Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers | Hacker News Reader

Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

nytimes.com

34 pointssenith68 comments

I never understood the idea that having mom (or dad) at home is the best thing for kids. When our daughter is at daycare, she's in a very stimulating environment staffed by energetic 22-year olds on 6 hour shifts. When she's at home with me my instinct is to bribe her with some ice cream and park her in front of her iPad. My wife has slightly more desire to engage with the kid, but no more energy for it--she's pretty spent after 2-3 hours.

It probably isn't in every case but my wife is passionate about it and treats it as a full time job. She takes our daughters out to social groups, meetups, farms, gymnastics, swimming.. every day. There's nothing wrong with daycare (my eldest went half-time for a year for the social opportunities and because it's free in the UK ;-)) but a full-time parent can provide even more variety and social opportunities with the right resources and the right community around them.

One unexpected upside is my wife spends so much time in the community it has really extended our circle of friends. The biggest downside, however, is I still get to enjoy half the chores because my wife is rarely home in the daytime(!) ;-)

Nobody will care for or about a child more than that child's mother (barring psychological abnormalities in the mother). Father a close second.

Even the best daycare is going to devote only a fraction of the instruction/attention to any individual child.

If your approach as a parent is to give "the kid" ice cream and electronic distractions, I think you should seriously reevaluate your priorities.

Caring is a separate issue from having the aptitude and temperament for the labor of child care. I'd do anything for my daughter, but let's face it, she's boring. She's slightly smarter than a puppy, and while it's all magical a couple of hours a day, I can't imagine engaging with her day-in and day-out, any more than I can imagine being a factory worker who just does one movement all day long. I'd go crazy.

The daycare worker certainly wouldn't run in front of a bus to protect my kid, which I'd do in a heartbeat. But that's not a day-to-day need.

While I agree with you I'm not sure that is a good use of "certainly"...It depends how many kids the worker is with and which one is her favourite, as well as the character of the daycare worker. There were plenty of strange* men volunteering to die in frozen waters to save women and children when the titanic went down, for example.

* in the stranger sense of the word.

Also Wesley Autrey, the "Subway Hero" who dove onto the tracks of the oncoming 1 train in order to save a stranger who had a seizure and fell onto the tracks. He held the man down in a drainage trench and the subway cars passed over them. That's about as literal as "jumping in front of a bus" as it gets.

Plus all the teachers at Sandy Hook who gave their lives protecting their students.

Those two are just off the top of my head. The willingness to put one's self in danger for others isn't exclusive to parents.

Have you taken a look at the study this article is written about?

I'd agree that it makes intuitive sense that childcare could do better than exhausted working parents, and possibly even emotionally drained stay-at-home parents, but another poster pointed out that this study seems to say "people who can afford daily childcare have children with better outcomes" -- which might correlate pretty closely with "wealthier people's kids have better outcomes", which the research already told us.

As an aside, these kinds of discussions (where HN talks about the world's social problems) are the second reason I come to HN. I'll get exposed to great worldviews, from generally smart people, expressed by people who speak my language.

And child care, together with the possibly related problem of currently worse outcomes for children of single-parent families, are social problems that are potentially immensely valuable for society to solve.

"Nobody will care for or about a child more than that child's mother (barring psychological abnormalities in the mother)."

Well, technically I guess I can't disagree with you because you said 'care... more', but I assume you meant that to also mean 'care... better', which is about as wrong as it gets. Why would anyone instinctively know what's 'best' for a child's development, let alone better than trained professionals in a professionally build environment? There are tens (hundreds, more likely) of thousands of people working every day to understand how children develop best, and convert that into actual practice. It doesn't stand the smell test to say that all that is nonsense because parents somehow know better.

The other aspect is how much love children get, and yes of course nobody loves children like their parents. But again there is no reason to think that just 'being loved in close proximity', say, 4 hours a day + weekends is worse than having a parent around 24/7. Nor does 'love' equate 'stimulate good development'. If you are going to claim that in the 'good old days' when children were at home all day with mom they would be doing crafts and nature education and going to playgrounds with equipment designed to stimulate activity in a safe environment, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale that you might be interested in.

Most of the time I spent with my dad in my earliest days he was parked on a couch with a beer in hand not even looking at me. I consider that time far more valuable than being babysat later on.

Growing up my father actively hated me and wanted me out of his life even though I did live with him until adulthood. Told me how unwanted I was every single day. Yeah, stand up guy. I had a baby sitter (my father's cousin - she was paid and babysat other kids at her house all day) who loved me more than anyone, including my mother. For me time spent with the baby sitter was more more caring, loving, nurturing, etc., and better in every single way than time spent with either of my parents. I'm sure my baby sitter would have jumped in front of a bus for me.

My sister ran an after school program for mostly disadvantaged kids and I am certain that she cared for and about her children more than some of their parents. Not all, just some.

You see examples of extended family stepping in all the time making sure children are cared for and their needs met when the parents are doing a horrible job.

Unfortunately we do not live in an idealized world like many might believe, otherwise there wouldn't be infanticide, honor killings, child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, etc., etc.

I'm not sure what my point is other than "some people's experiences are different from yours." (I'm sure you knew that, just chiming in with my story as a counterpoint)

In daycare (a good one), you're not 'babysat'. Educators do activities with children, fun ones and educational ones and preferably both at the same time, children play with other children, etc. Meh, probably a moot discussion at this point, I was just saying - daycare is not 'let's park the children there'.

> Nobody will care for or about a child more than that child's mother (barring psychological abnormalities in the mother). Father a close second.

That statement is useless because it is a tautology. If the parents don't care about or for their children (and trust me, many, many don't) according to you by definition they must have a "psychological abnormality." Being a selfish dick is a bad trait but "psychological abnormally" is going quite far. There's plenty of selfish dicks in the world who couldn't give a rat's ass about their children, including deadbeat dads (or moms) and others. Only in an idealistic, fantasy world do parents universally care for and about their children.

Many people who care about their children are very aware they don't have the ability to care for their children. That's a big reason why adoption (family adoption and stranger adoption) exists. The gender role assumption is pretty weird too. Some people have two fathers and an unknown egg donor for example - do these children have less care than someone with two heterosexual parents? Or do two moms trump a mom and a dad?

I am curious why you think a 22 year old on near minimum wage cares more about engaging with your daughter than you and your wife?

rayiner might not be in a country that pays minimum wage for daycare. (Some countries don't even have a minimum wage, and some even pay their daycarers decent money.)

This is possible, but even taking out the near minimum wage clause I am still surprised that rainier thinks that a 22 year old paid to look after his daughter cares more about her than him and his wife.

Probably because neither him nor his wife is getting paid to do it...

You worded that a bit strangely but it's fair to say the daycare worker made a willing career choice that involved taking care of kids all day everyday and is likely to enjoy it a lot and consider him/herself to be fairly skilled at it.

Potentially more so than a tired daddy and mommy, yes.

That's not what he said.

The average nurse cares more than her wage pays for. I guess it's the same with the average daycare worker. At least it's my own experience (against all odds daycare workers have pretty low wages here in France)

That's certainly my experience in the UK - the workers in the nursery my son went to from 6 months were absolute saints and had a lot of passion for their work - they loved working with kids.

Down voting because the op didn't saying anything about 'cares more about engaging' or 'cares about his daughter'. That's blatant misrepresentation of the what the op did write.

No it is not. I asked a question on how the op thinks a 22 year old paid to look after his daughter is more engaged with her than either him or his wife.

Oh really? Let's examine the text of this post, and one other in this same branch of the thread:

>> I am curious why you think a 22 year old on near minimum wage cares more about engaging with your daughter

>> I am still surprised that rainier thinks that a 22 year old paid to look after his daughter cares more about her than him and his wife.

Maybe that's what you thought, but that's not what you wrote.

We have a statement from rainier that a 22 year paid to look after his daughter is more engaged with her than either him or his wife. What motivation does this 22 year old have for being more engaged than him and his wife? This is what I mean by cares.

I have three children aged 10, 9 and 6. I work and my wife stays home with the kids. I don't pretend to know what is right for everyone and their kids but I found your comment oddly disturbing.

When I'm home with my three kids, my instinct is to think of the skills that will aid them later in life and work on that through various levels of play. Often that's sports - practicing basketball, baseball or whatever sport they happen to be doing at the time. Other times that's academics where if I know they're having a problem with sight words or multiplication I will work on that with them. Sometimes it's just playing video games together.

Looking back on being a father I think to the things that they do on a daily basis and remember, "My wife and I taught them to do that." All the time spent working with them on crawling, walking, talking and everything since then has created fantastic memories I wouldn't trade for anything.

"...working with them on crawling, walking, talking and...

This amuses me. With things like that (crawling/walking/talking) I let my kid find his own way, in his own time. I have no intention of helping him with anything like it, or from school, ever - unless he asks.

What I do do with my son is play. Building radio control cars. Jumping on car hoods/bonnets in a scrapyard. Lego. Jumping in puddles. Flying kites. Making fires. Going on the odd helicopter ride. Concerts...

He will spend such a silly amount of his life being a student that my mission is for him to just be a boy. Without the spectre of under- or over-achievement. No judgement, regardless of his performance. Because no matter what, he is, and will always be, enough.

We basically said the same thing but you seem to be focused on my statements regarding helping them with academics. I wonder though - when your son says, "I catched the ball" do you purposely not correct him because that's the school's job?

Everything you listed under your play I've done with my three kids with the exception of jumping on hoods in a scrapyard. I could add endlessly to the list including stop motion animation, working with electronic circuits, learning to dive, etc, etc.

I think essentially we agree; the time a child spends with his parents should be the best time for both the child and the parents.

> I wonder though - when your son says, "I catched the ball" do you purposely not correct him because that's the school's job?

Not thread parent, but parent nonetheless :) I'd say the ideal response would be ignoring that error but instead replying with "I caught the ball" in an appropriate situation. Kids learn languages by example, all we have to do is give good examples. Correcting "catched/ caught" puts focus on the error, not on the dozens of cases where grammar was fine. If done too often (e.g. not what you described), that can actually impede learning, as the kid could develop a self-perception of being constantly wrong.

In general the pedagogical ideal is creating a setting where learning can take place by itself. The role of the teacher is reduced to designing the setting. Your ball game example can be seen as such a setting: You two are just having fun together and talk about that, and the desired learning of the language just emerges out of the situation.

(I'm an eduactional scientist, so maybe at risk of over-theorizing trivial examples :) )

Almost every kid learns to walk and talk. But there are huge differences in how elaborate kids and adults can express themselves. And reading about super successful people, it seems they often started with their job as kids (writers, musicians, sports people, mathematicians...).

I like what you are doing with your son, though, I have similar goals for time with my kids.

Play might just be the natural (path of least resistance) way for children to learn. Play is not something that is overly scheduled. We don't have to make a curriculum for it. We don't have to track their play-progress. It's just something that kids tend to do.

Then well-meaning adults think to themselves, "how can I optimize this child's development? How can I make every hour spent with him be at least 70% utilized in order for him to develop fully? What can I do to make him better than my friends kids, and especially to avoid becoming an underachiever?"

Maybe children know best how to play. And indirectly know what's the path of least resistance for them to learn about themselves and the world.

Disclaimer: IANAP

Micromanaging your children's lives is not doing them any good. They need alone free time and boredom to truly thrive and develop creativity. I think someone who has their life constantly guided by a parent will probably develop anxiety once the parent isn't there to guide them through life.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-21895704

Differing parental styles will have different outcomes. It's part of what makes these studies so useless.

Or maybe not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption

Of course peer groups matter a lot. That's why concerned parents try to stir their kids into the right peer groups.

I agree with you, and my children do many things at day care we'd not think about (or not have time to, or not feel like) doing with them at home. But there are (or rather, 'used to be', as in most places in the West the law doesn't allow it any more - I don't know about other places) also many 'child care' facilities where 2 overworked staffers on full-day shifts spend their day running around spoon feeding and changing 20 children ranging in age from 3 months to 4 years in too-small, damp and cold (or hot, depending on climate) buildings, with the 'playground' consisting of concrete, a few half-broken plastic bikes and a swing. The devil is in the details.

This. There is a massive range in daycare from "your child will be alive when you come back" to "all our staff have degrees in childhood education" (and of course the associated price range).

The same is true of stay-at-home parents. Some get exhausted after a few hours and others thrive in constantly nurturing and teaching their children.

