So working mothers do NOT harm their children - stuff you (again) Oliver James

[LadyBiscuit]

A very comprehensive study (most comprehensive ever apparently) has been done which shows that mothers who work don't disadvantage their children. It does show that working under 30 hours a week is better for babies but that working per se can actually give children some advantages.

Hurrah

Articles: Torygraph
Grauniad
Washington Post

LOL at Ziptoes Angel child/ Devil child switch. Just had a day like that.

I'd be interested to know if in the study they controlled for the organisational skills required to work while bringing up children. My sister completed a nursing degree which she started when her son was 2. She now has a full-time job which is shift work, including nights. Her BF has an even more irregular job involving 18 hour days and longer away from home. Just listening to her describing the juggling act required makes me dizzy.

I can't help feeling that mums like her are probably going to do a better parenting job in general than mums like me who struggle even to get to toddler group on time.

"No-one will care for your child like you do" Thank Christ that when I was in the depths of despair with PND and occasionally thinking I would like to throw my baby out of the window as he screamed 20 hours a day, that there was a wonderful, compassionate, patient woman who met his needs.

Once again there seems to be a lack of understanding that not all childcare professionals are seventeen year old girls who are bored senseless by jiggling babies. There are some gems - both of mine have been loved and cared for by wonderful women and I (in my own situation) can safely say that my children benefitted by being away from me for a little bit when they were babies.

The thing is about this 'working mothers' malarkey: if you look across the world, most mothers work. Being a SAHM is an incredibly luxurious luxury that only the wealthy can enjoy.

I've just started reading the Continuum Concept, in which she essentially agrees with this statement - she says that babies who are carried a lot cry much less and require less one-on-one attention because they just enjoy experiencing their mothers' normal day-to-day activities. This then apparently has a subsequent effect on how they develop even after they're too big to be carried all the time. She also says that this frees up women to be involved in work of all kinds. Certainly IME of almost constant sling-wearing, my DD hardly cries (it's also brilliant for her reflux as she's upright all the time). I even managed to attend a half-day a training course with her last week (aged 11 weeks) with only slight interruptions.

Since this thread is a jab at OJ, I should say that I do agree with him on many things, but on this issue he needs to take a broader worldview.

Obviously for the continuum thing to work properly you need to restructure society - though, to be fair, this is what OJ proposes in his 'Affluenza' book, IIRC. But my point is that it's not as straightforward as working vs sah mums.

Boys, I think you're right.

Yet...do we want our children to be interacted with, focused on, entertained, etc, all the time?

Seems rather freakish and undesirable frankly. Life involves shopping, cleaning, cooking, etc. We can interact positively with children while doing these things surely? Slightly bored children learn to invent things and imagine while their carers are otherwise engaged.

This is not to say that women should not work, by the way. Just to say that being a SAHM with housework demands doesn't make us shit childcarers either.

slouching - re houseworky stuff, you reminded me of this evening - came home with DS (from nursery), who said to DH (doing gardening): 'Can I play with you, Daddy?'. DH said 'Okay, when I've finished here.' So I suggested that he involve DS in what he was doing.

They had a great time .

Obviously we are the perfect family and I am the perfect mother .

I'm sure there will be a million times when that won't work, but it was so sweet to see that a spoilt Western 3 yo (I mean 'spoilt' as relative to most children around the world) could still enjoy helping his father with domestic labour.

I've just read through all three news reports - Guardian, Telegraph, and Washington Times. The Guardian and the Telegraph both say similar things, and slightly vague. The Washington Times gets into the nitty-gritty and includes this fascinating paragraph:

"Infants raised by mothers with full-time jobs scored somewhat lower on cognitive tests, deficits that persisted into first grade. But that negative effect was offset by several positives. Working mothers had higher income. They were more likely to seek high-quality child care. And they displayed greater "maternal sensitivity," or responsiveness toward their children, than stay-at-home mothers. Those positives canceled out the negatives."

The findings aren't "in stark contrast" to previous research, as the Telegraph claims. It's just spun differently. Amusing that the English papers then spin the spin differently than the American one. Especially as here we have fabulous maternity leave and in the States they have rubbish maternity leave.

They never study the impact of men working. Ever thus. Sexist ot the core . Woman as whipping boy, Man as saint.

