Work, motherhood and women's affective well-being

This paper analyzes how motherhood and labor market status interact in their relationship to women's affective well-being using Day Reconstruction Method data from the United Kingdom Time Use Survey 2014-2015. The dataset contains information on how much time respondents spent on their various daily activities as well as how much they enjoyed each episode. This information is aggregated into a measure of an individual's affective well-being on a given day by calculating the mean of the reported enjoyments weighted by the duration of the respective episode. Results indicate a positive and significant correlation between motherhood and affective well-being. However, this relationship decreases in magnitude and even becomes insignificant in some specifications when controlling for labor market status. This could indicate that an increase in the likelihood of being in a labor market status associated with higher affective well-being mediates the positive relationship between motherhood and affective well-being. Women working part-time, self-employed women, homemakers and women on maternity leave are shown to have higher affective well-being than full-time employees. Furthermore, the time spent on and enjoyment experienced in employment related activities appears to be a key driver of many results in this study. Contrasting results in specifications using a measure of life satisfaction highlight the importance of considering affective as well as cognitive well-being.