Abstract

The Hoyt Estimate of Reliability for the instrument developed to measure maternal satisfaction was .74. Construct validity was supported through a comparative analysis of subjects' responses to the open-ended questions. ;Maternal primacy was also investigated by asking the women to list up to five roles they identified with and rank order them as to their importance to the subjects' sense of identity. In this study 86% of the professional women identified the maternal role as being primary over the professional role. ;Although the division of labor was not significantly related to maternal satisfaction, it was found that all four subscales used to measure division of labor were negatively related to marital satisfaction at the .02 level of significance or greater. The less subjects perceived that their husbands shared in assuming responsibility for and actually performing tasks related to household maintenance and childrearing, the less satisfied they were with their marriages. The women in this study indicated that childrearing activities were more equally shared than household tasks. In both childrearing and household tasks, husbands were more likely to take responsibility for deciding how the tasks were to be done than to actually perform the tasks themselves. ;The results of the multiple regression analysis indicated that among the major independent variables, marital satisfaction accounted for 16% of the variance in maternal satisfaction . The findings from the quantitative data analysis was substantiated by the content analysis of open-ended questions. Feelings of maternal satisfaction were associated with themes of family harmony and interpersonal relationships between family members. Marital conflict was reported as an event that affected maternal stress. These results suggest some overlap between the marital and maternal roles. ;The major research question investigated the relationship of seven major independent variables and various minor independent variables to maternal satisfaction, the dependent variable. The major independent variables were: marital satisfaction; responsibility for household tasks; performance of household tasks; responsibility for childrearing activities; performance of childrearing activities; maternal role primacy; career satisfaction. ;This ex post facto descriptive study examined factors related to maternal satisfaction in a sample of sixty-two married, professional women with at least one child under fourteen years of age. The women were either gainfully employed on a three-fourths or full-time basis and/or were students in higher education. The aim of this study was to investigate perceptions of maternal satisfaction and identify relevant family roles contributing to perceptions of maternal satisfaction within this population