Working fathers damage children. Men told to stay home or your child's IQ will be less etc etc Will we ever reach even slightly towards a point when men are regarded as much as parents as women?

SOme parents are useless of either sex and whether they work or not. They can't relate properly to children and don't enjoy them. Some who work and some who don't are pretty good. I;m not sure the work itself has the effects . I have loved having 5 children over 25 years (and even now I'm away on holiday with them all abroad and that's lovely) and I always worked full time and I am sure they have done better for that rather than worse. Of course they are old enough to ask and I'm sure they've been interviewed before now about it.

I found a recording of myself recently on You and YOurs about 18 years ago about working mothers or may be woman's hour. And people are still fussing about the issue now.

There are 100 good reasons to work and that being a housewife damages your children and I'm sure I've put them on mumsnet before but people secure in their choices will plough their own furrow. Children are huge fun. We are lucky to have them whether we work or don't.

Yes, Ridgeway.

This 'cancelling out' concept bugs me. Surely if something is negative, it remains negative, even if positives are present?

Frankly, I don't see higher income, in and of itself, as a positive. Depends on how income is used. What if a poorer family is perfectly content with simple living? What if a richer family is disconnected in a house full of gadgets and toys?

Also, how are they defining high quality childcare?

Work, don't work, whatever. Honestly, why do they keep making this into a competition?

And yes, Speedy. Sometimes it's fun for everyone when they help. Sometimes I shoo them away so I can do something properly at speed, after which I can give them my full attention.

Very good post Xenia.

slouching - yes, I know what you mean about the speed thing! (Obviously. Arriba!)

@slouchingtowardswaitrose: it seems that we are obsessed by the idea that there only ever can be one way of doing something right.(judging by this thread anyway)

Plenty of people have suggested that both options are equally valid, that children benefit and probably are disadvantaged by both. Yet still a side avenue on this thread are people trying to insist that one way is right and the other wrong.

What is right for one person, might not necessarily be right for all. Parenting is not a competition.

what I'm interested in is why being a SAHM is still so undervalued by our society? I have been both a working mum and a SAHM and I have no bias either way. I think that each family has to do what is best for them and I hate it that we women spend so much time beating each other up about it when we should stick together.

However I find that I have to justify myself all the time for being a SAHM as if i'm wasting away my days with my feet up at home, when the reality is I'm working b** hard (and enjoying it).
My work was also b** hard but the difference was I got paid well and had holidays, and (some) evenings and weekends off. Yet when I did that paid job people thought it was impressive. As a SaHM they are not impressed at all. They just say "when are you going back to work?" "Are you still not working?"

I'm lucky that I can be a SAHM for a while, and I totally understand that not everyone has that opportunity, or wants to do it. I fully intend to go back to work when they are a bit bigger, but at the moment, (after a few years of driving myself into the ground trying to hold down a difficult job in a male dominated anti women environment, and be a half decent parent) I'm enjoying taking some time to hang out with the kids, going to the park, making cakes, and all the other fun things which all too soon they will have no interest in doing any more. And then I will go back to the office. But why does society think that's such a worthless thing to be doing?

I have been a SAHM to all my children and I will be until my youngest is settled in school. Then i will get about 5 years work in until my DS leaves school and needs full time care at home. Since he was diagnosed with Autism work hasn't been an option for me as he has needed a lot of care and stability, plus there were no local childcare facilities that would take him.
That aside I have thouroughly enjoyed raising my kids at home and personally feel it is the best way. I know for some it isn't possible, mortgages etc, but for us in low rent and with no big purchases and holidays to fork out for I didn't need to work.
Some of you have said they couldn't possibly stay at home playing games with their toddlers or painting all day but that is just part of the fun of being with your kids. Yes endless CBeebies is boring which is why we don't watch it unless I have loads of housework and dc3 needs to be occupied for half an hour.
Those first few years are so important in their development I don't feel I could let someone else make such big decisions.

I agree with Singing Mummy why do people think a SAHm is not a worthwhile thing to do?

