Local Editor

Negative perceptions around women who combine paid work with parenthood had been comprehensively demolished in a major study by Harvard University, which showed the daughters of working mothers enjoy better careers, higher pay and more equal relationships than those raised by stay-at-home mothers.

Using data from 24 countries including the UK and US, the Harvard study said that while working mothers "often internalize social messages of impending doom for their children"; the reality is that their sons and daughters appear to thrive, with daughters benefiting most from the positive role model of a mother with a career.

Harvard Business School professor Kathleen McGinn, lead author of the study, noted that the effect on daughters' careers of mothers working was particularly marked in the UK and US, where public attitudes to career equality could be more of a barrier than in some European countries such as Finland and Denmark.

"We hope the findings from our research will promote respect for the spectrum of choices women and men make at home and at work," the researchers concluded. "Whether moms or dads stay at home or are employed, part-time or full-time, children benefit from exposure to role models offering a wide set of alternatives for leading rich and rewarding lives."

Furthermore, the researchers found that, on average, the daughters of working mothers were paid around 4% more than their peers, even adjusting for their greater levels of education and prevailing social attitudes, and were much more likely to have been promoted into managerial positions.

One in three daughters of working mothers were in managerial posts, compared with only one in four of those with non-working mothers.

"These findings suggest that in addition to transmitting gender attitudes across generations, mothers' employment teaches daughters a set of skills that enable greater participation in the workforce and in leadership positions," the study argued.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Allen, a working mother of two children and herself the daughter of a mother who worked, said the research suggested today's women had benefited from their mothers' struggles against discrimination and prevailing social attitudes.

"Our analyses find that sons raised by an employed mother are more involved at home as adults, spending more time caring for family members than men whose mothers stayed home full-time," the study reported.

Consequently, Allen said that schools also needed to adjust their demands on parents. "We've got to stop primary schools from having a day every week where parents are expected to dress up their children in some complicated outfit, or make something, or bring something in, or turn up to help with something or have an assembly," she said.

Source: The Guardian, Edited by website team