The days when mothers stayed at home cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children and performing all of the household chores are long gone. Mothers are working outside of the home now more than ever before. Deciding whether or not to return to work after delivering a baby is still one of the hardest struggles that a mother has to face.
Statistics show that mothers with younger children are less likely to be in the labor force than mothers with older children. In 2012, the labor force participation rate of mothers with children under 6 years old was 64.8 percent while the workforce participation rate for mothers with children between 6 and 17 years old was 5.1 percent (“Employment”). No differences exited between the participation rates of married and single mothers.
It has been said that a large number of women began to join the workforce and work outside of the household for their first time during World War II. While the soldiers were away defending the country, women needed to work to keep the country running in patriotic support of the war (Goldin and Olivetti). Since that time, women with families have continued to join the workforce without being frowned upon or considered to be radicals.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate, or the percent of the population working or looking for work, for all mothers with children under age 18 was 70.5 percent in 2012 (“Employment”). The rates should working mothers who actually had a spouse present were less than the rates of working mothers who were either widowed, divorced, or otherwise unmarried.
Some mothers return to work out of necessity. They have to work in order to financially support their families and help ensure that the famil...
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There are several mothers that are extremely successful such as Michelle Obama, Angelina Jolie and Maria Shriver. There are various advantages and disadvantages about working as a mother but which is better for the child's sake. This is difficult to determine.
Works Cited
Baum II, Charles L. Does Early Maternal Employment Harm Child Development? Tennessee: Middle Tennessee State University, Print.
Bernal, Raquel. "The Effect of Material Employment and Child Care on Children's Cognitive Development." In ternational Economic Review 49.4 (2008): n. pag. Print.
"Employment Characteristics of Families 2012." Bureau of Labor Statistics [U.S. Department of Labor] 26 April 2013: Print.
Goldin, Claudia, and Claudia Olivetti. "Shocking Labor Sup ply: A Reassessment of the Role of World War II on Wo men’s Labor Supply." American Economic Review: 257-62. Web.
When all the men were across the ocean fighting a war for world peace, the home front soon found itself in a shortage for workers. Before the war, women mostly depended on men for financial support. But with so many gone to battle, women had to go to work to support themselves. With patriotic spirit, women one by one stepped up to do a man's work with little pay, respect or recognition. Labor shortages provided a variety of jobs for women, who became street car conductors, railroad workers, and shipbuilders. Some women took over the farms, monitoring the crops and harvesting and taking care of livestock. Women, who had young children with nobody to help them, did what they could do to help too. They made such things for the soldiers overseas, such as flannel shirts, socks and scarves.
In older times, many women had to leave their job due to newly motherhood and having to care for their child, but that number has dropped significantly.
Paid maternity leave can increase female labor force participation by making it easier for women
However, the demands put on parents by the workplace can make spending time with the family a difficult task. The technological revolution has made it possible for businesses to assign work after hours which could cut into family time. Balancing family and work is even more difficult for new parents. They must learn what it means to be a parent, maintain a healthy marriage, and continue to provide for their family. According to Kunz (2013), parents experience stress and exhaustion following the birth of their child. Kunz also mentions the responsibility parents have to aid in every aspect of their child’s development. Parents are being pulled in one direction by their infant and another by their boss. This strain can be especially difficult for new mothers who want to breastfeed. Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for 6 months (who.int, 2017). If a woman returns to work quickly after giving birth, she will have difficulty breastfeeding and is at a greater risk for postpartum depression (cbsnews.com, 2017). The need for time to bond with an infant, encourage healthy development of the child, and to rest from child birth are all reasons why parental leave should be offered to all people. The need for time off after the birth of a child is not exclusive to one group. Parental leave should be offered to all types of families and business’ and the government should offer adequate assistance
It has been found that the Earned Income Tax Credit increases the labor supply of single mothers as it provides a higher degree of income which compensates for the losses associated with child care and other factors. The labor supply of single-mothers is a difficult thing to put into perspective, as the decisions that go into a single-mother’s decision on how m...
In the United States, a third of mothers return to work within three months of childbirth compared to only five percent in other industrialized nations such as Germany, Sweden, and the UK (Berger, Hill, and Waldfogel 29). The rapid return of mothers to the workforce sparked interest in the effects the return has on the child’s behavior and health. The experiments measure the child’s health and development by the amount of time the mother breastfeeds, the immunizations the child receives, their score on a vocabulary test, behavioral problems, and the amount of doctor’s visits (Berger, Hill, and Waldfogel 36). Mothers who returned to work within twelve weeks were less likely to breastfeed their child, provide as many doctor’s visits and immunizations, and there were more noticeable behavioral problems at age four (Berger, Hill, and Waldfogel 39-42). The data is significantly lower for mother’s who work full time within twelve weeks after maternity leave (Berger, Hill, and Waldfogel 43). Therefore, it is proved that the duration of maternity leave is directly correlated with children development and
The effects on individuals has thus far revealed only part of the whole picture. When focus is shifted to workers with family situations, reports are revealing that time constraints are also connected to the shared working time between parents in households, with dual-earner based households and single parents meeting intensified challenges. Among these parents, women are even today continuing to take on the biggest share of family based responsibility and caretaking. This is thus making women workers, or single fathers, feel even more pressure than their workforce counterparts who have no children. The separation between workers who have no children and mothers or fathers with caretaking responsibilities has led to yet another growing divide that demands a change in policy that will address the specific conditions of workers and their families.
