A Comparison Study of Certain Aspects of Development, Achievement, and Adjustment Between Children of Working Mothers and Children of Non-working Mothers

With the ever present change in our society more and more mothers are leaving their homes to seek employment. While some women must of necessity work outside the home, the number of those who work for other reasons, such as satisfaction, companionship, and relief from boredom, is becoming greater daily. The national manpower council in its publication, Womanpower, reported the impact of mothers working on the welfare of their children has probably received more widespread attention than any other issue resulting from the increased number of women in the labor market. If the overall development of the child is best nurtured in the warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with the mother, as child psychiatrists believe, the writer feels that substitute care outside the home or even within the home is something less than desirable. The writer being the mother of two pre-school children, was concerned about the children of mothers employed outside the home. The writer’s purpose was to determine the effects of maternal employment upon the child’s development as a whole person. One outstanding limitations of this study was the probability that the effects would be small and difficult to attribute to maternal employment. This research was limited to children of parents who were living together, as separation, divorce, and death of the father would involve an entirely different set of problems and effects concerning the children and the activation for the mother’s working