As if working moms don’t have enough guilt, now a new study shows that if a child has a working mother people don’t like that child as much.
Give me a break (but here I am up at 5am, worrying about it before I head off to work in a few hours).
Researchers at Kansas State University studied the perceptions people have of women and their children based on the women’s work status. (The participants were unmarried college students—99 percent of them childless.) Among the findings:
1. People value mothers who stay at home.
2. People value mothers who compromise between working and staying at home—moms who work part-time, for example.
3. People devalue moms who work full-time outside the home.
4. People perceive the children of moms who work full-time to be “troubled” and their relationships to be “problematic.”
5. People think that moms who work full-time don’t have good relationships with their children.
A few thoughts come to mind:
- Many of the women surveyed still plan to work when they grow up and become moms.
- I was the child of a working mom and I had lots of friends.
- My sons have a working mom (me) and have lots of friends.
What do you think about this study?
Tags: working moms
Having personally lived the various types of momhood — not-working, working ft and pt, I think there are scenarios that make it more difficult for children to get together with other children. For example, when my children were in preschool and playdates were dates for the caretakers too, it was more fun to arrange palydates for my kids with their friends who had moms that I liked to be with as opposed to a nanny or au pair that I really didn’t have much in common with. When the kids were older and the palydates are more the drop off type, it didn’t really matter so much — unless the child was in daycare after school — so that it was more complicated to arrange a get together and maybe the playdates could never really be reciprocated at the other kids’ house. Also, the kids in daycare sometimes don’t participate in after school activities with the other kids, so they aren’t in the soccer group or the boyscout group. How to resolve this? A lot of preplanning by the parents and hopefully — a flexible workplace and schedule — good friends help too!