The influence of antenatal working conditions on biopsychosocial outcomes during and after pregnancy

In July 2012, several newspapers in the UK reported a key finding of a research study by Del Bono, Ermisch and Francesconi (2012), who compared the effect of maternal smoking and when the mother stopped working prior to the birth on infant birth weight. From their study, they concluded that women who worked after they were eight months pregnant had babies who weighed 230g less on average. However, this study did not answer the question, why would maternal working have such an effect?

The implications of this reported finding was that the media then moralised the maternal choice to work: maternal working suddenly became ‘bad’, just like maternal smoking is ‘bad’ (the Guardian, 2012; the Daily Mail, 2012; Marie Claire, 2012). However, this conclusion goes far beyond the available data. In the current project, we wish to provide further investigation into these issues, incorporating appropriate controls that the Del Bono et al. (2012) study did not include, in order to dispel the unwarranted conclusion that ‘maternal working is bad’, per se. By contributing a more nuanced understanding of the impact of antenatal working on infant and parental outcomes, we will be able to provide guidelines to parents, policy makers and organizations about the appropriate, healthy working conditions for expectant mothers. Currently, there is a lack of empirical data on (a) the impact of social, physical and psychological workplace conditions on parent and child biopsychosocial outcomes, and (b) the social and psychological impact of moralising women’s choice to work during pregnancy. We propose that the moralisation of choices such as maternal working may actually increase the strain placed on working mothers. Prior research shows that pregnancy is already a time when women are stereotyped as more incompetent (Masser et al., 2007) and report increased discrimination (Salihu et al., 2012). The unwarranted moralisation of ‘free’ choices during pregnancy is a process that may be associated with increased disapproval from people in the community and increased discrimination at work during pregnancy.

This research will be conducted via a series of field surveys and laboratory experiments. We will examine the relationship between the physical, social and psychological working conditions of expectant mothers and key biopsychosocial outcomes for mother and child. These outcomes will include infant birth weight and maternal physical and psychological health. The objective in tracking this cohort is to unpack the complex causal relationships between the antecedent and outcome variables, and second to investigate the impact of moralising the ‘free’ choice to work for expectant mothers. The results of these investigations will in turn provide essential and nuanced knowledge that will lead to effective organisational policy for antenatal working.

Applications for this project are welcome from students with an excellent academic background in Psychology and interest in the organisational and/or health domain. Relevant work experience would be beneficial.