children essay

Working mothers risk damaging their child's prospects by STEVE DOUGHTY, Daily Mail
Mothers who return to work after their baby is born risk causing serious damage to the child's prospects in later life, researchers revealed yesterday.
Such children are more likely to do worse at school, become unemployed and to suffer mental stress than youngsters whose mothers stay at home to bring them up.
The findings from the Institute for Social and Economic Research are a severe blow to the Government, which has used the tax and benefit system to encourage mothers to work while stripping away tax breaks such as the Married Couple's Allowance.
They are an endorsement of the instincts of thousands of women who either give up work or drastically cut down their job commitments to devote most of their time to raising a young child.
According to the study, the impact of having a full-time working mother on a child's education is similar to growing up in a single-parent family. If a mother returns to work, say the researchers, the child is 20 per-cent less likely to get an A-level.
They also reject the idea that a child is helped if the father stays at home, showing that his absence has little effect on the child's educational success.
The research, published yesterday by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, followed the lives of 1,263 young people across all social groups who were born in the 1970s.
Researchers attempted to allow for other factors such as income, the parents' education and family break-up, and made comparisons of the performance of brothers and sisters.
It found that the children between one and five whose mothers worked for the longest periods tended to have lower educational attainment, greater risk of unemployment as a young adult, and a greater risk of psychological distress.
In only one field were the children better off than most others: Daughters of working mothers were less likely to become teenage mothers themselves.
The findings showed that the average mother during the 1970s and early 1980s worked for 18 months full-time before her child was five.
Nearly two thirds of their children, 64 per cent, achieved at least one A-level or equivalent qualification.
However, among mothers who worked for a longer period - 30 months and over before their child was five - only 52 per cent of the children achieved one A-level pass.
The likelihood of unemployment rose from seven to nine per cent for those whose mothers had worked full-time, and the chance of psychological stress went up from 23 per cent to 28 per cent.
Part-time work had much less damaging effects on children. The child's chance of passing an A-level fell by six per cent, but there was no evidence of other harm.
Fathers who worked full-time had a similar impact on their children's development to mothers who worked part-time. But their children were less likely than others to be unemployed later in life and less likely to show signs of mental distress.
Study author Professor John Ermisch said increases in family income were positive for children and could offset the damage of a full-time working mother.
But he added: 'Unless it can be shown to produce substantial long-term gains, it might be better for policy makers to encourage part-time employment by one parent during a child's pre-school years.
'The large proportion of employed mothers with young children who are in part-time jobs is evidence that many mothers already prefer this option.'
Conservative social security spokesman David Willetts said: 'This shows how wrong the Goverment is to bias the tax and benefits system in favour of two-earner couples and institutionalised child care.
'We believe that parents with young children should be free to choose whether and when they return to work.'
Robert Whelan, of the Civitas think-tank, said: 'This calls into question the whole policy of encouraging women to go out to work and disadvantaging those who stay at home.
'If you stay at home, everything in the tax and benefit system is ranged against you. The whole system should be reversed.'
But the Department for Education and Employment dismissed the findings, claiming that the development of childcare improves the educational chances of children of working mothers.
It said a study of more than 2,000 children had 'shown that quality pre-school and child-care has a positive impact on children's education'.
'This report is based on children born 30 years ago when there was little quality child-care and nursery education.
'This Government has changed that by creating the largest ever expansion of childcare,' a spokesman said.
Meanwhile, a U.S. study has found that growing up in a clean home can boost youngsters' exam grades and even the salaries they earn as adults.
The study of 3,400 volunteers over 25 years found that the length of time a child stayed in education and their future earnings was directly linked to the hygiene in their homes.

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Working Mothers and the Effects On Children
July 21, 2011 — Parents struggling to combine paid work with bringing up their children now have some positive news thanks to a new study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) on maternal employment and child socio-emotional behaviour in the UK. The research shows that there are no significant detrimental effects on a child's social or emotional development if their mothers work during their early years.

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The ideal scenario for children, both boys and girls, was shown to be where both parents lived in the home and both were in paid employment. For children living with two parents, the impact of the working life of the mother may partly depend on the father's own working arrangements. However using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, the researchers discovered that the relationship between behavioural difficulties and employment of the mother was stronger for girls than for boys and that this was not explained by household income, level of mother's education or depression in the mother.
While boys in households, where the mother was the breadwinner, displayed more difficulties at age five than boys living with two working parents, the same was not true for girls. 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.
The principal researcher in this study, Dr Anne McMunn, has 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."
As previous research has indicated, children in single-mother households and in two-parent households in which neither parent was in work were much more likely to have challenging behaviour at age five than children where both parents were in paid employment. Household income however, and maternal characteristics can mitigate the effects of this.
"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.
Working mothers 'bad for children'
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John Carvel, social affairs editor

