Posting is for Jerks; The Upsides of a WFH Spouse; Working Mom Bias & Child Penalties; The Mental Toll of Unemployment (for Men); Covid & the Parental Happiness Gap; The Privilege of Partnership
One thing to consider anytime effects on children are discussed is - what effects on children are being considered, measured, and analyzed. Social-emotional? Academic? Marriage? Satisfaction? Work status? Type of work status? I find that working decisions are really complex and can't really be parsed out in a randomized control trial. The confounding variables are astounding .. What are the demands of each job? What family support do they have? How satisfied are they with the child care offerings? What is the family income for 1 full time income vs 2 or 1.5? What are their personal, professional and family priorities? How much do their decisions feel freely made, versus coerced by circumstance? I love the WFH research - and you can see how much that could influence a family's choices and satisfaction with those choices. As someone in the trenches, we need more supports, leaves, part-time arrangements for families, big investments in children, and more flexible educational systems. Solidarity to all navigating this!
Yes, totally agree. One thing also to note that I think is important: the study that showed children with full-time working moms performing the same as children with part-time moms academically was looking at the status of the moms when the children were aged 5 and 7 (primary school). At least for me, when I think about the benefits of staying home with a child, I am really thinking about the early months of a babies life up to a year or two, not age 5 or 7. For example, were those kids in daycare at 6 weeks? Or are they starting it at 12 months? Etc. I don’t know how England’s maternity leave policies compare to other countries. It’s still interesting — but just further highlighting the complexity of this kind of research!
Re: your questions at the end, I suspect very few of the kids in these samples were in daycare at 6 weeks. It is, from what I can tell very rare here. My kids' nursery only starts taking kids at 9 months (if memory serves), which is when the (not particularly well) paid portion of the maternity leave (part-time and full-time) working moms get here ends. Unpaid leave extends to a year. In general, full-time work seems much more flexible and less taxing than your typical full-time job in America. I think the UK has plenty of room for improvement but I know a few American women who are kind of blown away by how much more accommodating to motherhood/life working culture is here.
100% agree. Anecdotally, I don’t know anyone who would provide an expectant academic performance justification for staying at home with their kids or not, and it’s strange that the people who believed it was better for women to stay home with their children were swayed and had their minds changed by academic performance metrics. That’s never even crossed my mind in the conversation about whether to become a SAHM (something I did, and gave up a high six-figure salary for).
All of this. I appreciate data as much as the next person, but my own family's situation "on paper", while looking identical to someone else, would have me giving so many caveats and explanations as to the background and nuance to any given setup, including the one we have now. lol So it just feels very limited in my opinion, with all the variables behind any data point.
I’d love to read (and will ask a librarian friend if she’s heard of) a study or report that rounded up all the outcomes from family/work studies and looked at what was most common - lifetime earnings? wages at 30? graduating high school/college/equivalent? It seems like benefits of a wide variety of early interventions “fade out” (Head Start academic gains fade away, a baby of a SAHP may experience fewer infant infections but have the same level of health at 3rd grade, etc). I also wonder at how parents desires line up with measured outcomes - do a large number of moms stay home (or seek employment) with an eye to long term academic/behavioral outcomes or in response to more immediate concerns like preferring care to employment, quality/availability of child care, etc
Let me know if you do find one! And yes I wonder about that, too. I am trying to reflect on how I made the decision to SAH. I actually had a pretty solid part-time set-up in my field, but it stopped be solid when I had my second. Didn't pay enough to cover part-time childcare for two. And then bc it was part-time, it didn't come with any sort of maternity/sick leave. I think they would have let me take 6 or maybe even 8 weeks off but I just don't think I would have been up for going back to work at that point, esp with breastfeeding. So there were immediate practical considerations that fed into the decision. But then I can also imagine my experience-shaped beliefs playing into it. I had made a series of decisions leading me to that part-time job that I think were very much rooted in a general sense that I wanted to err on the side of spending more time with my kids when they were young than less. I knew I was going to have kids and also knew I simply couldn't envision myself being away from them 50+ hours a week--I still can't?? lol and I guess that kinda tracks with this research bc I was raised by a SAHM! But then I'm not sure I would have assumed, even back then, that the kids of full-time working moms would do worse academically than those of part-time working moms...it's honestly hard to remember. At this point, I I've definitely read too many studies to make strong assumptions in either direction haha.
I think this dovetails with your reflection about whether people generally feel breastfeeding (or staying home etc) is worth it if it’s not “better” over the long run. I don’t love how people will use “kids are resilient” research to justify underfunding early childhood, but I think an encouraging part of those type of results is that even if a particular employment/care/feeding/schooling choice is optimal, the actual effect size is likely to be quite small once basic safety and care and nutrition is taken care of. That frees people up to choose parent care or formal care without the specter of “ruining your daughter’s future income” or “ruining your child’s future psychological well-being” hanging over their heads
You are one of my favorite writers on here. I always look forward to reading your summaries of the research. Thanks so much for taking the time to compile it all together!
