2013: Motherhood Advantage: How Parenthood Impacts Perceptions of the Meaning of Work and Work Outcomes (17929)

Working parents represent a significant portion of the labor force. However, invalid assumptions regarding how parental role engagement affects working parents, and in particular, working mothers, has led to stigma and workplace discrimination against them. In order to the eradicate such stigma and combat discrimination, we draw upon self-construal theory to theorize that, compared with non-parents, working parents are more likely to view their work as a means to communicate their professional ethics and principles to their family and serve as role models, which we termed “the symbolic meaning of work.” We further posited that sex interacted with parental status to affect employees’ perceived symbolic meaning of work, with the positive association between parental status and perceived symbolic meaning of work being stronger for females than males. Third, we argued that the symbolic meaning of work is positively related to employees’ demonstration of exemplary behaviors at work, such as increased work effort and ethical voice behavior. Lastly, we proposed that the indirect effects of parental status on work effort and ethical voice behavior via the symbolic meaning of work are stronger for females than males. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of 283 Chinese employees and found support for each of the hypotheses. The theoretical and practical implications of our study, as well as limitations and future research directions, are discussed below.

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