Men are likely to get hired if they have children and tend to get paid more. In contrast, women are less likely to get hired even though they have more quality and children. This is when the gender inequality come in. In this article “The Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus” the author presented the role and the impact between the roles of the genders. Michelle Budig, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst put it this way, “The inequality of gender role reveals when men get paid high for having children and women pay the biggest price for the low income” (Qtd. in Miller). According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, 71 percent of mothers are with their children working at home and 40 percent are the primary bread winner (Pew Research Center). In this perspective of women working at home and men working in career shift the qualification between them. The inequality is that employer sees the father as a commit worker and a mother as a distraction in workplaces because women have extra hours of work to do at home with their children and house chores. Claire Miller states that, “one of the worst career moves a women can make is to have children” (Claire Miller). As for the women in the United States, there are a lot of negative impact for them if they decide to have babies. The quality for them shrink to the corner while men hold the advantage of having
“Ninety percent of single-parent families are headed by females. Not surprisingly, single mothers with dependent children have the highest rate of poverty across all demographic groups” (Olson & Banyard, 1993, p. 50-56). “Approximately 60 percent of U.S. children living in mother-only families are impoverished, compared with only 11 percent of two-parent families. The rate of poverty is even higher in African-American single-parent families, in which two out of every three children are poor” (Kirby, n.d., Single-parent Families in Poverty section, para.2).
Modern moms in western culture have a much different role to play than simply caring for their children and their house. According to statistics Canada, 72.9% of women with children under the age of 16 are participating in the workforce. This means that women have adapted to a new role where they must balance work, social, and home life and face significant consequences if they are unable to succeed. However, this role shift is almost expected of women in our culture. With such a great majority of women in the workforce, those who have chosen to remain at home are questioned on their decision and criticized by their peers for not being “independent women”.
“The logic of intensive mothering, particularly as it applies to middle- and upper-middle-class mothers, therefore seems to be the greatest barrier to solving the problems detailed in this book….Nearly all mothers, for instance, feel they ought to be at home with their children, ought to want to be at home with their children, and ought to be their children’s primary parent.” Pg. 201 This quote from Untangling the Mother-Nanny Knot emphasizes on the fact that these working mothers need to let go a of that temperament that they must keep the nanny, their spouse and anyone else away from their child at any cost. Because they are not able to be there for their kids they can rest their mind knowing that the person with their child when they are not present is someone that will love them and care for them no matter what, and all the working mother must do is let go just a
“Four in 10 American households with children under age 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census and polling data released Wednesday. This share, the highest on record, has quadrupled since 1960.”
A single parent household has been stereotyped as a place where women are the main contributors. They are also women who don 't have or hold a job and rely on the government to provide for themselves and for their kid(s). However, from personal experience it can be the opposite in some states. In fact, "single mothers are more than twice as likely to be unemployed (12 percent) compared with mothers in married-couple families (5 percent); and the majority of employed single mothers—59 percent—are working in retail, service, and administrative jobs that typically provide low wages and few benefits" (Mather,
As it was noted above, the number of working mothers in the U. S. during the past thirty years increased dramatically and there are no signs of decrease in this number in the near future. There are many different reasons for mothers to choose employment rather than staying at home. Some mothers make conscious choice to be employed. In other words there is no restrictions on type of employment or amount of income it brings. In this case, satisfaction and self-fulfillment from job will have positive effect on how these mothers raise their children. However, some of the mothers are forced in to being employed due to being the only provider to the family, single parent or other consequences. The forced maternal employment causes rise in the level of mother’s stress and has negative influence on quality time that mother spends with children. Nevertheless, no matter what is the reason for employment, all of the working mothers face a problem when it comes to balance work and family life. Having to balance work and family life is complex problem and parents can use all the help they can get to solve it. It is one of the society’s responsibilities to provide help to families in raising children into adequate adults. As a result, there is a need for changes in society in order to accommodate recent changes in family structure due to increase in maternal employment.
Men and women are working harder than ever to survive in today's tough economy. It's a big challenge for low and middle class families to survive. To meet growing demands, it's getting difficult for families to depend on one income. To contribute to family income, mothers are coming forward and joining the workforce. Working mothers are the one who takes care of the family and work outside the home. They may be a single mothers or married mothers. Working mothers usually work to support their family financially. Some of the mothers work, just because they are more career-oriented. Working mothers may work part time or full time. Women are now the primary or only income source for 40% of US households with kids, according to a new Pew survey (Wang, Parker and Taylor, ch. 1). They play a major role in raising their family and doing household chores. There are many reasons that why mothers should work.