Maternal Employment During the First Year of Life as Related to Cognitive and Socioeconomical Development in Seven Year Old Children PDF Download

Author: Andrea B. Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child development
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Author: Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child development
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Using data from the first two phases of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, the links between maternal employment in the first 12 months of life and cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes for children at age 3, age 4.5, and first grade are examined. Families in which mothers worked full time (55%), part time (23%) or did not work in the first year (22%) are compared. Most families involved non-Hispanic White children although some analyses did involve African-American children. Structural equation modeling results indicated that, on average, the associations between first-year maternal employment and later cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes are neutral because negative effects, where present, are offset by positive effects. The results confirmed that maternal employment in the first year of life may confer both advantages and disadvantages and that for the average non-Hispanic White child those effects balance each other.

Author: Adele Eskeles Gottfried
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1489908307
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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In a review written in 1979, I noted that there was a paucity of research examining the effects of maternal employment on the infant and young child and also that longitudinal studies of the effects of maternal em ployment were needed (Hoffman, 1979). In the last 10 years, there has been a flurry of research activity focused on the mother's employment during the child's early years, and much of this work has been longi tudinal. All of the studies reported in this volume are at least short-term longitudinal studies, and most of them examine the effects of maternal employment during the early years. The increased focus on maternal employment during infancy is not a response to the mandate of that review but rather reflects the new employment patterns in the United States. In March 1985, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 49.4% of married women with children less than a year old were employed outside the home (Hayghe, 1986). This figure is up from 39% in 1980 and more than double the rate in 1970. By now, most mothers of children under 3 are in the labor force.

Author: Teresa Katherine Lightbody
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Children of working mothers
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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This thesis focused on the associations between maternal employment in early childhood and the developmental outcomes of infant, toddler, and preschool age children in Canada. It is well established that maternal employment in the first year is negatively associated with children's development, particularly cognitive outcomes. However, a number of questions remain about the effects of the number of hours that mothers work, differential outcomes for boys and girls, and the contributing role of the factors in children's family and child care contexts. Thus, I examined the nature of relationships among maternal employment in early childhood, children's gender, family context, child care context, and young children's development. Guided by Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model of Human Development, I conducted a secondary analysis of data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth using Cycles Six (2004/2005), Seven (2006/2007), and Eight (2008/2009). The method of analysis was multiple linear regression. I tested the associations between mothers' employment in the first four years of children's lives and the motor and social development of zero to four year old children and receptive language of four and five year old children (commonly used as an indicator of cognitive development). Further, because previous research has shown that the influence of maternal employment on children's cognitive development varies with the specific timing of mothers' return to work, I examined the associations between maternal employment in the first two years of children's lives and the receptive language of children four and five years. Additionally, I ran a sub-group analysis comparing children of mothers who worked more than 20 hours a week to children of mothers who worked fewer hours. To examine the influence that child's gender and family and child care contexts have on the relationship between maternal employment in early childhood and children's developmental outcomes, I investigated the moderating effects of child gender, family economic well-being, mothers' marital status, maternal education, and child care type and quality. I also analyzed the mediating effects of family functioning, depressive symptoms, and parent-child interactions on the relationship between maternal employment in early childhood and children's developmental outcomes. With children's motor and social development, I found that mothers who returned to work when their children were between zero to four years old had enhanced motor and social development in comparison to children of mothers who did not work during this time. However, the magnitude of the effect was relatively weak. Additionally, findings indicated that maternal employment within the first four years had stronger positive effects on the motor and social development (improved motor and social development) for female children than it did for male children. Findings showed that the only Contextual Process that played a mediating role was parent-child interactions. The enhanced motor and social development of children of mothers who worked was explained in part by more positive parent-child interactions displayed by employed mothers. Regarding receptive language, findings showed that maternal employment between zero and four years was not significantly associated with children's receptive language. However, I found that relative to children of mothers who worked 20 hours or less per week in the first two years of their children's lives, children of mothers who worked more than 20 hours had lower receptive language scores at four and five years of age. An additional analysis suggested that maternal employment initiated between 12 and 17 months was a sensitive period in which working more than 20 hours a week was negatively associated with children's receptive language. The small positive associations between maternal employment in early childhood and children's motor and social development provide some reassurance to mothers who engage in maternal employment in early childhood. That being said, my research suggests that working more than 20 hours a week in the first two years of children's lives and even more so between 12 and 17 months of age has negative associations with children's later receptive language. These findings could be of interest to policy analysts and government officials who create and monitor Canadian maternity and parental leave policies/programs in that they bring attention to areas (i.e., hours worked in early childhood) that policy developers may want to consider in future changes to current Canadian maternity and parental leave policies/programs.

Author: Brittany English
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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This study examines the effects of maternal employment during the first year of a child's life on their cognitive and non-cognitive development at age nine using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The relationship is estimated using multiple regression in which the outcomes are a child's percentile rank on four nationally-normed assessments and their score on a delinquency scale, and the independent variable of interest is a variable indicating if a mother worked at all during the first year of her child's life. The models used in this study control for child, maternal, and family characteristics. Results suggest no relationship between maternal employment and children's development. This is robust across outcomes and subgroups and suggests that any relationship between maternal employment and child outcomes might fade out by age nine. Secondary analyses using full-time employment as the key independent variable do show a potential relationship between full-time work and children's development at age nine. While these results cannot be interpreted causally, they support the hypothesis that increased financial resources gained through maternal employment support children's cognitive development through age nine.

Author: Christopher J. Ruhm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child development
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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This study investigates the relationship between parental employment and child cognitive development using data from multiple years of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Maternal labor supply during the first three years of the child's life is predicted to have a small negative effect on the verbal ability of 3 and 4 year olds and a substantial detrimental impact on the reading and math achievement of 5 and 6 year olds. Working during the second and third years appears to have less favorable or more deleterious consequences when the mother is also employed in the first year. The results are robust to the inclusion of controls for day care arrangements or paternal job-holding and there is some indication that early employment may be particularly costly for children in traditional' two-parent families. Finally, the data suggest that paternal and maternal employment have qualitatively similar effects, hinting at the importance of time investments by fathers. The overall conclusion is that previous research may have provided an overly optimistic assessment of the effects of parental employment on child cognitive development.

Author: Paul R. Amato
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319083082
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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The widening gap between the rich and the poor is turning the American dream into an impossibility for many, particularly children and families. And as the children of low-income families grow to adulthood, they have less access to opportunities and resources than their higher-income peers--and increasing odds of repeating the experiences of their parents. Families in an Era of Increasing Inequality probes the complex relations between social inequality and child development and examines possibilities for disrupting these ongoing patterns. Experts across the social sciences track trends in marriage, divorce, employment, and family structure across socioeconomic strata in the U.S. and other developed countries. These family data give readers a deeper understanding of how social class shapes children's paths to adulthood and how those paths continue to diverge over time and into future generations. In addition, contributors critique current policies and programs that have been created to reduce disparities and offer suggestions for more effective alternatives. Among the topics covered: Inequality begins at home: the role of parenting in the diverging destinies of rich and poor children. Inequality begins outside the home: putting parental educational investments into context. How class and family structure impact the transition to adulthood. Dealing with the consequences of changes in family composition. Dynamic models of poverty-related adversity and child outcomes. The diverging destinies of children and what it means for children's lives. As new initiatives are sought to improve the lives of families and children in the short and long term, Families in an Era of Increasing Inequality is a key resource for researchers and practitioners in family studies, social work, health, education, sociology, demography, and psychology.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309324882
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Author: Francine D. Blau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child development
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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This paper analyzes the relationship between maternal labor supply and children's cognitive development, using a sample of three- and four-year-old children of female respondents from the 1986 National Longitudinal Surveys Youth Cohort (NLSY). Respondents in the NLSY were aged 21 to 29 in 1986; thus our sample consists of children of relatively young mothers. We show that for this group the impact of maternal labor supply depends upon when it occurs. Maternal employment is found to have a negative impact when it occurs during the first year of the child's life and a potentially offsetting positive effect when it occurs during the second and subsequent years. We find some evidence that boys are more sensitive to maternal labor supply than girls though the gender difference is not significant. The negative first-year effect is not mitigated to any great extent by the increased maternal income that accompanies it, though the increase in maternal income does appears to play an important role in producing the positive effect in the second and later years

Author: Christopher J. Ruhm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child development
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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This study investigates how maternal employment is related to the outcomes of 10 and 11 year olds after controlling for a wide variety of child, mother and family background characteristics. The results suggest that the mother's labor supply has deleterious effects on cognitive development, obesity and possibly risky behaviors such as smoking or drinking, while reducing behavior problems. These negative consequences are quite small for the average child, however, and usually restricted to relatively long maternal work hours. Less intensive employment is often associated with favorable outcomes and labor supply after the first three years typically has little effect. By contrast, large adverse consequences are frequently obtained for advantaged' adolescents, with negative impacts predicted even for limited amounts of maternal labor supply and for work during the child's fourth through ninth year.