I think most people think all these SAHM vs working mum threads are a bit silly - it's nobody else's place to judge what is or isn't the best for somebody else's family. I find it a bit annoying that almost everybody says 'well I did this and it worked so that's the right way', or 'I did this and it was awful so that's the wrong way'. All families are different, and the experience of one or two families we all have is not enough to make a judgment. So long as you give your children a safe environment in which to grow up and that they know they are loved, you've done your job. The very fact that it is so difficult to tell, on the face of it, what may or may not be best, is an indicator that the question has no straightforward answers

Mankind has survived because we have pecking orders and survival of the fittest and whoever has the most beads, salt, gold, money is the "best", We're a competitive species. Stay at home monthers are some of the worst of the bunch because they have only their domestic sphere about which to show off but I certainly don't agree with the view that any person is such a God that their deisions are always right. I do feel stay at home parents don't have enough humility. It's good for children to see 2 different parents and other adults taking different views on things. It gives them better perspective and thinking it's a great thing you have taken all the decisions is not in my view anything of which to be pleased. What about the child;s father - is it a worse parent because it hasn't taken the decisionsabout whegther tp change nappy A on the baby or nappy B on the toddler at 10am?

Most people who work full time and are parents know as much as stay at home parents that how we care for those we love is very important but it's neve been a proper job and will never be valued as such. It's one of the least well paid jobs on the planet along with domestic cleaning. Everyone always who ever has had the chance has outsrouced it - the Romans had slaves, the Indians in Africa have African servants, The Victorians had a huge number of servants and gradnparents and sibilngs are roped in to spare parents from the tedium of the dull domestic stuff. Most of us love it for a shortish period but then are happy to leave the baby happily with its other parent, relative, nanny or whatever and go about our normal work. That has always been the way and it will always remain the best way.

But I repeat what I said above - that you can be a good parent in either sphere and I'd much rather see more on how much fun being a working mother or father (or housewife) is - if you don't like life then change it. Too many articles where people whinge.

I don't know about society, but I do know that I have only twice been made to feel really bad about my work choices (I work 2 days a week, and went back to work when my babies were about 15 months).

Both times were by full-time SAHMs. One took me aside at a party and ranted at me for 30 mins about how working parents damaged their babies and how she'd given up everything for her children and anything else was selfish. Another lectured me when we were moving house about how we should find a council house so I could stay home and not have a mortgage.

No working mother, part or full time, has ever commented on my choices. Nor has any father.

Debs 75 - you assume that you will have a job to walk back into once your youngest is settled at school. That may be true in your instance, but for some of us, en 2-3 years out of our jobs means no chance of ever getting back in again. I'm currently an FT WOHM, but am trying to get things into a situation where by the time DD is older (4-5 years time), neither myself nor DH will need to work out of the home. The only way we can achieve this was for me to go back to work when DD was 1 - the longest a break would have been tolerated. From personal experience, if I have a choice between being at home when DD is very small or being at home when she's older, I go for older.

I see it so often with my friends - people talking about getting jobs once youngest is at school, only to find when they try that they are seen as having no value in the workplace, as out of touch, and as inflexible workers due to childcare commitments, so unemployable.

Fix that issue, and you may get more women staying at home for longer. Still not all though - wprk is important to many.

I repeat myself The study isn't about how important or undervalued SAHMs are. It isn't about SAHMs. It's about the way that WOHMs don't damage their DC. Which is an reassuring message to hear if you are a WOHM. It isn't an SAHM/WOHM issue.

The whole SAHM/working mother debate is a white elephant, not least because women have worked forever.

From looking at all my friends with small children and their different decisions/combinations of working FT/working PT/SAHM with childcare/SAHM without childcare/husbands who share childcare/husbands who barely see their children it seems that the happiest, most well balanced children are the ones who have the most sensible and caring and boundaried parents. The children who are most unhappy and with behavioural problems are those who mothers (and it is generallly mothers) are too enmeshed with them or are clearly neglectful. These things have nothing to do with whether the mother is working or not.

A good mother or father is a good mother or father full stop and will use his or her time with her children in a positive way that makes the children feel confident and secure and will make sure they have good childcare for when they aren't there.

My personal experience of my mother as a SAHM was not a good one sadly. There is no doubt that she lived her life through me, still does, and tries to send me on endless guilt trips about how much she gave up for me, how much she has supported me, how much I owe her. I am dealing with this everyday and it is a nightmare and has caused me serious problems. I wish that she had worked and I had had other relationships with other adults where I could have maybe had more autonomy. I guess though that she was just not a good mother ultimately and probably wouldn't have been in any circumstance.

