GOOD FOR THE SOUL


Good for the soul A


longside balancing the demands of combining paid work with child- rearing, working parents also contend with concerns, often reflected in the


“


media, about the impact time spent working may have on their children. The prevailing belief has traditionally been that the more time parents – and particularly mothers – spend with their children, the better it will be for the child’s development. And, equally, that by working, parents may in some way be neglecting their children. But new research conducted by researchers at the ESRC International Centre for Life Course Studies in Society and Health challenges that view. The research looked at the impact of parental employment patterns over the first five years in relation to child behaviour at age five. The study of nearly 10,000 children in the Millennium Cohort Study – a multidisciplinary research project


We did not see any evidence for


a longer-term detrimental influence on child behaviour where mothers were working


following the lives of around 19,000 children born in the UK in 2000/1 – found no significant detrimental effects on a child’s social or emotional development if their mothers work during their early years. In fact the ideal scenario for children, both boys and girls, was shown to be where both parents lived in the home and both parents were in paid employment. The study also looked at the impact of maternal employment in the first year of life, as well as employment across the first five years. “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. But in this study we did not see any evidence for a longer- term detrimental influence on child behaviour where mothers were working when children were nine months old,” said Dr Anne McMunn, principal author of the study. Dr McMunn and her team also found that there were gender differences in the relationships between parental employment in the early years and child behaviour at age five. She 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


” 20 SOCIETY NOW AUTUMN 2011


Children’s social and emotional development is greater if their parents work – and the effect is stronger for girls than for boys


behavioural difficulties for boys of non-working mothers, but the same was not true for girls. The relationship between maternal employment and child behaviour was significantly stronger for girls than for boys.”


Also, whereas 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 authors do not know why the relationship


between maternal employment and child behaviour is stronger for girls than for boys. Dr McMunn says: “We need to do further work to understand why the daughters of working mothers are less likely to have behavioural difficulties at age five compared with daughters of stay-at-home mothers. We might hypothesise that it has something to do with gendered role-modelling, but we would be speculating. We haven’t been able to look at that.” 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. Previous studies have concentrated on cognitive or educational development in children and where socio-emotional development has been addressed, this has not been looked at within the context of the employment of both parents. A limitation of the study is that behaviour was


reported by parents, usually mothers, so there may be some bias if working mothers are more likely than stay-at-home mothers to under-report behaviour problems. A next step for the authors will be to use an identical measure of behaviour at age seven which has been asked of the parent and the teacher. n


i Dr Anne McMunn leads a research project within the ESRC


Email a.mcmunn@ucl.ac.uk Telephone 0207 6791730 Web www.ucl.ac.uk/icls ESRC Grant Number RES-596-28-0001


International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health (ICLS) investigating the influence of parental divisions in paid employment and childcare, as well as stability and change in family structure, on the emotional wellbeing of children in the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS)


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