Employment status and new mothers’ affective well-being: does it amplify emotional returns from maternal role adaptation?

Employment status significantly shapes how new mothers experience the transition to motherhood, yet its multifaceted influence on postpartum psychological well-being requires further exploration. This study investigated the impact of employment status on new mothers’ social support, positive and negative affective well-being, and maternal role adaptation. It also examined the mediating role of maternal role adaptation in the relationship between social support and positive affect, as well as the moderating effect of employment status on this pathway.

A total of 498 new mothers were recruited from the outpatient department of a major children’ s hospital in Shanghai and completed standardized scales. Results indicated that full-time employed mothers reported significantly higher levels of social support and lower negative affect compared to non-full-time mothers. However, no significant differences were found between the groups in maternal role adaptation or overall positive affect levels.

Maternal role adaptation mediated the link between social support and positive affect. Importantly, employment status moderated this pathway: compared to full-time employed mothers, non-full-time mothers showed a stronger positive relationship between maternal role adaptation and positive affect, indicating they gained greater emotional benefits from successful adaptation. These findings suggest that while full-time employment may facilitate social support, interventions aimed at strengthening role adaptation could be especially beneficial for enhancing positive emotional outcomes among non-full-time mothers.

The authors would like to thank the new mothers who participated in the study. This study was supported by the Shanghai Social Science Innovation Research Base of “Research on Transitional Sociology with Chinese Characteristics”. Shanshan He is supported by the Shanghai Social Science Innovation Research Base of “Research on Transitional Sociology with Chinese Characteristics”.

East China Normal University, Shanghai, China Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Correspondence to Shanshan He or Yihua Chen. The authors declare no competing interests. All research procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Research Committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Ethical approval was obtained from the University Committee on Human Research Protection of East China Normal University (authorization code no. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.