Over the past 40 years one of the most dramatic changes in society has been the increase in working mothers. When I was a child in the late 1950s and early 1960s a working mother was the exception, not the rule. When I went over to a friend’s house after school the mom was there and vice versa – my mother was at home, too.
Today for a variety of reasons, including the high cost of living, many women work. For many women and couples they wrestle with this is very difficult decision – stay home with my children or go back to work. They wonder – Are we neglecting our child if we leave her/him in the care of another?
Kids Benefit from Working Moms. I think there might be good news for people choosing to work. In an article from Harvard Business Review called Kids Benefit from Having a Working Mom author Carmen Nobel introduces us to some terrific research by Kathleen McGinn and Mayra Castro, which uncovers a positive correlation between working mothers and the future success of their daughters in the workplace and their sons on the home-front.
According to Kathleen McGinn, “There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother.”
McGinn’s research used information from a global survey by the International Social Survey Programme that gathered worldwide data from 2002 to 2012. It included 13,326 women and 18,152 men from 24 developed countries. And they carefully categorized the data based on regional attitudes toward gender equality, which I found interesting. The article describes in greater detail how the study controlled for various factors.
Here are a three of the findings I found interesting.
- Not only are adult daughters of working mothers more likely to work themselves, they have higher income than working daughters of mothers who stayed home full-time.
- Adult daughters of working mothers are more likely to hold supervisory jobs.
- Married sons of working mothers are much more likely to spend more time helping at home than sons of stay at home mothers.
I found this last factor interesting because I fall into this group. As I noted at the top, I was raised in a typical family of the 1950s and 1960s and my natural behavior, even if it is subliminal, is to let Patti do most of the inside chores. Yes, I help, but it is not a natural behavior, I have to think about it. Patti did work when our children were younger and throughout their formative years. Our son, Scott, is much better at helping at home and carrying 50 percent of the workload there than I was.
While I know this is just anecdotal, yesterday I was with a group of our successful managers (most of whom were women I should note) and almost all had mothers who worked themselves.
If you are interested in how the article is being received, read the posted comments at the end. Clearly stay-at-home mothers are defensively negative about the findings, which is quite interesting. But many of the comments give additional insights into the success of children of working mothers.
At the end of the article the writer includes this quote from McGinn, “There’s a lot of parental guilt about having both parents working outside the home. But what this research says to us is that not only are you helping your family economically—and helping yourself professionally and emotionally if you have a job you love—but you’re also helping your kids. So I think for both mothers and for fathers, working both inside and outside the home gives your kids a signal that contributions at home and at work are equally valuable, for both men and women. In short, it’s good for your kids.”
Ultimately, I think, if you love your children and spend personal time with them, they will blossom and be successful people when they grow-up.
