A NEW STUDY by British social researchers contends maternal employment in early childhood is psychologically beneficial for children. The study, which received prominent attention in the British press last week, is a dream come true for the liberal press and policy analysts, supposedly disproving the common sense belief – a belief held for all of human history – that maternal care of very young children is primary and important. The head researcher said children of mothers who do not work were more likely to suffer from social problems and “depression.”

According to The Guardian,

Katherine Rake, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute charity, welcomed the research paper. “This study shows what mothers know intuitively. If you are able to get the balance right, your child and your career can both flourish.”

But this is not what mothers know intuitively. They know they cannot be in two places at the same time. As for those not able “to get the balance right?” Those who place toddlers and infants of necessity in the care of poorly-paid daycare workers? Tough luck. 

The fanfare surrounding the study was noticeably absent of critical thought. In truth, this new study cannot be taken seriously and may actually demonstrate the opposite of what it is believed to prove.

Researchers at University College London, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, tracked 19,000 white children born in 2000 and 2001 who were being followed as part of a larger study. The team looked at the children up until age five, making their sweeping claims even though psychologists and other observers of the human condition widely believe that the psychological effects of early childhood care do not always manifest themselves right away.

The most serious problem with the study, however, is that its results were based on interviews with mothers. Who is likely to report behavior problems in their children: the mother who is with her child all day and is intimately familiar with his behavior or the mother who is away from him all day and may in some cases have a vested interest in believing he is doing better than he is? This fact alone – the reliance on maternal interviews – renders this study at the very least unserious and at the worst, deliberately misleading. The fact that mothers who are not working are more apt to perceive problems may itself be proof of superior maternal care. In any event, mothers themselves are hardly objective observers.

No society prior to the modern era willingly exposed large numbers of children to non-maternal care. Even in societies where children were raised in tribal groups, their own mothers were close at hand. Given the anxiety children typically feel when separated from their mothers, given other studies which have shown increases in aggression among children raised in daycare, and given the weight of history and common sense, the onus of proof for claims that maternal care is not necessary is heavy indeed. Much more than this problematic study would be needed to come to the counter-intuitive conclusion that maternal care for much of the day is unnecessary to young children. 

As for the study’s claim that mothers of young children who do not work are more likely to be depressed, this is only a serious consideration in urging women to work if maternal care is already considered unnecessary. If a study concluded that soldiers were depressed and those soldiers were necessary to a nation’s defense, would researchers conclude the soldiers should go home? Most likely, they would seek relief for their problems in morale. Given the high rate of single mothers in Britain and the widespread view promoted by feminists that maternal care is expendable, it would not be surprising at all if some mothers who do not work are “depressed,” although the use of this word is highly suspect given that it now encompasses every form of psychological discomfort and assumes that a “depression”-free existence is possible.

If serious depression were a normal part of the maternal experience, it is likely the human race would have perished a long time ago.

                                             — Comments —

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

From the moment I became a public critic of the higher education establishment in 1996, I learned to be radically suspicious of the phrase, “studies have shown.” Indeed, I’d nominate any assertion beginning with “studies have shown” or “a study shows” as presumptively untrustworthy and sinister. The phrase takes its place with other iterations that gather together under the label, Orwellian.

Jeff W. writes:

My translation: “It is very important that mothers of small children be in the workforce, not only to drive down wages so as to enrich huge corporations, but also to pay taxes. Furthermore women who stay home with children are often incapable of going into debt. Working women who incur debts produce larger profits for banks, as well as aiding the consumer economy in general.”

One thing that these academics ignore is that there aren’t enough jobs. So even as government-employed academics say, “It’s scientifically proven that you should go back to work,” government’s ineptness in private sector job creation makes their advice impossible to follow for many people.

A reader writes: 

You wrote, Given the high rate of single mothers in Britain… 

That is another telling point. If many of the children in the study are being raised by single mothers (how many of them grew up in broken homes themselves and don’t know what “normal” should even look like), those children are already handicapped by not having fathers, and perhaps such children appear to function better in daycare than being home with mothers who have already had relationship problems, along with who-knows-what other problems. 

Ghetto children may well do better in daycare than at home, and the welfare society and breakdown in morals has done a great job of turning the middle class towards lower class dysfunction. 

The experts quoted on this site give another view.

Laura writes:

I did not read the entire study, which is not available for reasonable cost online. According to Ann McMunn, the lead researcher, the study says children of single mothers fare worse overall than those from married homes, but in her comments about working mothers in general she does not indicate how the prevalence of single mothers would have affected their conclusions about maternal employment. Obviously, a child of a poor single mother would be better off if his mother was working.

But McMunn is clear that maternal employment is not just a financial matter, but a question of better psychological health for all children, including those with married parents. She told The Telegraph:

“One message would be that the best situation for children was two parent families where both parents were working,” she said.

“Maternal employment and parental employment is good for families and children.

“If we can find ways to support families so that both parents can work and still combine child rearing and family life, then it is probably going to have a positive effect for children in terms of their socio-emotional behaviour.”

Nathan writes:

“The most serious problem with the study, however, is that its results were based on interviews with mothers”

This is much like the study on children raised by lesbians. It primarily used interviews with the ‘parents’ of the children. Not surprisingly it concluded such children ‘adapt better’ (whatever that means) than children of heterosexual parents.

The problem you’ve identified is a type of ‘self-report bias,’ a well known methodological problem in the social sciences. The fact that these studies can be trumpeted as the latest and greatest ‘findings’ – without any mention of their obviously flawed methodology, shows that we are dealing with an ideological agenda here and not science under any meaning of the term.

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