The Guardian, Friday 14 November 2003 10.03 GMT
The children of mothers who return to work full time in the years before they start school have slower emotional development and score less well in reading and maths tests, according to a study published today by the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
The disadvantage starts in primary school and persists into early adulthood, with lower educational attainment, higher unemployment and greater likelihood of childbearing early in life.
An early return to work by the mother reduces the child's chances of progressing to A-level from 60% to 50%. The employment patterns of the father have little effect, said the study by John Ermisch and Marco Francesconi, professors at Essex University.
They found that in Britain, the adverse effect on children was the same whether mothers returned to work full time before the child's first birthday or before the age of five. This ran counter to studies overseas suggesting that a return to work in the first year had more impact on the child.
They said the consequences were less severe for the children of better-educated mothers. And the positive effects of higher household income brought about by the mother returning to work went some way to compensate for the negative effect of reduced contact in the early years.
Prof Francesconi said last night: "Even the children of highly educated mothers who go back to full-time work early will have lower educational attainment. But the disadvantage will not be as much as it is for less educated mums."
He said the findings came in part from studies comparing the outcomes for siblings, looking at the relationship between educational attainment and the age at which the mother returned to full-time work. This confirmed that the negative effect of an early return could not be explained by differences between families.
The study was presented as the first large-scale appraisal of international research on working mothers.
It said: "The long-term effects of maternal employment have their strongest manifestation in lower educational attainments for children in their late teens and early 20s."
Much of the report looked at what happened to children in two-parent families. But it was gloomy about the prospects for the children of lone parents with low educational qualifications being encouraged by the government to take low-income jobs.
The National Family and Parenting Institute said the ISER report ran counter to a recent study of women from Bristol University that showed the timing of a mother's return to work had no influence on their children's development.
A spokeswoman said: "This debate has been rumbling on for a long time without getting anywhere... Findings like this have a massive effect on the self-esteem and levels of guilt experienced by working parents."
For many people the choices about working or not working are entirely financial - particularly on the question about whether to work full time or part time.
"Other research shows parents would like to spend more time with their children. Often it is working practices, particularly for men, that prevent this. We work the longest hours in Europe and the institute is campaigning to change that.
"There are undoubtedly many women who would prefer not to work, or to work part time. But those options are simply not there for them. Parents are increasingly finding creative ways to be with their children more, such as shift parenting."
The Impact of Working Mothers on Child Development
By David Pelcovitz, Ph. D. | Jan 3rd, 2013 | 0 Comments
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In recent years, full time employment of mothers has become the norm in the United States. Recent statistics indicate that 75% of mothers work full time in the first year of their child’s life.[1] Since most jobs in the United States only offer maternity leave for the first four to six weeks of a child’s life, the reality is that mothers are generally back to work when their child is still an infant.
By definition, the realities of kollel life (where a husband engages in full-time study of Talmud) typically include a mother needing to return to full or part-time work while their children are still young and the financial demands of an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle often make it necessary for both parents to work in non-kollel families.
Research on the Long-term Impact of Maternal Employment
The research on the long-term impact of maternal employment seems to tell a consistent story.

