©iStockphotoHere's some heartening news for working mothers worried about the future of their children.
Women whose moms worked outside the home are more likely to have jobs themselves, are more likely to hold supervisory responsibility at those jobs, and earn higher wages than women whose mothers stayed home full time, according to a new study. Men raised by working mothers are more likely to contribute to household chores and spend more time caring for family members.
“There are very few things … that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother”
The findings are stark, and they hold true across 24 countries.
"There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother," says Kathleen L. McGinn, the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, who conducted the study with Mayra Ruiz Castro, a researcher at HBS, and Elizabeth Long Lingo, an embedded practitioner at Mt. Holyoke College.
McGinn's previous research, with Katherine Milkman of Wharton Business School, found that female attorneys are more likely to rise through the ranks of a firm (and less likely to leave) when they have female partners as mentors and role models. McGinn, Castro, and Lingo wondered how nontraditional role models influenced gender inequality at home—both in terms of professional opportunities and household responsibilities.
"The link between home and the workplace is becoming more and more critical as we have two-wage-earning families," McGinn says. "We tend to talk more about inequality in the workplace, and yet the inequality in the home is really stuck."
In developed countries, employed women in two-parent households report that they spend an average of 17.7 hours per week caring for family members, while employed men report devoting about 9, according to the researchers. At the same time, women report spending an average of 17.8 hours per week on housework, while men report an average of 8.8 hours.
The Global Effect Of Working Moms
To gauge the global effect of working moms, the researchers dug into data from the International Social Survey Programme, a global consortium of organizations that conduct social science research, and studied 2002 and 2012 responses to a survey called "Family and Changing Gender Roles." They supplemented these data with data on employment opportunities and gender inequality across countries.
The survey included several pages of questions related to gender attitudes, home life, and career path. The researchers were primarily interested in the answer to one key question: Did your mother ever work for pay, after you were born and before you were 14?
"It didn't matter to us if she worked for a few months one year, or worked 60 hours per week during your whole childhood," McGinn says. "We weren't interested in whether your mom was an intense professional, but rather whether you had a role model who showed you that women work both inside and outside the home. We wanted to see how that played out."
The research team aimed to find out whether growing up with a working mom influenced several factors, including employment, supervisory responsibility, earnings, allocation of household work, and care for family members.
Survey respondents included 13,326 women and 18,152 men from 24 developed nations. The researchers based their analyses on responses collected from the 2002 and 2012 surveys. They categorized the countries by their attitudes toward gender equality, both at home and in the workplace.
"Liberalizing Egalitarians" were those countries where respondents' attitudes toward gender were already egalitarian in 2002 and became even more so over the following decade (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, and Slovenia). "Stagnating Moderates" leaned slightly egalitarian in 2002 and remained stagnant in the following decade (Israel, the United States, Great Britain, Spain, Australia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, and Taiwan). "Stagnating Conservatives" started off with conservative attitudes toward gender roles in 2002 and stayed that way (Chile, Latvia, Mexico, Philippines, and Russia.)
Men tended to report more conservative gender attitudes than women-with the exception of Mexico, where women were more conservative than men, McGinn says.
The researchers controlled for factors including: age; marital status; religion; years of education; urban versus rural dwelling; average Female Labor Force participation in the respondent's home country during the years the respondent was 0 to 14 years old; Economic Freedom Index in the respondent's home country during the survey year; Gender Inequality Index in the respondent's home country; and Gross Domestic Product in the respondent's home country. Stripping those things away, they focused on the effects of being raised by a mother who worked outside the home. "The direct effects are significant across the board," McGinn says.
The data showed that men were just as likely to hold supervisory jobs whether or not their moms had worked outside the home. But women raised by working mothers were more likely to supervise others at work.
Effects On Income
The data also showed that while being raised by a working mother had no apparent effect on men's relative wages, women raised by working moms had higher incomes than women whose moms stayed at home full time. The one exception: women who reported conservative attitudes toward gender equality. "It's only for earnings that having conservative gender attitudes reduces the effect of a working mom," McGinn says. "For all of the rest of them, having had a non-traditional role model at home has a direct effect on the outcomes, regardless of attitudes."
As for men whose moms ever worked outside the home, they were more likely to contribute to household chores and spent more time caring for family members. "Growing up, what was being modeled for sons was the idea that you share the work at home," McGinn says.
Women spent about the same amount of time caring for family members, regardless of whether their moms worked outside the home. However, "When we segmented just for people who have children at home, we found that women who are raised by a working mom actually spend more time with their kids," McGinn says, adding that this includes women who grew up to become working moms themselves.
"There's a lot of parental guilt about having both parents working outside the home," McGinn says. "But what this research says to us is that not only are you helping your family economically—and helping yourself professionally and emotionally if you have a job you love—but you're also helping your kids. So I think for both mothers and for fathers, working both inside and outside the home gives your kids a signal that contributions at home and at work are equally valuable, for both men and women. In short, it's good for your kids."
men, children are equally important - the balance is personal but must be established. My opinion only and thanks for the research.
The range of hours from minimal to maximal work outside the home appears to have a similar effect with regard to the work habits and attitudes of a woman's offspring.
That said, new questions arise.
*What proportion of women, and eventually their daughters, opt for a balance of work both inside and outside the home, that is, giving generally equal and balanced hours to child time and domestica work alongside (paid or volunteer) work outside the home?
*What is the difference between the long term life benefits from this model of balanced commitments and the models of extremes of either full time child time and domestica work or full time intense work outside the home?
Thanks for giving lots to consider!
