The Effects of Mentoring on Work-parenting Gains and Strains in a Sample of Employed Predominately Female AFDC Recipients

Nationally, as well as locally, the emphasis in public assistance is to assist clients in becoming job ready. To this end, Oregon received waivers necessary to implement an innovative welfare reform effort, JOBS Plus Program (JPP), in 1994. The JPP provided subsidized employment for welfare recipients through the cashing out of public assistance benefits and Food Stamp monies. Employers were required to provide an on-site mentor for subsidized employees as a condition of agreement to participate in the Program. Mentoring has been shown to positively impact employee overall job satisfaction, tenure, salary and promotion. While mentoring has been seen traditionally as promoting protégé career functioning, another less acknowledged function of the mentor relationship is the psychosocial function. The psychosocial aspect of the mentor relationship includes addressing personal as well as professional issues and concerns. This aspect of the mentor relationship may be of particular importance for working parents. This study used post-test survey data collected as part of the JOBS Plus Evaluation to test the effect of mentoring on work-family interaction and overall satisfaction with work. Further, the quality of the mentoring relationship was assessed, from the protégés\u27 perspective, in terms of agreement between mentor and protégé on tasks and goals and the degree of bonding between mentor and protégé. Mentored individuals reported significantly less strains from work and family interaction and greater overall satisfaction with work than non-mentored individuals. The mentor bond sub-scale was significantly associated with work-family strains in the predicted direction. The mentor bond and goal sub-scales were significantly associated with overall satisfaction with work. A model that included mentoring, subsidized and unsubsidized worksite and interaction between mentoring and worksite was tested. This model was significant for overall satisfaction with work; the experience of having a mentor proved to be the significant contribution to explained variance of the overall satisfaction with work outcome variable. Study findings provide support for the role of mentoring in overall work satisfaction for low income individuals. Policy recommendations include further research on the role of mentoring for public assistance recipients and the inclusion of a module on mentoring in job readiness curricula