Harvard Business School has released results of a study investigating how children are affected by having a mother who works outside the home. According to an essay in the New York Times by Claire Cain Miller, the study found that “daughters of working mothers completed more years of education, were more likely to be employed and in supervisory roles and earned higher incomes.
There’s good news about sons of working moms, too. The study found sons of working mothers “spent seven and a half more hours a week on child care and 25 more minutes on housework.” The essay quotes finding of additional research and references Racquel Fernandez, an economics professor at New York University, who views the new study as “part of a shift away from focusing on whether working mothers hurt children and toward a richer understanding of the relationship between work and family.”