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Multiple Roles and Women's Mental Health in Canada

Heather Maclean, EdD; Keva Glynn, MHSc; and Donna Ansara, MSc, PhD candidate (Centre for Research in Women's Health)

Health Issue

This chapter extends previous analyses on the moderating effects of different role combinations on women's mental health and situates this analysis in a social context. The relation between socio-economic factors and women's mental health is assessed with respect to different combinations of women's roles: (i) single mothers, employed and non-employed; (ii) partnered mothers, employed and non-employed; (iii) women without children, partnered and single; and (iv) women without children, employed and non-employed. A new analysis using National Population Health Survey data from 1994-1995 and 1998-1999 examines the association between different role combinations and socio-economic status, and the differences in women's stress, distress, and chronic stress levels according to the various combinations of roles.

Key Findings

• Irrespective of women's employment status, single mothers are significantly more likely than partnered mothers to be poor, and to experience financial stress and food insecurity. Further, whether employed or non-employed, they are significantly more likely to report feelings of high personal and chronic stress. Although employment has a significant effect on the stress and distress levels of single mothers, it does not appear to have a significant effect on the distress or chronic stress levels of partnered mothers.
• Single mothers who were not employed were more than twice as likely as all other groups of women to report a high level of distress. In all age groups, single mothers, regardless of employment, were most likely to report feelings of high personal stress and feeling overloaded, compared to partnered mothers.
• Finally, single or partnered women with children had a higher risk of personal stress than those without children. This effect is more pronounced in the comparison of single women with and without children than that of partnered women with and without children.

The results clearly show that the distress, stress, and chronic stress levels of mothers, regardless of employment or marital status, are high, particularly for single, non-employed mothers. The inclusion of life context (chronic stress) in the assessment of personal stress results in higher reports of stress for all four groups. The apparent negative influence of the wider social context on women's mental health speaks to the need for further investigation into the social and environmental conditions influencing women's experiences with multiple roles. In particular, given the disturbing results with respect to the mental health of single, non-employed mothers, further attention needs to be paid to the legislative, social, and environmental factors contributing to their poor state of mental health.

Data Gaps and Recommendations

Data Collection

The authors identified the following data gaps:

• More detailed information needs to be collected on the characteristics of women's work environments and their responsibilities with respect to caregiving.
• Future national surveys should extend questions related to household composition to include intergenerational households, households headed by same-sex couples, and multi-family arrangements.
• More information is needed on the quality of women's domestic roles.
• More disaggregated information on women's ethno-racial background is required.

Policy Recommendations

The authors made the following recommendations:

• Labour force policies and policies that support family life need to be developed. Integral to these policies should be the recognition of women's participation in the labour force and as unpaid caregivers in the home.
• There is a need to expand the childcare and economic subsidies available to lone mothers.
• Employment strategies specific to lone mothers should be developed.
• Educational programs to enhance mental health professionals' understandings of the impact of women's multiple roles on their mental health need to be developed.

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