In this chapter we extend the analyses from Chapter 5 to consider the links from maternal employment to parenting styles and child outcomes, through the mother's sense of well-being. In Chapter 5, we found that working-class employed mothers were less depressed and had higher morale than nonemployed mothers, but that there was no relation between maternal employment and mothers' mood among married, middle-class women. Here, we consider the possibility that the greater advantage of maternal employment for working-class children often found in the literature is mediated by the positive effect of employment on the mother's sense of well-being. This possibility is bolstered by a large body of research that demonstrates a positive relationship between maternal mental health and both more effective parenting and children's cognitive and emotional adjustment (see Chapter 1). However, with one possible exception (McLoyd, Jayaratne, Ceballo, & Borquez, 1994), there has not yet been an adequate study that investigates whether maternal mood mediates the relationship between a mother's employment status and her childrearing orientation, or between maternal employment and children's outcomes. In a study of working-class, single, African-American mothers of adolescents, McLoyd and her colleagues (1994) found that the mother's current employment status was significantly related to depressive mood, with non-employed mothers significantly more depressed than employed. They also found that depressive mood was significantly related to both a negative perception of the maternal role and the mother's use of power-assertive discipline.