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In 2015, preliminary results of a groundbreaking study found that the daughters of employed mothers often perform better in their eventual careers than the daughters of stay-at-home moms.
Now the full study has been released, and it brings even more good news for the children of working moms: They wind up just as happy in adulthood as the children of moms who stayed home.
Harvard Business School Professor Kathleen McGinn hopes the findings bring a big sigh of relief for guilt-ridden mothers who either have to hold down a job to make ends meet or simply choose to work outside the home while raising their children.“People still have this belief that when moms are employed, it’s somehow detrimental to their children,” says McGinn, the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration. “So our finding that maternal employment doesn’t affect kids’ happiness in adulthood is really important.”“As we gradually understand that our children aren’t suffering, I hope the guilt will go away” This isn’t about raising happier kids, she continues. “When women choose to work, it’s a financial and personal choice.
Women should make that choice based on whether they want or need to work, not based on whether they are harming their children—because they are not.