During the 1950s and 60s, when the number of women joining the workforce began to rise, there were claims by psychoanalyst, writers, and doctors that claimed these women were negatively effecting their child's development. Even as late as 2004 Suzanne Venker published a book illustrating the 7 reasons why having children and actively pursuing your career just don't mix. As I began to think about this assumption, I started to wonder what merit it actually held. Is there any negative effect to working while trying to raise a child? I did some research through academic resources and this is what I found...
A lot of the studies I looked at data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) which gathered information from children born in 1986 and their mothers. While some studies examined the data for a specific time period, others chose to follow a specific group of children throughout their developing years, sometimes up to adolescence and college years. Each study also varied in the factors they took into consideration, such as maternal income, child care options, the amount of quality parental time spent with the child, and education levels of both parents. They used these standards to test the PPVT (Peabody Picture and Vocabulary Test, a standard developmental testing system) of children whose mothers worked.
And now the results. Nearly all of the studies I read found a notable negative cognitive development during the first year of life for those children whose mothers worked. However, if the mother continued to work through the subsequent years of the child's life, the negative effects are offset by positive development through years 2-4. In the end, these children have no net effect on their cognitive ability merely because their mothers were working as they aged. Besides this neutral long-term effect on cognitive development, many studies cited positive social outcomes for children whose mothers worked during their childhood (I'll discuss some of these things in a later post).
Having shared the information that I've learned, I'm curious to know how these claims of negative effects on children remain a fear of working women today. Have these things crossed your mind when deciding whether to continue work after childbirth? I am just really interested in knowing to what extent any of these ideas remain today, and if so how mothers react to them.
If anyone has comments I'd love to hear them! That's all I've got for today but I'll write again tomorrow about some more things on my mind...
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I know this kind of research--in addition to my own gut feeling--convinced me it wouldn't be right to send our child to daycare. Children can be socialized, trained, acclimated to almost any circumstance, I think; they're survivors. But should we take advantage of that? Surely our choices affect our children. That's not to say there's one right way, nor that all children are alike. For some beginning daycare might be an easier transition than for others.
ReplyDeleteIn Norway, the point about children needing to get socialized into a public setting is often used to rationalize the significance of daycare. To build a shared platform of values and skills.
Psychologists who emphasize the importance of building attached relationships the first two-three years are not against daycares/pre-schools; they just recommend waiting till child is two-three. I'd like to have Lilly begin in the Montessori in town pre-school when she's three. That's in the morning, from 8:30-11:15. Quite different from a fulltime daycare situation.