ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R
主办:中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理科学进展 ›› 2025, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (11): 1870-1890.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2025.1870 cstr: 32111.14.2025.1870

• 研究构想 • 上一篇    下一篇

榜样与感染:父母身份认同增益职场母亲的工作动力

陈乐妮1(), 黄旭2, 许寒华2   

  1. 1中央民族大学管理学院, 北京 100081
    2香港浸会大学工商管理学院, 香港 999077
  • 收稿日期:2025-04-28 出版日期:2025-11-15 发布日期:2025-09-19
  • 通讯作者: 陈乐妮, E-mail: cln1992@126.com
  • 基金资助:
    国家自然科学基金青年科学基金项目(72402250);中央民族大学新进教师科研能力培育计划项目(2024XJJS07)

Setting examples and drawing inspiration from children: How parental identity enhances working mothers’ work motivation

CHEN Leni1(), HUANG Xu2, XU Hanhua2   

  1. 1School of Management, Minzu University of China, Beijing 100081, China
    2School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong 999077, China
  • Received:2025-04-28 Online:2025-11-15 Published:2025-09-19

摘要:

本研究挑战“生育与女性工作动力相矛盾”的社会成见, 提出父母身份增益理论。研究提出父母身份认同能成为职场母亲工作动机的重要来源。这种增益通过两种机制发挥作用:父母榜样动机(母亲努力工作以成为子女榜样)和从子女探索精神中获取感染(激发工作好奇心与内在动机)。研究从个人、组织和家庭三个角度提出父母增益理论的适用情境, 深化了对生育相关身份与女性工作动力关系的理解, 并为提振育龄女性工作动力提出管理对策建议。

关键词: 父母身份认同, 职场母亲, 女性工作动力, 家庭-工作增益

Abstract:

Breaking the social stereotype that fertility is contradictory to women’s work motivation is key to addressing the dual challenges of low fertility desire and promoting women’s employment. Existing research mostly adopts the opting-out perspective, suggesting that parenthood would make women focus on child-rearing, thereby actively reducing their work motivation and even withdrawing from the workplace. Based on the work-family enrichment theory and identity research, this study challenges the opting-out perspective and proposes a parental identity enrichment theory, proposing that parental identity can be a significant source of work motivation for working mothers, thereby enhancing work performance and decreasing withdrawal.

This research posits that parental identity enrichment operates through two mechanisms: on one hand, during pregnancy, parental identity provides meaning to working mothers by striving to become role models for their children, enhancing their parental role model motivation, which promotes their return to work and performance after maternal leave; on the other hand, working mothers with higher parental identity are deeply affected by their children’s strong motivation to explore the world(innate curiosity and intrinsic motivation), which inspires their workplace curiosity and intrinsic motivation, enhancing their performance and creativity.

Furthermore, the study identifies the conditions that shape when parental identity enrichment occurs. We propose a multilevel framework of moderating factors that determine whether parental identity becomes a source of work motivation or creates additional burden. At the individual level, gender role attitudes shape how women interpret their parental identity. At the organizational level, family-supportive organizational culture provides cultural legitimacy for integrating parental and professional identities, while workplace role models of working mothers demonstrate successful identity integration, and work autonomy creates space for transferring child-inspired traits to work. At the family level, spousal support ensures resources for positive identity transformation.

This project deepens the understanding of the relationship between fertility-related identity and women’s work motivation from theoretical perspectives, mechanisms, and boundary conditions, making theoretical contributions to breaking social stereotypes and providing management recommendations to boost working mothers’s work motivation.

Key words: parental identity, working mothers, women’s work motivation, family-work enrichment

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