Children of Working Mothers vs. Stay At Home Mothers and Their Effects
Looking back at the past there have been women struggling for equal rights throughout the United States of America this includes the right to work or stay at home with their children. Ever since women started working the argument has been forthcoming over mothers who work and those who stay home with their children. One concern is what differences, if any, are there in children who are raised by stay-at-home moms and working moms. This includes effects on their children emotionally and academically. In today’s world women find themselves and their choices they make under much scrutiny. “With more women currently in the workforce than ever before, fewer children are being raised by stay-at home mothers and more are spending prolonged hours at childcare facilities” (Working Mothers: Cognitive and Behavioral Effects on Children, P75) This is a drastic change from women who were taught that their job in life was to raise their children at home.
Today these women are the minority and there has been research in which their children do not benefit from them being home. This is a great change from when people thought children of stay-at-home mothers thrived in that environment. “In the United States today, more than half of mothers with young children work, compared to 30 percent in the 1970’s” (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1999). This was research done in 1999 and in 2007 “Seventy-one percent of American mothers with children under the age of eighteen are in the labor force, meaning that they are either employed or are seeking employment (Health Researches and Services Administration, 2007). There are many reasons that women stay at work once their children are at...
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... personnel are able to stimulate a child with education tools such as toys and games, most parents have less experience with these types of tools and therefore the child will not benefit from the stay at home mother. Many studies have found that children of working mothers tend not to suffer any differently from antisocial behavior or stress-related problems than those of nonworking mothers. However they did find that children of working mothers held fewer stereotyped gender-role attitudes and felt their mothers were more competent.
One important decision that a women comes across during her lifetime is to become a working mother or a stay-at-home mother. In some situations stay-at-home mothers feel that being a mother was their most important part of their life while working mothers feel that their jobs are their main concern and the family was an added benefit.
Read, Katy. "Regrets of a stay-at-home mom." Real Families. Salon, 05 Jan 2011. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
Women have always been stereotyped as being the mother who stays home and has the responsibility of the household and maintaining the children. Presently mothers work outside the home, but they still have the responsibility of taking care of the household. “One study of 20 industrialized countries ...
For low-income families, particularly single mothers, preschool is a huge financial burden. Despite what parents want for their children, it isn’t always a practical option; sometimes, the cost of enrolling their children outweighs the money earned at a job (Mason 46). Soon, mothers are sending their kids to preschool so they can work to make money to pay for preschool. Furthermore, without an education, parents are confined to minimum wage jobs with no hope of advancement (49). Where’s the incentive to work? Robin Mason describes one single mother’s motivation. For her, employment is more than just money; rather, it’s also a means to boost her self-esteem, gain financial independence, and set a positive example for her children. She emphasizes her responsibility to her children to keep a roof over their head, be a good mother, and choose a quality daycare (47).
People are judged for being single parents, struggling to help their kids, but in reality being a single parent can be a good thing. Children that have both parents that work most of the time feel neglected and lonely which could lead to depression or acting out and rebellion later on in life. One of my family’s long times friends had this same exact problem. The family was in excellent financial shape because both parents worked. They had high level jobs working as doctors at the same hospital, but they never really made time for their children. The parents worked constantly away from home, and now the family is very dysfunctional. The children who are now adults never visit or talk to their parents. It shows that money is not everything, and that a stay at home mom is not just a suppressing stereotype it’s a beneficial tool to your children’s happiness and
In the United States, a third of mothers return to work within three months of childbirth compared to only five percent in other industrialized nations such as Germany, Sweden, and the UK (Berger, Hill, and Waldfogel 29). The rapid return of mothers to the workforce sparked interest in the effects the return has on the child’s behavior and health. The experiments measure the child’s health and development by the amount of time the mother breastfeeds, the immunizations the child receives, their score on a vocabulary test, behavioral problems, and the amount of doctor’s visits (Berger, Hill, and Waldfogel 36). Mothers who returned to work within twelve weeks were less likely to breastfeed their child, provide as many doctor’s visits and immunizations, and there were more noticeable behavioral problems at age four (Berger, Hill, and Waldfogel 39-42). The data is significantly lower for mother’s who work full time within twelve weeks after maternity leave (Berger, Hill, and Waldfogel 43). Therefore, it is proved that the duration of maternity leave is directly correlated with children development and
If a woman chooses motherhood, then she must lower her occupational goals and expectations. A woman with children will fall behind a childless woman in earnings, as the childless woman goes up the corporate ladder faster. Women will then risk career advancement by having children. Also, a working mother must not only juggle a family and a career, but she must find child-care as well. Child care costs are the major reason why most women end up just quitting their jobs. The majority of a working mother’s salary goes directly to the child care provider. If women were paid equal to men, more families may be able to pay for child care expenses and working mothers could continue to work and get ahead.
