The relationship between mother’s workplace flexibility and child development: the mediating role of parental involvement and stress

This paper examines the direct and indirect effect of working mothers’ workplace flexibility on young children’s general, cognitive and socioemotional development through positive mother–child engagement activities and maternal stress level, using data from 8,367 mother–child pairs in Chile. We find that flexibility is positively associated with child development outcomes. It is also strongly negatively related to maternal stress level, which shows a strong negative relation to development outcomes. Our analysis indicates that maternal stress mediates a relevant part of the relation we observe between workplace flexibility and child developmental outcomes, especially when explaining socioemotional development. There is less support for the engagement activities channels as the relation between flexibility and mother–child activities is weak.