The amount of time a woman takes before returning to a full-time job after childbirth may affect her child’s mental development.
That’s the finding of a report, published in Child Development magazine, that links early full-time maternal employment to slower intellectual development in kids. The report was based on data collected from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care, which involved 900 white non-Hispanic children in 10 cities over three years.
Researchers found that children whose mothers worked 30 hours or more per week by the time the children were 9 months old scored lower on school-readiness tests at age three.
These negative developmental effects persisted until the children were 7 or 8 years old, the researchers said. However, children whose mothers did not start working until the kids were one year or older had no significant negative effects. Boys appeared more sensitive to the effects of their mother’s employment than girls, according to a New York Times News Service report. Other experts pointed out that factors including the father’s involvement, the quality of the child care, the mother’s sensitivity to her children and her job-related stress all play a role in the children’s development.
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