In 1991, the National Institute of Child Health and Development initiated a comprehensive longitudinal study in ten centers across the United States to address questions about the relationships between maternal employment, child-care experiences and various outcomes in children. The leaders of this study were among the most respected researchers in the field of developmental psychology, making the conclusions of this research particularly worthy of attention. In a recent review of their findings, they drew the following conclusions:[2]
In terms of the behavioral adjustment of children of middle class or upper middle class mothers who worked when they were infants:
Full-time maternal employment begun before the child was three months old was associated with significantly more behavior problems reported by caregivers at age 4½ years and by teachers at first grade;
Children whose mothers worked part-time before their child was one year old had fewer disruptive behavioral problems than the children of mothers who worked full-time before their child’s first birthday. This increased risk for behavioral difficulties was apparent at age three, and during first grade;
The pathway through which those protective effects of part-time work operated was through increases in the quality of the home environment and in the mother’s sensitivity.
With regard to cognitive difference in the middle and upper middle class sample, the study found that:
Children of mothers who worked full-time in the first year of that child’s life received modestly lower child cognitive scores relative to children of mothers who do not work on all eight cognitive outcomes examined. Associations at 4½ years and first grade were roughly similar in size to those at age three;
Mothers who worked full-time were more likely to have symptoms of depression;
Lower cognitive scores were not found in children of mothers who worked part-time during the first year of their child’s life.
While these findings point to the need to consider the impact of full-time maternal employment on children, particularly before they are three months old, some benefits of full-time work were found in the area of the mother’s ability to be sensitive to her child.
Mothers who worked full-time tended to use higher-quality substitute childcare and to show higher levels of sensitivity to her child. The researchers speculate that the higher levels of maternal sensitivity seen in employed mothers might have stemmed from their having greater financial security.
A recent meta-analysis of 69 research studies spanning five decades,[3] evaluating the impact of maternal employment, came to similar conclusions as those summarized above. Early maternal employment was found to be associated with beneficial child outcomes when families were at risk because of either financial challenges or as the result of being single-parent families. In those families, children of working mothers showed higher levels of achievement and lower levels of internalizing behaviors such as anxiety and depression.
These benefits are generally explained by a compensatory hypothesis that views work in those families as providing added financial security, lower levels of family stress and enhanced learning opportunities for children who would otherwise be home with a parent who is dealing with the ongoing stress of poverty and child-rearing challenges with little external support.
Employment was associated with negative child outcomes, however, when children were from intact, middle class families that were not at risk financially. In those families, early full-time employment (relative to mothers who were not working outside the home) was associated with later risk for child behavioral difficulties.
It should be noted, however, that this increased risk was not the case when mothers worked full-time when their children were toddlers or preschoolers. It appears that working full-time when the child is an infant – a critical period in terms of attachment and emotional and cognitive growth – is more likely to be associated with subsequent difficulties.
In summary, the consensus of the empirical studies on the impact of maternal employment finds that child adjustment is tied to a number of relevant variables. In the case of single-parent families, or families otherwise facing poverty, the impact of maternal employment appears to be mostly positive. In the case of middle class or wealthy families when the mother is working full-time, particularly in the early months of a child’s life, there appears to be a mildly increased risk for later behavioral problems and subtle cognitive impact relative to mothers who aren’t working or are working part-time.
It is very important to note, however, that these conclusions cannot necessarily be generalized to our community. There are numerous variables that may differ. For example, in the case of kollel families, where husbands learn full-time, the possibility of a more flexible schedule may result in fathers having the potential of greater involvement in their child’s life than in the case of a father who is employed full time in a traditional job. Similarly, grandparents might be more actively involved in caring for their grandchildren – a factor that is generally associated with improved childcare and improved outcomes.[4]
Awareness About Full-Time Versus Part-Time
Although based on relatively small levels of statistical significance, the findings of a number of well-executed studies suggest that when parents have a choice early in their child’s life (particularly during the first three months), they should consider working part-time.
During that critical period, when there is an option, the father should make an effort to be present in as active a parenting role as possible. Similarly, if at all feasible, grandparents should be more actively recruited to take care of their grandchildren when they are infants and both parents are working full-time. This has an added benefit since research has found that actively-involved grandparents serve a crucial role as a protective buffer against the potential harmful influences of parental stress.[5]
It is important to note that the potential dangers of full-time versus part-time work are only found in middle and upper middle class families. This recommendation is therefore most relevant for the segment of our community that falls in that category.
The finding that full-time mothers are at times at greater risk for depression should not be taken lightly. Researchers have found that infants are clearly impacted by their mother’s depression. Infants of parents with depression have been found to have difficulties with self-quieting, lower activity levels and decreased ability to attend. Relative to the children of non-depressed parents, their affect tends to be more negative, as typified by increased likelihood of expressing sadness and anger.
Equally important are the studies on the role of chronic stress in parenting.[6] Powerless parents are more likely to: be hyper-vigilant with their child; focus on the negative, while ignoring improved behavior; engage in coercive and punitive parenting; misread neutral child cues as malevolent, and derogate child in efforts at power repair.
This style of parenting frequently engenders high levels of resistance and at-risk behavior in the adolescent.
The implications of this body of research are that high stress levels, and particularly depression in stressed-out parents, can have long term implications on child development. The community needs to take this into account when prioritizing the need to provide young parents with support.
Quality of Substitute Childcare
Perhaps the most important lesson of the research is the importance of high-quality childcare for children. The key elements of what matters in substitute care are clearly demonstrated here.
Unfortunately, parents in our community are given very little in the way of evidence-based information on how to evaluate a quality program. The guidelines summarized in The Importance of Choosing the Correct Childcare should prove helpful in providing parents with a cognitive map of what to look for.
Data from a recent survey of parents of adolescents in the Orthodox Jewish community did not find any differences in adolescent outcomes for those mothers who reported being at-home mothers as compared with mothers who held other professions[7]. However, this was just a first glimpse of the subject.
Additional research needs to be done to determine how the various issues addressed in this paper might present differently in the Orthodox Jewish community. It is clear that we need to do a better job of guiding the next generation of parents on how to navigate the challenges of young parenthood.
Perhaps chosson and kallah (husband and wife) classes can include a segment on some of the guidelines discussed in this paper and rabbinic leaders can set a more mindful agenda about how to marshal the resources of our community to prioritize the importance of provision of high-quality childcare.
I can think of no priority as important as helping parents nourish their young child’s developing mind and soul by better equipping parents to manage the balance between work, parenting and marriage.