Do working mums raise better boys?

12 June 2015

Recently, there's been much talk about the effects of working parents, mothers in particular, on their children.

The consensus from two new major studies — a Harvard University intergenerational study and an education gender gap study co-authored by the University of NSW — was that girls generally thrived, yet the studies showed quite different outcomes regarding the education of boys.

While the Harvard study, which took in data from 50,000 adults in 25 countries, including Australia, found that a working mother didn't much influence the careers of her sons, this was counteracted by the 'Mothers' Employment and Children's Educational Gender Gap' study, which concluded that the education of boys was 'more adversely affected' by a mother's employment.

Just what are we mothers of sons (including yours truly) to make of such divergent findings? While the gender gap study allows us to revert easily enough to the default position of mother guilt, there was one other significant finding by the Harvard study that should have had us high-fiving each other.

The study found that boys of working mothers improved in two vital areas. One, they did more housework and, two, they were more nurturing.

Yes, you read right. Sons of working mothers from developed countries as diverse as Mexico, Russia, Israel, the US and Australia spent a whole extra hour a week caring for their family members and 17 minutes more per week on housework.

As Kathleen McGinn, a professor at Harvard Business School and a co-author of the study, told The New York Times: 'This [finding] is as close to a silver bullet as you can find in terms of helping reduce gender inequalities, both in the workplace and at home.'

Not only did the Harvard research further add to a well-regarded 2004 US research paper that argued 'that the growing presence of a new type of man — one brought up in a family in which the mother worked — has been a significant factor in the increase in female labour force participation over time'; it also found a direct link between an increased women's labour force and more stable partnerships.

As someone whose single-handed efforts of trying to get two young males, aged five and eight, dressed, fed and out the door in the mornings remains something of a delicate dance between capitulation and utter chaos, this came not as a revelation, but a reaffirmation.

Long before I became a mother I vowed to teach

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Do working mums raise better boys?

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