maternal Employment and Women's Career and Family Aspirations

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to examine college-aged women’s future career and family aspirations and whether these aspirations vary based on the participants’ mothers’ employment history. These aspirations are categorized into three orientations: work, home, and adaptive (a desire to balance family and career), originally established in Catherine Hakim’s (2000) Preference Theory. A questionnaire was given to assess college-aged women’s views regarding career, marriage, and family, with a particular focus on role-orientations. All participants had not been previously married and had no children. The findings support the influence of maternal employment as a model for participants’ own orientations. Compared to participants whose mothers stayed home full time, participants whose mothers worked outside the home full time showed higher levels of career orientation, adaptive orientation, and career commitment, and lower levels of family orientation.