I do find it interesting though that from the outside she looked like (and still does to some extent) the perfect SAHM mother and wife....

I think children benefit from having happy parents, I would love to be a SAHM but can't afford it and in reality would probably get bored very quickly if I didn't have some adult conversations.
This survey has probably come out as less people can afford to stay at home as long as they would like with their kids.
It is different for different people some chav on benefits would be better going to work and leaving their child with a professional carer some of the time ;) a responsible mum who enjoys work may be able to provide her child a more rounded lifestyle and have better quality time if she works but a mum who feels really guilty about going to work, misses her child and is stressed out with money and long hours would benefit from some support as her child will pick up on this.
As people have mentioned more Dads are staying at home and generalised comments can't be applied to everyone. Although this public statement is a nice 2 fingers up at the mums who don't work and give me funny looks for rushing off to work after dropping my DS off at nursery.

takethatlady has pretty much covered it...

Personally, I can see potential benefits to children from both a SAHM and WOHM situation: I have no axe to grind relating to the positives/negatives of either choice because it's not a choice for me, I have to go back to work part-time or we would be financially crippled (and have to pay back a very handsome enhanced maternity package).

However, aside from the 'who is wrong?'/'who is right?' debate about women's work in and/or out of the home, I do wonder if constant adult-child stimulation and attention has the potential to create children who learn too late that the world doesn't revolve around them.

Whether a child is at home with his or her mum, or in childcare of some sort, I think it's healthy for them to be bored and sometimes benignly neglected. Children need to find their own solutions to the problems they face and not simply ours: at the moment, my 8 month old son has a habit of sitting on the floor and grunting at me in frustration that he can't crawl yet. If I make eye contact, he starts crying: he can't understand why I won't do it for him, for of course, at his age, he is the centre of the world as far as he knows. If I am "busy" but watching out of the corner of my eye, I can see him try out different movements.

This extends throughout childhood. As a speech and language therapist, I've come across a number of children with no particular developmental difficulty who have been late to talk as their parents have anticipated their every need.

The concept of a SAHM has been translated by the media (and many parents I know) into: I sit with my child and do crafts/play games/talk to them about everything/fill my day with relevant developmental "experiences"/respond to their every motion and sound e.g. a helicopter parent vs the WOHM who works full-time and struggles to find five minutes quality time with their child at the end of the day. I don't suppose it's like this for most women in reality but the stereotype seems to serve to provoke guilt in most women: what SAHM has the energy and time for that? what WOHM doesn't imagine a SAHM involves long days of sunshine feeding the ducks and baking (whether or not they would want to do these things, tapping into another level of guilt about "maternal instinct" relating to being your child's playmate).

As others have said, men are in the sidelines in this picture: they go to work, that and nothing more. Women make the childcare choices. We can choose to tut at the inequity of this and lament the failure of feminism, yet we do it to ourselves, we do, and that's why it really hurts. Women telling women that their choices are wrong, over and over and over... and buying into the guilt trap about WOHMs and SAHMs as though being one or the other (or a mixture of both) was a monolithic, defined entity.

Bossofme I am under no illusions that I can magically find a job when my youngest is at school. I know from friends experience that it is difficult to get back or even start a working life. In my life tho it has not been possible to work with a SN son, I would of liked to work but having to be around for dr appts, sick days and every other thing a child entails it was better for us if I stayed at home. I thoroughly enjoy it and wouldn't change my experience for the world but I would like to contribute something to society by working if and when I can.

Going back to the OP I am hoping that this study does not affect the choices working mothers have. Our coalition govt are keen to grab as much money back as possible so this could be a great excuse for them to cut maternity leave. If you have stayed at home for a year on mat leave then you feel ready to return to work and let a nursery, childminder help raise your child then that is great but how many of you would feel bad or guilty at being forced to do that 6 months earlier?

Good post arses!

Can someone link us through to the actual study these reports are about?

Wouldn't want to comment too enthusiastically before reading it.

[lazy cow emoticon]

My children BEG me not to go out to work. I just point out that there won't be any play stations for Christmas if I stay at home.

I like to think that the emotional disadvantages of being abandoned by their mother on a regular basis will be offset by their higher self-esteem as individuals who have all the latest electronic doo-das, plus their superior hand-eye co-ordination from hours spent twiddling their joy-sticks.