ORIGINAL ARTICLE Employment conditions and maternal postpartum mental health: results from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children Amanda R. Cooklin & Louise Canterford & Lyndall Strazdins & Jan M. Nicholson Received: 15 June 2010 / Accepted: 2 November 2010 / Published online: 30 November 2010 # Springer-Verlag 2010 Abstract Maternal postpartum mental health is influenced by a broad range of risk and protective factors including social circumstances. Forty percent of Australian women resume employment in the first year postpartum, yet poor quality employment (without security, control, flexibility or leave) has not been investigated as a potential social determinant of maternal psychological distress. This paper examines whether poor quality jobs are associated with an increased risk of maternal postpartum psychological dis- tress. Data were collected from employed mothers of infants ≤12 months (n =1,300) participating in the Longi- tudinal Study of Australian Children. Logistic regression analyses estimated the association between job quality and maternal psychological distress, adjusting for prior depres- sion, social support, quality of partner relationship, adverse life events and sociodemographic characteristics. Only 21% of women reported access to all four optimal job con- ditions. After adjustment for known risk factors for poor maternal mood, mothers were significantly more likely to report psychological distress (adjusted OR=1.39, 95% CI 1.09, 1.77) with each reduction in the number of optimal employment conditions. Interventions for maternal post- partum affective disorders are unlikely to be successful if major risk factors are not addressed. These results provide strong evidence that employment conditions are associated with maternal postpartum mood, and warrant consideration in psychosocial risk assessments and interventions. Keywords Maternal . Postpartum mental health . Employment . Job quality . Maternity leave Introduction Maternal mental health and psychological wellbeing in the postpartum period is governed by a range of factors. Established risk factors include a poor quality intimate relationship, concurrent adverse life events and inade- quate social support (Boyce and Hickey 2005; Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network 2002; Milgrom et al. 2008; Rubertsson et al. 2005). More recent evidence also points to the importance of social and family circumstances such as lower socioeconomic position (Kermode et al. 2000; Rubertsson et al. 2005). Indeed, results from one study show that the influence of structural factors on depressive symptomatology in women following childbirth outweighs that of established, individually based charac- teristics (Chen et al. 2005). However, very few studies have explored what aspects of women’ s broader social circumstances are important after childbirth, nor has there been a detailed investigation of the role played by the conditions of employment, despite an increasing propor- tion of mothers returning to work postpartum. This paper therefore provides new evidence on the relationship be- tween access to family-friendly and supportive employment conditions and maternal mental health in the postpartum period. A. R. Cooklin (*) : J. M. Nicholson Parenting Research Centre, Level 5, 232 Victoria Parade, East Melbourne, VIC 3002, Australia e-mail: ACooklin@parentingrc.org.au L. Canterford : J. M. Nicholson Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia L. Strazdins National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Arch Womens Ment Health (2011) 14:217–225 DOI 10.1007/s00737-010-0196-9