Paid employment, social stress and mental health in working class women with young children.

Working class women with dependent children are at a relatively high risk of mental health problems. Hypotheses about the association of a) paid employment, b) life event stress, c) social support and d) the presence of a preschool child with rental health were tested in a community survey of 193 working class women with young children. Subject selection minimised confounding between these variables. I tested for a direct relationship of employment with a range of mental health variables and also examined it in interaction with social stress. Reliable measures of sex role beliefs and work satisfaction, which had been developed in pilot studies, were also used to examine whether mothers' attitudes moderated the employment/health relationships. The 'stress buffering' hypothesis of social support was also investigated, as were three models of the relation of negative cognitive style to depression. Further analyses examined the psychological characteristics of respondents in the community falling at the threshold level of psychiatric symptomatology in the case identification procedure.