Advantages to having a working mom

Working moms often carry heavy loads of “mom guilt” when trying to balance work and childcare. Much of the guilt is rooted in worries that being away from their kids somehow harms them in the long run. Now, studies show that children of working moms –especially daughters of working moms– may actually benefit from this sort of role model.

The NYTimes reports:

In a new study of 50,000 adults in 25 countries, daughters of working mothers completed more years of education, were more likely to be employed and in supervisory roles and earned higher incomes. Having a working mother didn’t influence the careers of sons, which researchers said was unsurprising because men were generally expected to work — but sons of working mothers did spend more time on child care and housework.

Some of these effects were strong in the United States. Here, daughters of working mothers earned 23 percent more than daughters of stay-at-home mothers, after controlling for demographic factors, and sons spent seven and a half more hours a week on child care and 25 more minutes on housework.

altM is exploring this and other working mom matters in an ongoing series designed to provide advice and inspiration to the next generation of Muslim working moms. Read Part I of the series here.

Screen shot 2015-05-16 at 1.53.20 PM

1 Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *