The Importance Of Working Mothers As Role Models
“I think while all mothers deal with guilt, working mothers are plagued by guilt on steroids.”
This quote makes me laugh and cry, for how painfully true it is. Working mothers constantly seem to second-guess themselves, their parenting and the impact on their children that their careers will have.
For all those who worry, I have good news.
The Influence Of Working Mothers On Their Children’s Careers
In 2015, the preliminary results of a ground-breaking study found that the daughters of employed mothers often perform better in their eventual careers than the daughters of stay-at-home moms.
According to an article by Dina Gerderman in Working Knowledge by Harvard Business Review, when the authors of the study published their initial findings, they got a lot of pushback. Though the study showed that adult daughters whose mothers worked outside the home are more likely to work themselves, hold more supervisory responsibilities, and earn higher wages than women whose mothers stayed home full time, the feeling by some was that the study didn’t reveal the whole picture. There were questions raised about whether these daughters truly benefitted mentally and emotionally from being raised by working mothers.
Three years later, when the full research was published in 2018, it showed that daughters of working mothers end up being just as happy in adulthood as the children of mums who stayed home.
The surveys and studies by Harvard Business School Professor Kathleen McGinn (along with her colleagues, Mayra Ruiz Castro of Kingston University in the UK, and Elizabeth Long Lingo of Worcester Polytechnic Institute) show that across 29 countries, daughters of employed mothers are 1.21 times more likely to be employed, and have higher annual earnings than those raised by stay-at-home mums.
What about the sons then? While their career paths and progress may not mirror their mothers’, their attitudes are definitely influenced. The sons of employed mothers have significantly more egalitarian gender attitudes (surprisingly even more so than the daughters of stay-at-home mothers!).
Working mothers then play a far more influential role than previously realised – on their families, their economic well-being, and on society as a whole.
With these findings, I do hope that the “guilt on steroids” that Ariana Huffington refers to will eventually go away.
Why It’s Good For Mothers To Have Careers
I truly believe that it’s not only good for kids to have working mothers. It’s also good for mothers to work. For themselves.
Why is it that men are never questioned about their decision to continue working after they become fathers? Why are their working hours, their career choices, etc. and the impact of these on their children not under scrutiny?
Women have to stop justifying to anyone, including themselves, about their decision to work. Working is good for mothers because it helps them achieve all their needs. As per Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, these could be basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing which they can get as they become financially independent, to higher needs such as making connections, building a community and the higher-order needs of esteem and self-actualisation.
Understandably, there are women who choose not to work or don’t have the opportunity to work outside the home because of choice or circumstances. I also know that the unpaid and unseen work that mothers do often hampers their career choices.
Despite the difficulties, I would love to see a society where every woman has the choice and opportunity to work, should she choose to. I do believe that having working mothers as role models will set children up for healthier and more equitable choices in the future, and encourage them to script their own satisfying career stories.
I would like to end on a personal note. I was brought up by my parents who practised equality in every aspect at home and in their jobs. My mother has never stopped working. Growing up seeing her work ethic, dedication and pride, I was determined to have the same. What’s more, it also inspired me to help more women have the choice to pursue careers and offer them the required support to do so. While that is just one of the stepping stones in my journey to setting up The Career Lounge, there is no doubt that the impact of being raised by a working mother is being felt far wider than the little island of Curaçao where my mother has lived and worked all her life.
Since I started with a quote, perhaps I should end with another. This time, quite aptly, I would like to quote the lead actor of Workin’ Moms on Netflix –
“We should go after our dreams and not be apologetic about it, but it’s scary.
Whether you want to work or not, you have to do what makes you a fuller person. You have to love yourself”