S. In the study. Perhaps the researchers took race into account but I found nothing in this summary indicating that
Blacks are at the bottom of most measures of employment and income even though it's likely the mother works outside the home. Racial bias is such a huge factor that I believe race be part of any analysis of outcomes and the presence of a role model.
I became a single parent when my children (3 sons) were very young, so the advice to go to school and have a career worked out for me.
One element I find concerning as I read this--and the pieces in other outlets that refer to this research--is that "benefit to kids" and "gender equality" and other indicators of success are measured in terms of income equality, holding supervisory responsibilities, and contribution to household chores. As a father of three, I am looking at a constellation of success metrics that includes those indicators--but many many more.
I'm skeptical that having a working mom is going to impact all the metrics that matter most...and for me, though I care substantially about income equality and household-chore contribution, those are not in my top 10 measures that matter. I've yet to see the full study and digest all its findings--I look forward to doing so; however, I worry about the impact of outsourcing the care of my children at young ages to non-parent/non-family caregivers who are less consistent in ensuring what I care about most: a long list ranging from a grounded sense of morality and positive social-behavior norms/virtues to balancing the use of media with physical play.
I'm not advocating that moms or dads feel guilt about circumstances not in control, but for me who gratefully has control over such circumstances--my greatest investment and highest priority (across "work" and "life") is the raising of children who are strong across a multitude of measures, which are often not addressed in this terrain of research. I'm grateful for the contribution to the ongoing dialog that, again, provides great alternatives for consideration and for individual choices. But, I think we're a very long way from saying it's a silver bullet in terms of helping reduce gender inequalities at work and at home (Professor McGinn is thus quoted in the 15 May 2015 NY Times article about this research).
Seems there is agreement that this is non conclusive. In a spirit supporting Ms. McGinn, can we change the observation statement? My recommendation would be "Research supports that working moms do not cause detriment to child's ability to compete?:
Despite of that fact the article is well-written and has chosen a quite interesting topic. Thank you.
y to exterior considerations.
That said, if a working woman can educate her children to evolve them as worthy human beings, it would be fine. Usually however, and we do not blame her for that, she is so much engrossed in her own career issues that she does not get time to attend to her children optimally.
Yes, the children of working women develop independence which can lead them to grow without fear but, if not watched, has an in-built risk of their getting astray.
Finally, my view is that growth of the children be kept under close watch particularly when they are young so that they move forward in life without any inhibitions due to unbecoming habits acquired by them.
k glass ceiling, especially as far as earnings were concerned, when my children were young. One of the biggest factors to me was the example I was setting to my children - to my daughter, that she would most likely need to work too, and to my sons, that they would most likely have working partners. So I stuck with full-time work. My husband, also a professional, is a tremendous contributor around the house, and our children have seen his example, how we both assume responsibilities around the house and how we manage conflicting schedules and demands, around the house, from work, from the kids' schools, and as parents generally. I do think that each person/family has to decide for him/her/itself what works and constitutes "balance" (which, a la Sheryl Sandberg, is measured over the long term, not necessarily on a day to day basis). I am lucky that my parents were able, and my husband and I have been able, to achieve a level of financial stability that gave them, and gives u
s, a good lifestyle and a somewhat balanced homelife. At the end of the day, a good education is extremely important to gender equality at home and in the workplace, and the example at home certainly helps.
home without a paycheck too, and even model active community participation and volunteerism at the same time.
still had the confidence and drive to pursue a career and move up the ladder, regardless of the professional path. I always knew I would go to college and have a career, if I had a daughter I would encourage her to do the same. My mother worked outside the home, but we were often qualified as poor. It was also great to see that men were more likely to participate in home life when raised by a working mother, which is awesome. I am not married, but I believe having a partner to share the responsibility at home would make a huge difference. I don't think this study was designed to put any less value on full time or part- time mothers. This study supports the idea that children model what they see, so whether we choose to work in or out of the home, we should be the best at it. Either way, being our best helps our children.
Any study produced that says otherwise can be easily countered with psychological impact studies that quantify the value of parents raising their own kids.
Parenting to valuable to be outsourced? Working parents are not outsourcing their roles as a mom and dad. Quality childcare can be a wonderful tool in your parent toolbox. The saying, "it takes a village to raise a child" is true and I think a lot parents in this time are selfish with raising their children. There has been multiple studies that show children benefit from quality childcare and having strong adults in their life besides their parents.
I am not saying that every child should have a stay at home parent or both parents should work. But as a mom who has done both (stay at home and work) I find stay at home parent families are incredibly short sighted and don't understand something they have never participated in.
cycle. I don't think women should have to look for data to support the concept of working mothers in the 21st century. Like men, we are not *just* parents; we are people with our own needs to balance. Thanks
we bothered to have kids if we were going to outsource all
child rearing. The last straw was losing my temper all the time because I was so stressed trying to juggle it all. How do you constantly explain to your kid it's not their fault but Mom just had a hard day at the office? At my last HBS reunion the amount of people who spoke of kids with mental health/anxiety issues was eye-opening. I quit my full time job two years ago and am happier and healthier for it. So is my child. Now I'm on a quest to find meaningful part time work that isn't going to bankrupt me or damage my self-esteem but I suspect that will take a while. I'd love to get back to work sometime and would love to see more of a dialogue on how to restore balance back in the workplace. For starters, a better quality of part time job roles.
For the past several years HBS is determined to weigh in on alumnae's marriages and parenting, waving dubious research like this as proof of what constitutes correct choices. I for one am tired of this overreach in to our private lives. We've already graduated, so please stop grading women according to the school's forced curve.