Why Working Moms Raise Great Kids

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 I know I am biased because my mother was a working Mom. But I believe the skills we had to learn were invaluable as we grew up and later on in adulthood. Is there any evidence for this?

Photo by Standsome Worklifestyle on Unsplash

I was very happy to read the Harvard study which confirmed my bias! This research examined no less than 100,000 children who had working moms in 29 countries.

Basically, the study shows that having a working mom helped the daughters to be more successful in the workplace and they had more supervisory roles. Sons were generally more empathic and had fewer problems in adapting to non-traditional gender roles when raising their own families.

At the moment, there is an ever-changing scenario with lots of mothers smart working from home due to COVID-19. This may negatively affect work-life balance.

Here are the main points which have emerged from the earlier studies.

1. Gender roles are evolving

Basically, the statistics now show that one-in-five parents are staying at home Moms and Dads. This has inevitably changed attitudes towards why and how to run the household. The Harvard study has also shown that men are spending more time on childcare.

2. Sons are becoming more empathic

When sons start helping out with household chores, they are more likely to be more sensitive and caring. They themselves will become better and more empathic partners themselves. There is less need to classify human qualities in gender role packaging. This will eventually improve society.

3. Sons will support their own wives and partners.

The sons who were raised by working mothers will themselves be much more supportive and helpful when their own spouses start working.

4. Daughters are inspired by their mother’s example

The positive example set by a working mom will be a positive and inspiring example for daughters to follow. They will have no worries about juggling job and home duties as they have seen how their own mothers coped.

5. Daughters have more supervisory roles

This New York Times article shows that there is quite a lot of evidence and other studies which show that 25% of daughters of stay-at-home moms were in supervisory roles while that number rose to 33% for those who had working moms.

6. Daughters are paid more

There are some studies that show the daughters of working moms are actually earning 23% more than their female counterparts who were brought up by stay-at-home Moms. This difference could amount to as much as $7,000 annually in the USA.

The best news of all is that the impact on a child’s happiness is not affected in any significant way by whether they are raised by stay-at-home moms or working moms.

We all know what the real challenge is!

“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”
― Milton Berle

First published on Medium:-  https://medium.com/p/8de2a405dfdd

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How to Raise Resilient and Independent Kids

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Here's my take on overprotective parents. This was written by myself and was an answer on Quora. 

When we were young, my uncle defended his kids even when they were in the wrong and let the headmaster know about it in no uncertain fashion. We looked on in disbelief as our parents had completely different ideas and they would never have done that. We had to stand on our own two feet and they very rarely intervened. When we were mocked in the street, my mother’s response was:-

Helicopter parents are really ruining kids’ sense of autonomy and resilience in the long term. This quote says it all:-

“Helicopter parents. Before I started at Pirriwee Public, I thought it was an exaggeration, this thing about parents being overly involved with their kids. I mean, my mum and dad loved me, they were, like, interested in me when I was growing up in the nineties, but they weren’t, like, obsessed with me.” -Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

You can watch the video here of Lenore Skenazy who has a great site called Free Range Kids and she defends her position very well in this video and I completely agree with her. She says that society has become obsessed with child protection and some parents are even charged with negligence when their kids are playing unattended in their own backyard!

And what about parents who are just not even bothering to supervise their kids on the Internet?

It needs to be monitored (without hovering around them all the time!) because there may be a need to restrict media activity. Again, parents setting an example can be a great help. They can be much more active in restricting the use of devices at mealtimes, family get togethers and even on outings. 

In a way, overprotective parents are having a knee jerk reaction to hysteria about child safety and protection and that is understandable but this is not the answer to raising resilient and independent kids.

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