The days when mothers stayed at home cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children and performing all of the household chores are long gone. Mothers are working outside of the home now more than ever before. Deciding whether or not to return to work after delivering a baby is still one of the hardest struggles that a mother has to face.
Statistics show that mothers with younger children are less likely to be in the labor force than mothers with older children. In 2012, the labor force participation rate of mothers with children under 6 years old was 64.8 percent while the workforce participation rate for mothers with children between 6 and 17 years old was 5.1 percent (“Employment”). No differences exited between the participation rates of married and single mothers.
It has been said that a large number of women began to join the workforce and work outside of the household for their first time during World War II. While the soldiers were away defending the country, women needed to work to keep the country running in patriotic support of the war (Goldin and Olivetti). Since that time, women with families have continued to join the workforce without being frowned upon or considered to be radicals.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate, or the percent of the population working or looking for work, for all mothers with children under age 18 was 70.5 percent in 2012 (“Employment”). The rates should working mothers who actually had a spouse present were less than the rates of working mothers who were either widowed, divorced, or otherwise unmarried.
Some mothers return to work out of necessity. They have to work in order to financially support their families and help ensure that the famil...
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There are several mothers that are extremely successful such as Michelle Obama, Angelina Jolie and Maria Shriver. There are various advantages and disadvantages about working as a mother but which is better for the child's sake. This is difficult to determine.
Works Cited
Baum II, Charles L. Does Early Maternal Employment Harm Child Development? Tennessee: Middle Tennessee State University, Print.
Bernal, Raquel. "The Effect of Material Employment and Child Care on Children's Cognitive Development." In ternational Economic Review 49.4 (2008): n. pag. Print.
"Employment Characteristics of Families 2012." Bureau of Labor Statistics [U.S. Department of Labor] 26 April 2013: Print.
Goldin, Claudia, and Claudia Olivetti. "Shocking Labor Sup ply: A Reassessment of the Role of World War II on Wo men’s Labor Supply." American Economic Review: 257-62. Web.
The 1940s provided a drastic change in women’s employment rates and society’s view of women. With the end of the Depression and the United States’ entrance into World War II, the number of jobs available to women significantly increased. As men were being drafted into military service, the United States needed more workers to fill the jobs left vacant by men going to war. Women entered the workforce during World War II due to the economic need of the country. The use of Patriotic rhetoric in government propaganda initiated and encouraged women to change their role in society.
When all the men were across the ocean fighting a war for world peace, the home front soon found itself in a shortage for workers. Before the war, women mostly depended on men for financial support. But with so many gone to battle, women had to go to work to support themselves. With patriotic spirit, women one by one stepped up to do a man's work with little pay, respect or recognition. Labor shortages provided a variety of jobs for women, who became street car conductors, railroad workers, and shipbuilders. Some women took over the farms, monitoring the crops and harvesting and taking care of livestock. Women, who had young children with nobody to help them, did what they could do to help too. They made such things for the soldiers overseas, such as flannel shirts, socks and scarves.
During America’s involvement in World War Two, which spanned from 1941 until 1945, many men went off to fight overseas. This left a gap in the defense plants that built wartime materials, such as tanks and other machines for battle. As a result, women began to enter the workforce at astonishing rates, filling the roles left behind by the men. As stated by Cynthia Harrison, “By March of [1944], almost one-third of all women over the age of fourteen were in the labor force, and the numbers of women in industry had increased almost 500 percent. For the first time in history, women were in the exact same place as their male counterparts had been, even working the same jobs. The women were not dependent upon men, as the men were overseas and far from influence upon their wives.
In older times, many women had to leave their job due to newly motherhood and having to care for their child, but that number has dropped significantly.
Paid maternity leave can increase female labor force participation by making it easier for women
It has been found that the Earned Income Tax Credit increases the labor supply of single mothers as it provides a higher degree of income which compensates for the losses associated with child care and other factors. The labor supply of single-mothers is a difficult thing to put into perspective, as the decisions that go into a single-mother’s decision on how m...
However, the demands put on parents by the workplace can make spending time with the family a difficult task. The technological revolution has made it possible for businesses to assign work after hours which could cut into family time. Balancing family and work is even more difficult for new parents. They must learn what it means to be a parent, maintain a healthy marriage, and continue to provide for their family. According to Kunz (2013), parents experience stress and exhaustion following the birth of their child. Kunz also mentions the responsibility parents have to aid in every aspect of their child’s development. Parents are being pulled in one direction by their infant and another by their boss. This strain can be especially difficult for new mothers who want to breastfeed. Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for 6 months (who.int, 2017). If a woman returns to work quickly after giving birth, she will have difficulty breastfeeding and is at a greater risk for postpartum depression (cbsnews.com, 2017). The need for time to bond with an infant, encourage healthy development of the child, and to rest from child birth are all reasons why parental leave should be offered to all people. The need for time off after the birth of a child is not exclusive to one group. Parental leave should be offered to all types of families and business’ and the government should offer adequate assistance
“Four in 10 American households with children under age 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census and polling data released Wednesday. This share, the highest on record, has quadrupled since 1960.”
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
Men are likely to get hired if they have children and tend to get paid more. In contrast, women are less likely to get hired even though they have more quality and children. This is when the gender inequality come in. In this article “The Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus” the author presented the role and the impact between the roles of the genders. Michelle Budig, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst put it this way, “The inequality of gender role reveals when men get paid high for having children and women pay the biggest price for the low income” (Qtd. in Miller). According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, 71 percent of mothers are with their children working at home and 40 percent are the primary bread winner (Pew Research Center). In this perspective of women working at home and men working in career shift the qualification between them. The inequality is that employer sees the father as a commit worker and a mother as a distraction in workplaces because women have extra hours of work to do at home with their children and house chores. Claire Miller states that, “one of the worst career moves a women can make is to have children” (Claire Miller). As for the women in the United States, there are a lot of negative impact for them if they decide to have babies. The quality for them shrink to the corner while men hold the advantage of having
“Ninety percent of single-parent families are headed by females. Not surprisingly, single mothers with dependent children have the highest rate of poverty across all demographic groups” (Olson & Banyard, 1993, p. 50-56). “Approximately 60 percent of U.S. children living in mother-only families are impoverished, compared with only 11 percent of two-parent families. The rate of poverty is even higher in African-American single-parent families, in which two out of every three children are poor” (Kirby, n.d., Single-parent Families in Poverty section, para.2).
“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
Change in work patterns more mothers are part of the working force making households where both parents are working
A single parent household has been stereotyped as a place where women are the main contributors. They are also women who don 't have or hold a job and rely on the government to provide for themselves and for their kid(s). However, from personal experience it can be the opposite in some states. In fact, "single mothers are more than twice as likely to be unemployed (12 percent) compared with mothers in married-couple families (5 percent); and the majority of employed single mothers—59 percent—are working in retail, service, and administrative jobs that typically provide low wages and few benefits" (Mather,
Working mothers try their best to balance between families and work. Mothers who work outside are happier, have a better level of health and energy, as compared to stay at home mothers. Working mothers are dynamic multi-taskers and great managers. The most important reason that mothers should work is money. Whether a mother is single or married, in order to survive in a fluctuating economy the family needs money. Mothers can never see their family depriving of basic needs. Another reason could be if a mother is earning more than a father then it's wise to continue the job. Also when both mother and father work, two incomes are coming into the house. Because of that family can enjoy the luxuries, go on vacations and fulfill children demands. A working mother is financially independent. If a husband dies or divorces her, she will have no...