Stone (2007) conducted “extensive, in depth interviews with 54 women in a variety of professions-law, medicine, business, publishing, management consulting, nonprofit administration, and the like- living in major metropolitan areas across the country, half of them in their 30’s, half in their 40’s” (p. 15). Keep in mind these women Stone (2007) focuses on are “highly educated, affluent, mostly white, married women with children who had previously worked as professionals or managers whose husbands could support their being at home” (p. 14). Her findings revealed women are strongly influenced by two factors: workplace push and motherhood pull. “Many workplaces claimed to be “family friendly” and offered a variety of supports. But for women who could take advantage of them, flexible work schedules (which usually meant working part time) carried significant penalties” (Stone, 2007, p. 16). This quote represents the workplace push, where women are feeling encouraged to continue their rigorous careers with little to no family flexibility being offered from workplaces. The motherhood pull is a term used to describe the way mothers feel when they face the pressure of staying home to raise their children while still expected to maintain a steady job. “Motherhood influenced women 's decision to quit as they came to see the rhythms and
“The logic of intensive mothering, particularly as it applies to middle- and upper-middle-class mothers, therefore seems to be the greatest barrier to solving the problems detailed in this book….Nearly all mothers, for instance, feel they ought to be at home with their children, ought to want to be at home with their children, and ought to be their children’s primary parent.” Pg. 201 This quote from Untangling the Mother-Nanny Knot emphasizes on the fact that these working mothers need to let go a of that temperament that they must keep the nanny, their spouse and anyone else away from their child at any cost. Because they are not able to be there for their kids they can rest their mind knowing that the person with their child when they are not present is someone that will love them and care for them no matter what, and all the working mother must do is let go just a
To gain insight on the role of being a working mother I interviewed my mother, Jane Smith. Smith currently works forty, or more, hours a week as an office manager for a family business. Her job requires her to be at work from eight in the morning until five or six in the evening Monday through Friday. In addition to her role as an employee, she is currently married and is a mother of four daughters. These daughters are between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one; of these four daughters, three live at home with the family while the other is currently completing a study-abroad year in Germany. Smith has been a working mother for the past seven years, before which she worked as a stay-at-home parent. Her job requires her ...
About 75 percent of the 68 million women working in the United States will become pregnant at some point in their careers. Women with children are one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. labor force. In 1975, 47% of women with children under the age of 18 were employed; by 2008, this number grew to a notable 71% (Miner et al. 60. The nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Compared to other workers, mothers are often viewed as less competent, less productive, and less committed to their job, which is assumed to result in increased absenteeism and resignation (Byron and Roscigno 5).
There was a time when the woman 's expected role was based on staying at home. Now there are many more working mothers. This has caused changes in many attitudes. Those that
One of the issues that parents are dealing with is money. They believe that they can’t have a stay at home parent, because they wouldn’t be able to live off of one parent’s salary. However what many people don’t know that the value of a stay a home parent is a lot more than one would imagine. According to Barbara Sefton, “The stay-at-home mother is on duty an average of 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. She provides a service with a market value of approximately $36,000 annually.” This is more than some individual salaries. Most do not realize how much work a stay a stay at home mom does, from c...
Children who showed that they could help, cooperate with, and solve problems with their peers on their own (as opposed to those who did not) were the children who grew up to earn college degrees and go for higher job positions in life. Those who showed limited social skills grew up to have an increased chance of getting arrested, binge drinking, and not going to college. Children who have working mothers have a higher chance at success as well. Daughters of mothers who work are known to strive for supervisory roles, and earn up to twenty-three percent more than daughters of stay at home mothers (Gillet &
Men and women are working harder than ever to survive in today's tough economy. It's a big challenge for low and middle class families to survive. To meet growing demands, it's getting difficult for families to depend on one income. To contribute to family income, mothers are coming forward and joining the workforce. Working mothers are the one who takes care of the family and work outside the home. They may be a single mothers or married mothers. Working mothers usually work to support their family financially. Some of the mothers work, just because they are more career-oriented. Working mothers may work part time or full time. Women are now the primary or only income source for 40% of US households with kids, according to a new Pew survey (Wang, Parker and Taylor, ch. 1). They play a major role in raising their family and doing household chores. There are many reasons that why mothers should work.
Mothers have a very big responsibility. They have a lot of big decisions to make. Some decisions are harder and more important than others are. For instance, one of the big decisions a mother must make is whether to stay home with her children or to go back to work. In this paper, I will give reasons why a mother should consider staying home with her children during their early years of childhood.