A new study from the Harvard Business School finds that daughters of working moms are more successful in the workplace compared to daughters of mothers who didn’t work.
Overall, the study found that daughters of working moms were likely to earn up to 23 percent more and be in more supervisory positions that held more responsibility. The study also found that sons whose mothers worked were more likely to contribute more to the household, by doing chores or providing childcare.
“There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother,” Harvard professor and researcher Kathleen McGinn told HuffingtonPost Canada. “The link between home and the workplace is becoming more and more critical as we have two-wage-earning families.”
The research was conducted by studying 50,000 people from 24 developed countries and found that children under 14 whose mother’s worked, either full-time or part-time, for at least a year, were less likely to conform to traditional gender roles of male breadwinners and female homemakers.
Researchers suggest that this is because working mothers act as role models for their children, showing there is a role for women in both public and private spheres.
“We weren’t interested in whether your mom was an intense professional, but rather whether you had a role model who showed you that women work both inside and outside the home. We wanted to see how that played out,” said McGinn.
Researchers also noted that the number of women in the workforce has been declining, because women are choosing not to work or, as researchers suggest, because of a lack of available jobs since the recession.
Either way it’s important to know that whether you stay at home or not, a woman’s choice to do whatever she wants with her career is her choice and being a mom to her kids in which ever she wants will always be the best choice.
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