One thing to consider anytime effects on children are discussed is - what effects on children are being considered, measured, and analyzed. Social-emotional? Academic? Marriage? Satisfaction? Work status? Type of work status? I find that working decisions are really complex and can't really be parsed out in a randomized control trial. The confounding variables are astounding .. What are the demands of each job? What family support do they have? How satisfied are they with the child care offerings? What is the family income for 1 full time income vs 2 or 1.5? What are their personal, professional and family priorities? How much do their decisions feel freely made, versus coerced by circumstance? I love the WFH research - and you can see how much that could influence a family's choices and satisfaction with those choices. As someone in the trenches, we need more supports, leaves, part-time arrangements for families, big investments in children, and more flexible educational systems. Solidarity to all navigating this!
Yes, totally agree. One thing also to note that I think is important: the study that showed children with full-time working moms performing the same as children with part-time moms academically was looking at the status of the moms when the children were aged 5 and 7 (primary school). At least for me, when I think about the benefits of staying home with a child, I am really thinking about the early months of a babies life up to a year or two, not age 5 or 7. For example, were those kids in daycare at 6 weeks? Or are they starting it at 12 months? Etc. I don’t know how England’s maternity leave policies compare to other countries. It’s still interesting — but just further highlighting the complexity of this kind of research!
Re: your questions at the end, I suspect very few of the kids in these samples were in daycare at 6 weeks. It is, from what I can tell very rare here. My kids' nursery only starts taking kids at 9 months (if memory serves), which is when the (not particularly well) paid portion of the maternity leave (part-time and full-time) working moms get here ends. Unpaid leave extends to a year. In general, full-time work seems much more flexible and less taxing than your typical full-time job in America. I think the UK has plenty of room for improvement but I know a few American women who are kind of blown away by how much more accommodating to motherhood/life working culture is here.
100% agree. Anecdotally, I don’t know anyone who would provide an expectant academic performance justification for staying at home with their kids or not, and it’s strange that the people who believed it was better for women to stay home with their children were swayed and had their minds changed by academic performance metrics. That’s never even crossed my mind in the conversation about whether to become a SAHM (something I did, and gave up a high six-figure salary for).
Agree with everything you said here :).
All of this. I appreciate data as much as the next person, but my own family's situation "on paper", while looking identical to someone else, would have me giving so many caveats and explanations as to the background and nuance to any given setup, including the one we have now. lol So it just feels very limited in my opinion, with all the variables behind any data point.
I’d love to read (and will ask a librarian friend if she’s heard of) a study or report that rounded up all the outcomes from family/work studies and looked at what was most common - lifetime earnings? wages at 30? graduating high school/college/equivalent? It seems like benefits of a wide variety of early interventions “fade out” (Head Start academic gains fade away, a baby of a SAHP may experience fewer infant infections but have the same level of health at 3rd grade, etc). I also wonder at how parents desires line up with measured outcomes - do a large number of moms stay home (or seek employment) with an eye to long term academic/behavioral outcomes or in response to more immediate concerns like preferring care to employment, quality/availability of child care, etc
Let me know if you do find one! And yes I wonder about that, too. I am trying to reflect on how I made the decision to SAH. I actually had a pretty solid part-time set-up in my field, but it stopped be solid when I had my second. Didn't pay enough to cover part-time childcare for two. And then bc it was part-time, it didn't come with any sort of maternity/sick leave. I think they would have let me take 6 or maybe even 8 weeks off but I just don't think I would have been up for going back to work at that point, esp with breastfeeding. So there were immediate practical considerations that fed into the decision. But then I can also imagine my experience-shaped beliefs playing into it. I had made a series of decisions leading me to that part-time job that I think were very much rooted in a general sense that I wanted to err on the side of spending more time with my kids when they were young than less. I knew I was going to have kids and also knew I simply couldn't envision myself being away from them 50+ hours a week--I still can't?? lol and I guess that kinda tracks with this research bc I was raised by a SAHM! But then I'm not sure I would have assumed, even back then, that the kids of full-time working moms would do worse academically than those of part-time working moms...it's honestly hard to remember. At this point, I I've definitely read too many studies to make strong assumptions in either direction haha.
I think this dovetails with your reflection about whether people generally feel breastfeeding (or staying home etc) is worth it if it’s not “better” over the long run. I don’t love how people will use “kids are resilient” research to justify underfunding early childhood, but I think an encouraging part of those type of results is that even if a particular employment/care/feeding/schooling choice is optimal, the actual effect size is likely to be quite small once basic safety and care and nutrition is taken care of. That frees people up to choose parent care or formal care without the specter of “ruining your daughter’s future income” or “ruining your child’s future psychological well-being” hanging over their heads
💯💯
You are one of my favorite writers on here. I always look forward to reading your summaries of the research. Thanks so much for taking the time to compile it all together!
Thank you! That means a lot coming from you :)
I appreciate all the work you put into dissecting and explaining the research here. Not an easy task I know.🙌
There’s always so many interesting links on here! It’s hard to keep up but I am so grateful for these summaries!