A Study of Personality Adjustment among Adolescent Children with Working and Nonworking Mothers

This study sought to determine if there was a difference in personality adjustment as measured by the Minnesota Counseling Inventory (MCI) among 312 ninth-grade pupils who were categorized according to their mothers' work history. The principal statistical model used for analyzing the differences in groups was analysis of variance-treatments by levels design. The findings revealed that (1) in all instances, the personality adjustment (as evidenced by MCI scores in eight areas of adjustment) of boys was better when the mother worked full-time than if she had worked part-time or not at all; (2) the personality adjustment of girls did not follow a consistent pattern regarding the employment history of their mothers; (3) on the majority of the MCI scales, girls with nonworking mothers had better adjustment scores than girls with mothers who had worked either full-time or part-time.