THE OBSERVER: Findings overturn earlier research on working mothers / Gains of being in employment outweigh disadvantages
A ground-breaking study has found that mothers can go back to work months after the birth of their child without the baby's wellbeing suffering as a result.
By assessing the total impact on a child of the mother going out to work, including factors outside the home, American academics claim to have produced the first full picture of the effect of maternal employment on child cognitive and social development. Their conclusion will provide comfort for thousands of women who re-enter the employment market within a year of giving birth.
"The good news is that we can see no adverse effects," said American academic Jane Waldfogel, currently a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. "This research is unique because the question we have always asked in the past has been: 'If everything else remains constant, what is the effect of a mum going off to work?' But of course everything else doesn't stay constant, so it's an artificial way of looking at things.
"Family relationships, family income, the mental health of the mother all change when a mother is working and so what we did was to look at the full impact, taking all of these things into account."
In one of the most fraught areas of social policy and research, several studies over the past two decades have suggested that children do worse if their mothers go back to work in the first year of their lives.
Recent research by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University found that children of mothers who went back to work within the first three years were slower learners, and a 2008 Unicef study recommended that mothers stay at home for the first 12 months or "gamble" with their children's development. The Pew Research Centre in Washington found high levels of anxiety among women over the issue.
The new study, led by New York's Columbia University School of Social Work, was published last week by the Society for Research in Child Development. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care followed more than 1,000 children from 10 geographic areas aged up to seven, tracking their development and family characteristics.
It found that, while there are downsides to mothers taking work during their child's first year, there were also significant advantages – an increase in mothers' income and wellbeing, and a greater likelihood that children receive high-quality childcare. Taking everything into account, the researchers said, the net effect was neutral. >>> Tracy McVeigh and Anushka Asthana | Sunday, August 01, 2010
This study is suspect, to say the least. To start with, wasn’t it conducted by a working mother?
To say that “babies don’t suffer when mothers return to work” is about as stupid as it gets! Do these idiots think that babies bring themselves up?
This study flies in the face of hundreds, nay thousands, of years of experience with raising our offspring. It also seems to fly in the face of earlier, probably more believable, studies.
Fact is that children need mothers at home. We can see this when we look around us, and see how badly-raised so many children are today. It’s the mother who gives the child the informal education it needs. Formal education comes from the schools it attends; but informal education comes from the home. And if there is no-one in the home to supply it, the child has to do without it. This is exactly what is happening today, because so many mothers today are selfish and choose to work instead of raising their offspring.
Whilst material goods are nice to have, they are no substitute for the love, support and guidance a stay-at-home mother can give. The fact that many young people today have abysmal language skills, no dress sense or no culinary skills, no table manners, and further, they are often obese to the point of endangering their own health, all point to children who have lacked a good start in life. To say that babies don’t suffer when their mothers return prematurely to the workplace is about as stupid as saying that one’s partner, when gravely ill, will not suffer when one goes out to work and leaves him or her to the gods! – © Mark
