Is it better to have a working mum?
Any mums who juggle work and parenting will sigh with relief at a new study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ECRC) on maternal employment and child socio-emotional behaviour in the UK.
According to the study, the ideal home scenario for children was where both parents lived in the home and both were in paid employment, however the impact of this arrangement partly depended on the father’s working arrangement.
The study also looked at the data form the UK Millenium Cohort Study, the researchers discovered that the relationship between behavioural difficulties and employment of the mother was stronger for girls than boys. It also found that:
- Boys in house holds where the mother was the breadwinner, displayed more difficulties at age five than boys living with two working parents. The same didn’t apply to girls.
- It also found that girls in traditional households where the father was the breadwinner were more likely to have difficulties at age five than girls living in dual-earner households.
Dr Anne McMunn, the principal researcher in this study said: “Mothers who work are more likely to have higher educational qualifications, live in a higher income household, and have a lower likelihood of being depressed than mothers who are not in paid work. These factors explain the higher levels of behavioural difficulties for boys of non-working mothers, but the same was not true for girls."
"Some studies have suggested that whether or not mothers work in the first year of a child's life can be particularly important for later outcomes. In this study we did not see any evidence for a longer-term detrimental influence on child behaviour of mothers working during the child's first year of life," states Dr Anne McMunn.
Previous research has shown that children brought up in single-mother households or households where neither parent works were more likely to have challenging behaviour at age five than in households where both parents work.
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