If you’re a new mum, deciding when to go back to your job can be a difficult and stressful decision. But according to new research conducted at Colombia University in the USA, mums can go back work just months after giving birth, without their babies’ wellbeing and development suffering.
The new research might come as a breath of fresh air for mums who have been previously told that choosing to go back to work has a negative impact on their children. In the past, the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University said that children whose mums returned to work within the first three years were slow learners.
Plus, a Unicef report in 2008 recommended that new mums should stay at home for the first year of their baby’s life, or risk their child’s development. And new mums are feeling the strain of this difficult issue – the Pew Research Centre in Washington reported that anxiety about returning to work after having a baby is rife amongst women.
For this new study, American researchers looked at 1,000 children aged up to seven years old in 10 different parts of the USA. Everything from family relationships and household income to the child’s vocabulary, reading level and school test scores were assessed and it was found that working mums had better mental health, healthier relationships with their family and improved their family income – all of which supported healthy child development.
And that’s not all. Children with working mums benefit from high-quality childcare outside of the home, because parents could afford it.
However, mums going back to work early did produce some ill effects – such as children having less interaction with their parents and doing worse in ability tests at school. But, controversially, researchers claim that these negative effects are cancelled out by the advantages of having working mums.
But there’s good news for mums who work part time –women who worked under 30 hours a week enjoyed a happy home, increased income and great childcare without losing out on any precious mother-baby bonding time.
Picture kindly from here