Comparing the two isn't terribly useful unless you break it down further.

A very stimulating environment isn't what a kid always needs. Quite apart from inter-kid differences, the downtime is just as important. My kid got a lot from just being carried around (or later following us around) while we continuously narrated what we were doing (laundry: look here, we match up the socks by colour; cooking: watch out this knife is very sharp but see how the carrots come apart). So net not a huge increase in time.

BUT kids are super exhausting and demanding and if you are worn out you won't be able to help them much either. I tried not to bring up my kid the way you describe, but I have to say there were plenty of times when I did the equivalent (no iPads or TVs in our case but essentially much the same). He came out fine.

There is no perfect system and what works for one doesn't necessarily work for someone else.

For basically the entirety of my childhood. Both my parents were working. I can honestly say I am a better person for it. And not just because of the material benefits it afforded me (better education, got to travel a lot).

Through out my childhood both parents had jobs with varying amounts of time requirements, with both having periods of stay a home spouse (I believe my father found this particularly eye opening) and both periods of 9-7 working time.

They always took the time to explain to me and my sister about why they were doing the things they were and ensuring that we were comfortable with their decisions. Now it may be that it was this honesty that had the greatest benefit. However I do think I have a much greater appreciation for the importance of a purposeful work life balance.

Mind you, not necessarily a highly even balance, just ensure that if you are working 50 hours a week, there should be a goal in mind. In fact every decision about lifestyle should be carefully thought about.

The article does not mention it but where are the kids when the mother is at work? More than likely this is in day-care rather than in the home of another family member (most likely the grandparents). The likelihood is that the kids are in a richer environment, materially and socially. When you mix in the added benefit of parents not having spent all day dealing with the childens' needs then it's no surprise that generally they are able to devote more attention to them.

None of this is the direct benefit of a parent being at work. You would probably see all these advantages if one of the parents simply stayed at home, while the kids were in day-care. But where is the money going to come from for that.

This is also a good argument for providing free or heavily subsidized daycare to children whose parents are unemployed or outside the workforce.

What argument?

This:

> [In day-care] the likelihood is that the kids are in a richer environment, materially and socially.

Think single parent suffering from mental health issues and unable to work, or other disadvantaged stimulus poor domestic environment.

“Was it really her mother working who did this, or was it her mother getting an education?”

I'd personally wager on the latter. We have plenty of studies on the topic of "being educated increases the average education level of your children."

Would be quite interesting to have a Hacker news poll to see the distrubution of hners whose mother went to work!

I dont seem to have enough karma to create one unfortunately. Can someone else do it please ?

It just says daughters of working mothers are more likely to become working mothers themselves. They consider working moms to be a good thing, and prove it by showing that working moms have working daughters, which is in their opinion a good thing.

A bit circular. I am not against working mothers, just saying one should be clear about one's judgement. For me it is not a given that working is a good thing. At least not in general (not for any kind of work).

"it is difficult to know whether a mother who worked caused her daughter to work, or whether other factors were more influential" - reminds me of the "An Eleanor is 100 times more likely to go to Oxford than a Jade" study from last year, i.e. the names themselves might not cause the difference but rather other factors which the names represent.

Take this personal anecdote for what it is worth. My office used to be next door to a childcare centre looking after around 40 children. I was able to watch what happened throughout the day and what the staff and children did. After a few months I swore no matter what the financial cost I would not let my children ever end up in childcare.

For me, not using childcare == not working, which means I'd probably lose my home. I'm not sure that risk is worth it.

Would you be homeless or just living in a less ideal home?

I am lucky to live in a country where my choice really is just a trade in the level of material comfort, but I understand this is not the same for everyone.

I would be homeless, first and foremost, because I wouldn't be able to pay my mortgage and the bank would seize my assets.

Eventually I would be eligible for state benefits and placed on a waiting list for a council owned property, but waiting lists are long. I might be able to get shelter in a women's refuge in the mean time, but I'm not sure that's an ideal place to raise my children just so that I can claim the moral high ground on childcare use.

If you could not pay your mortgage could you not sell and rent privately?

Please don't take this as a critism of your decision - I made mine and I am happy with my choice, but I don't expect that what is best for me is best for everyone.

