Allyship in the fifth trimester: A multi-method investigation of Women’s postpartum return to work

Nitya Chawla, Allison S. Gabriel, Melanie Prengler, Kristie Rogers, Benjamin Rogers, Alyssa Tedder-King and Christopher C. Rosen

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2024, vol. 182, issue C

Abstract: Recognizing that postpartum mothers’ organizational reentry is fraught with physical, emotional, and psychological challenges, we explored the specific behaviors that coworkers and managers can enact to support and advocate for working mothers during their reentry process—behaviors we conceptualize as postpartum allyship. In Study 1, we adopted a qualitative approach to gain insight into the forms of allyship that working mothers found valuable. We then build upon these findings in Study 2 by developing and validating a scale of postpartum allyship. Finally, in Study 3, integrating emergent themes from our qualitative data with tenets of the social cognitive model of career self-management (Lent & Brown, 2013, 2019), we use our newly-developed measure in a time-lagged study focused on the cognitive, affective, and behavioral impact of postpartum mothers’ experiences of allyship. Results indicated that postpartum allyship experiences bolster work-motherhood self-efficacy and reduce guilt which, in turn, yield important implications for working mothers’ turnover intentions, work-family capital, and postpartum depressive symptoms. Combined across our studies, the current research illuminates the critical impact of allies’ support and advocacy for postpartum mothers during reentry.

Keywords: Postpartum allyship; Working mothers; Organizational reentry; Mixed methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597824000220
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:182:y:2024:i:c:s0749597824000220

DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2024.104330

Access Statistics for this article

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes is currently edited by John M. Schaubroeck

More articles in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().