Motherhood, Accelerated Role Transition, and Social Pathologies

Every society prescribes the timing of critical events in the life cycle, such as those attending mother-hood. Patterns of role transition at variance with social prescriptions should produce role stress. Thus, when the adult roles associated with motherhood are activated too early in a woman's life cycle, stress and resultant social pathologies should be generated in the family. This study employs national surveydata, finding that early motherhood, a form of accelerated role transition, is closely associated with high in-cidence of marital dissolution, poverty, and truncated education. Achieving motherhood is a critical life event, for it requires the woman to take on many complex and demanding roles as other impor-tant roles are abandoned or modified. Mother-hood is expected to cause significant changes in the social behavior of the woman giving birth, and of others, especially those most intimately associated with her