Motherhood, Employment, and Life Satisfaction: Trends in Germany Between 1984 and 2015
| Author | Fabian Kratz,Franz Neuberger,Lukas Posselt,Klaus Preisner |
| Date | 01 October 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12518 |
| Published date | 01 October 2018 |
K P University of Zurich
F N German Youth Institute∗
L P School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences Paris∗∗
F K Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich∗∗∗
Motherhood, Employment, and Life Satisfaction:
Trends in Germany Between 1984 and 2015
Objective: This article analyzes trends in the
relationships among motherhood, employment,
and life satisfaction in Germany and regresses
them on changing motherhood norms.
Background: Motherhood norms have changed
in recent decades in Germany, and differences
in labor force participation between mothers
and women without children have decreased.We
research whether differences in life satisfaction
have decreased at the same time.
Method: Analyses are based on the Ger-
man Socio-Economic Panel (1984–2015) and
restricted to women aged 16 to 45 (N=18,238).
A series of hybrid panel regressions was used
to determine intrapersonal and interpersonal
motherhood and employment effects on life sat-
isfaction over decades. Polynomial regressions
were used to relate these effects to changing
motherhood norms.
University of Zurich, Institute of Sociology,Andreasstrasse
15, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland (preisner@soziologie.uzh.ch).
∗German YouthInstitute, Nockherstraße 2, 81541 Munich,
Germany.
∗∗School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences Paris,
Boulevard de la Liberté 16, 93260 Les Lilas, France.
∗∗∗Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Institute of
Sociology, Konradstraße6, 80801 Munich, Germany.
Key Words: culture, employment, longitudinal research,
motherhood, well-being.
Results: The negative effects of motherhood on
life satisfaction are less prevalent today than
they werein the past. The interpersonal maternal
happiness gap has disappeared, and the intra-
personal motherhood effect on life satisfaction
has increased during the past decades.
Conclusion: As restrictive social norms for
maternal employment have lost ground, the
transition to motherhood has become increas-
ingly conducive to life satisfaction for both
working and nonworking mothers.
Implication: Normative and public support of
women’s freedom to choose among different
motherhood roles is key to reducing nancial
and time pressures of mothers and thereby
increasing maternal life satisfaction. Further
support is needed for mothers without partners
or jobs.
In 20th-century Germany, motherhood was a
normal and expected life event, a quasi-natural
standard for women. Childlessness, on the other
hand, was seen as deviance or fate, but certainly
as a source of unhappiness (cf. Coontz, 1992;
Donath, 2015a). In recent decades, traditional
family ideologies and religious doctrines have
lost ground in Germany, and life courses have
become more diverse. Fertility rates have fallen
low,and childlessness has increased (Dorbritz &
Ruckdeschel, 2013, p. 255). At the same time,
the expansion of formal child-care services has
Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (October 2018): 1107–1124 1107
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12518
1108 Journal of Marriage and Family
improved the reconciliation of family and work.
Greater freedom, lower normative pressure, and
the availability of professional child care may
have leveled out differences in life satisfaction
between mothers and nonmothers as individuals
may increasingly choose the lives they want
to live.
Although there is a large body of research
on the relationship between parenthood and
various indicators of well-being (Aasve, Goisis,
& Sironi, 2012; Baetschmann, Staub, & Studer,
2016; Dew & Wilcox, 2011; Grossbard &
Mukhopadhyay, 2013; Keizer & Schenk, 2012;
Kohler, Behrman, & Skytthe, 2005; Neuberger
& Preisner, 2017; Pollmann-Schult, 2014), the
relationship between motherhood and life satis-
faction remains unclear. Whereas studies from
the 1990s and the 2000s tend to nd a negative
or no relationship between motherhood and life
satisfaction (for an overview, see Hansen, 2012),
recent studies increasingly point to positive rela-
tionships in Germany (Baetschmann et al.,
2016). Surprisingly, there is very little research
on how the relationship between motherhood
and life satisfaction has changed during the past
decades, and what are the possible causes (cf.
Herbst & Ifcher, 2016), which is the research
focus of this article.
There are good reasons to expect a chang-
ing relationship between parenthood and life
satisfaction. Whether motherhood increases or
decreases life satisfaction is subject to specic
circumstances that have seen much change in
Germany in recent decades. Currently women
have more life options to choose from, includ-
ing a life without children or having children as
well as a professional career. Taking into consid-
eration recent family policy reforms and chang-
ing social norms, it is reasonable to expect the
relationship between motherhood and life satis-
faction to have changed as well.
We argue that fertility and parental outcome
can be seen as contextualized rational decisions.
The main rationale is that predominant social
norms and taboos bias the perception of the costs
and benets of motherhood as well as maternal
employment and that they thereby provoke deci-
sions that can lead to unfavorable outcomes and,
hence, lower life satisfaction. In Germany, pre-
dominant pronatalist norms and negative views
on maternal employment have increasingly lost
ground in recent decades (Paetzold, 1996). We
expect that greater freedom to opt for or against
motherhood, a less-restrictive social climate, and
greater opportunities to reconcile motherhood
and work will result in better decisions and
greater life satisfaction of both mothers and
women without children.
We take a closer look at the historical devel-
opment of the relationship between motherhood
and life satisfaction in Germany between 1984
and 2015. We rst focus on individual circum-
stances such as employment. Life circumstances
not only impact life satisfaction but also they
may differ between mothers and nonmoth-
ers and may therefore explain differences in
life satisfaction between mothers and women
without children. Second, we focus on the
social norms around motherhood, for example,
whether mothers are expected to stay at home
to care for their children instead of pursuing
their careers. Individual resources and soci-
etal context are both subject to change and
may therefore explain a changing relationship
between motherhood and life satisfaction over
time, that is, maternal employment may become
more benecial as working mothers are more
commonly perceived as emancipated role mod-
els rather than rabenmütter (“raven mothers,”
used to accuse working mothers of neglecting
their children in favor of their careers).
We focus on Germany because it has seen
tremendous normative and institutional change
related to motherhood in recent decades and
also because of the availability of long-term
panel data. We analyze data from the German
Socio-Economic Panel from 1984 to 2015
(GSOEP; https://www.diw.de/en/soep). Our
sample comprises 18,238 women aged 16 to
45. We use a series of hybrid panel regression
models to estimate intrapersonal motherhood
effects (within effects, i.e., the differences in
life satisfaction before and after the transition
to motherhood) and interpersonal motherhood
effects (between effects, i.e., the differences
between mothers and nonmothers) over time
and with a particular focus on mothers’ employ-
ment status. Finally, we relate these motherhood
effects on life satisfaction to social norms for
maternal employment.
To our knowledge, there are three aspects
of this study that go beyond previous research:
First, we research trends of both intrapersonal
and interpersonal motherhood effects on life
satisfaction. Hence, we differentiate between
intrapersonal change on the one hand and
interpersonal differences between mothers and
women without children on the other hand.
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