Mothers’ Psychological Availability to Their Infants: Associations with Work-Related Negative Mood, Psychological Exhaustion, and Recovery Experiences

SYNOPSIS: Objective. Being psychologically available is a prerequisite for mothers to respond to their infant’s emotions and behaviors in a timely and appropriate manner. As many mothers worldwide return to work within the first few months postpartum, their psychological availability may depend on their work-related experiences. Specifically, work-related negative mood and psychological exhaustion may lead mothers to have fewer cognitive resources available to their infants and so lower psychological availability to their infants. Furthermore, recovery experiences, such as sleep and enjoyment of after-work activities, might weaken this negative spillover. In the current pre-registered study, we examined whether maternal work-related negative mood and psychological exhaustion are associated with lower psychological availability to their infant. The moderating role of recovery experiences was also studied. Design. Self-reported questionnaire data were taken from 138 Dutch working mothers on two study days: a workday and a non-workday spent with the infant. Results. Work-related negative mood, but not psychological exhaustion, was associated with lower psychological availability to their infants in the evening. However, the association was no longer significant when repeating the analyses without multivariate outliers. While enjoyment of after-work activities and sleep quality did not play a role in recovering from work-strain, mothers who enjoyed their activities after work more showed higher psychological availability to their infant that same evening and the day after. Conclusions. Enjoyment of after-work activities as a potential recovery experience may be a promising avenue for future research examining how working mothers with infants recover from other-than-work-only related strain.