Women’s Employment after Childbirth and Maternal Separation Anxiety
Is high maternal separation anxiety associated with poorer maternal mental health?
Mothers returning to work are under a lot of pressure to reach some semblance of balance in their lives. This can be exacerbated by maternal separation anxiety, which finds some mothers feeling overwhelmed by thoughts, feelings and concerns about being separated from their infant in the first year following birth to go back to work.
Separation anxiety is influenced by maternal and infant characteristics, but few studies have examined whether adverse social and contextual circumstances, such as lengthy childcare use, poor employment conditions and inadequate social support, and socio-economic disadvantage account for any variation in maternal separation anxiety. This study investigates the maternal, infant social and contextual characteristics associated with very high maternal separation anxiety in a representative cohort of Australian mothers of infants.
Gaining an understanding of the social and contextual circumstances may provide opportunities for intervention and support. The relationship between mothers and their infants also need to be considered in policy and public debate about parental leave and workplace policy.
The project is part of a wider collaboration between the Parenting Research Centre and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) research team at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute (MCRI) known as the Parenting Australian Children Collaboration. This collaboration involves the analysis of data from the nationally representative LSAC to produce a series of papers on parenting and child wellbeing.
