Going back to work before a child's first birthday 'does not harm your baby'
Katy Morton
Monday, July 25, 2011
Young children whose mothers return to work during their early years are less likely to have behavioural problems than if they stay at home as full-time mothers, according to a new study.
The research, which was based on data from the Millennium Cohort study of almost 19,000 children born in 2000 and 2001, revealed that there are no detrimental effects on children’s social or emotional development resulting from mothers going back to work during the first year after birth.
The findings challenge popular belief that young children suffer if their mothers go back to work and they are placed in nursery during their early years.
According to researchers from University College London, who led the study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the best arrangement for children is a home with two parents who are both in paid employment.
They also discovered that boys displayed more behavioural and emotional problems such as hyperactivity, aggression or tantrums, at the age of five if the mother was the sole earner.
The opposite was true for girls, who were more likely to have bad behaviour if they lived in traditional households where the father was the breadwinner.
Children in single-mother households and in two-parent households in which neither parent was working were also much more likely to display challenging behaviour at the age of five.
Dr Anne McMunn, senior research fellow at UCL, said, ‘Some studies have suggested that whether or not mothers work in the first year of a child’s life can be particularly important for later outcomes. In this study we did not see any evidence for a longer-term detrimental influence on child behaviour of mothers working during the child’s first year of life.
‘Mothers who work are more likely to have higher educational qualifications, live in a higher income household, and have a lower likelihood of being depressed than mothers who are not in paid work. These factors explain the higher levels of behavioural difficulties for boys of non-working mothers, but the same was not true for girls.’
The findings challenge popular belief that young children suffer if their mothers go back to work and they are placed in nursery during their early years.
According to researchers from University College London, who led the study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the best arrangement for children is a home with two parents who are both in paid employment.
They also discovered that boys displayed more behavioural and emotional problems such as hyperactivity, aggression or tantrums, at the age of five if the mother was the sole earner.
The opposite was true for girls, who were more likely to have bad behaviour if they lived in traditional households where the father was the breadwinner.
Children in single-mother households and in two-parent households in which neither parent was working were also much more likely to display challenging behaviour at the age of five.
Dr Anne McMunn, senior research fellow at UCL, said, ‘Some studies have suggested that whether or not mothers work in the first year of a child’s life can be particularly important for later outcomes. In this study we did not see any evidence for a longer-term detrimental influence on child behaviour of mothers working during the child’s first year of life.
‘Mothers who work are more likely to have higher educational qualifications, live in a higher income household, and have a lower likelihood of being depressed than mothers who are not in paid work. These factors explain the higher levels of behavioural difficulties for boys of non-working mothers, but the same was not true for girls.’
- The study, Maternal employment and child socio-emotional behaviour in the UK: longitudinal evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, is published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
