Recent research funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) shows that children of working mothers suffer no ill effects due to their mothers working, contradicting what some might see as common sense thinking.
What the Study on Working Mother's Found
Recent research conducted by a team funded by the ESRC and led by Dr. Anne McMunn, of University College London, with results published on the Journal of Epidemiology and & Community Health, concludes that the best possible scenario for raising emotionally healthy children is when they are raised by two parents, both of whom are working, as opposed to where only the father goes to work. McMunn suggests this is because in homes where the mother works, the mother is more likely to have more education, have a higher income, and also a lower likelihood of being depressed, a factor she says is more likely than any other (except very low income) to adversely affect children in emotional ways.
The study consisted of using data abstracted from the Millennium Cohort Study, a large nationally representative census that was used to collect data on the relationship between parental employment and child socio-emotional behavior. Combining that data with publicly available health records (in England), the research term was able to find patterns in emotional behavior (as reported to health care officials) as it related to parents in various working combinations: working mother and father or where just one or the other was working.
The patterns found suggested that young girls in particular, who had working mothers, appeared to live emotionally healthy lives while young boys fared slightly less well. But even so both genders appeared to be better off emotionally than children raised in homes where just one parent was working and much better than children raised in either single parent homes, or where neither parent was employed.
McMunn also noted that if household income fell below a certain level, emotional instability appeared in the children of both genders almost immediately regardless of whether the mother was working or not.
What the Working Mother's Study Means for Mothers and Their Kids
Based on the data and report, it appears that for the most part, kids of working mothers are doing just fine. This means, says McMunn, that working mothers can stop beating themselves up worrying over whether as working Moms they will mess up their kids.
The study also seems to back up the belief by many that household income in general is a bigger factor in emotional stability for young children than whether their mother stays home or goes to work.
Sources
- "Maternal employment and child socio-emotional behaviour in the UK: longitudinal evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study" Journal of Epidemiology and & Community Health, January 2011
- "Working mothers and the effects on children" Economic and Social Research Council, viewed July 26, 2011
Bob Yirka - Bob Yirka has written thousands of online articles and backs them up with a BS in Computer Science/MS in Information Systems Management.
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