Factors Associated with Past and Future Career Ambitions and Preferences of Women Raising Children

Abstract

  In this study, we examined whether lifestyle factors, including their working situation, determine the past and future career ambitions of 221 women with infants. The women completed a questionnaire assessing their career ambitions, time perspective, egalitarian gender role attitudes, personal domain awareness, public self-consciousness, coping behavior of marital role adjustment, and objection to maternal employment by their husband and/or husband's parents.

  Binomial logistic regression analysis showed that, with regard to women who were working full-time, the higher the consciousness of gender equality, the more likely the women were to choose to work full-time in the future. With regard to women who were working full-time and also were homemakers, the higher the time perspective (satisfaction with daily life), the more likely they were to believe that their future career ambitions would be fulfilled. These results suggest that living a fulfilling life in the present may encourage the desire to work in the future, that is, having career ambitions.