Private renting in my area (as with a lot of places in the UK) would be more costly than my current mortgage.

I didn't think you were criticising parents who use childcare, least of all me, but I do feel it's necessary for people to understand that the "I'm too good for daycare" argument comes from a position of massive privilege.

Sounds like a crazy situation if a mortgage and all the associated costs is less than renting - here in Australia it is considerably cheaper to rent.

I don't think the choice of not using daycare is one that can only be made from a position of massive privilege, but it does involve material sacrifices if you are middle class.

My mortgage is £477 p/m on a small 2 bedroom semi-detached house. To rent I'd be looking at ~£600p/m for a small 2 bedroom flat (apartment). I'd still have to pay the same utilities etc so wouldn't be better off by any stretch of the imagination.

Wow your mortgage is low - mine is more than 10 times the size and I live in a flat! Australian housing is expensive especially where I live.

When I owned a house the maintenance cost was quite considerable. You can put it off for a while, but eventually it comes due. My guess is that it was around $750 a month plus I had council rates to pay on top of this which were another $250 a month.

Are there any studies on working father's impact on children? (A quick google returns a few studies on father's impact but not working ones specifically.)

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you work, you're a neglectful parent. If you don't, you're sucking off the state. (UK stereotypes)

I have done the 3 main variants of parent-work balance (staying at home, working at home, working out of the home) with my 2 children and I'm not convinced that any one is better than the other, personally. But what does one little anecdote mean in the grand scheme of things...

To answer your first question there is little incentive to look into this question as no one with serious money wants to know the answer.

Which of the three options was best for you?

Hard to say. As a stay at home mum I felt unfulfilled and lonely. In the early years of returning to work full time I felt guilty for leaving my child in daycare. Working at home (with a mix of juggling kids and some daycare) I felt isolated and over-worked.

I'm actually in the process of working my notice at my current job so that I can return to working from home, but as it stands I have no intention of reducing my son's hours in childcare.

I'd like to think that I can find a balance between working (for mental satisfaction as well as financial reasons) and time with my youngest outside of childcare, but this depends on my success in the coming months. If nothing else my son starts school in September 2016 so at least I won't have a ~£645 childcare bill each month :)

I was quite delighted that my mother worked - she was the part time librarian of our village library. So from about 10 or so she would let me take the key of the library and get books as often as I wanted - providing I stuck to the limits of the number of books I borrowed at one time and kept record of what books I had borrowed in the same way as everyone else.

perhaps some are spending more quality time with their kids because the are not home and feel more obligated to do so. throw in the idea that children learn from the actions of their parent and so success is more likely from seeing parents already in the workplace the outcome becomes expected

And yet, and yet... Female happiness marches relentlessly downward.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969

"In a new study of 50,000 adults in 25 countries, daughters of working mothers completed more years of education, were more likely to be employed and in supervisory roles and earned higher incomes" - TLDR, children will imitate what you do, not what you tell them to do. This is good for certain values of good (depending on how you define a 'good' adult).

The title of the article (Mounting Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers) seems to define having a career as an advantage, but is it really?

How about we rephrase this. Daughters of those mothers that earn enough to make putting their children in childcare are more likely to earn more than mothers who's wages are too low to afford childcare. Phrased this way we come to the startling conclusion that the children of the middle class grow up to be middle class. I am shocked.

This doesn't explain why the relationship holds true even in countries with free or heavily subsidized daycare. Or why only daughters are affected, along many variables.

Picked these from the HBS post @ http://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/mcginn-working-mom.as...

Anyone have a link to the paper?

Even when childcare is heavily subsidised it use will still be dominated by the middle classes. If you are unemployed why go to the effort to cart the children you love down to some strangers even if you don't have to pay anything.

You were talking about low wage mothers, I responded to that. They are anyway more numerous than unemployed-for-reasons-unrelated-to-parenting mothers. (This can also make financial sense to subsidize, as otherwise they'll have a larger probability to go unemployed and permanently fall out of workfroce later when kids go to school)

I think the study controlled for income, as stated:

>daughters of working mothers earned 23 percent more than daughters of stay-at-home mothers, after controlling for demographic factors

Exactly how were these demographic factors controlled?

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