Working parents often command considerable respect from their children, because they demonstrate the worthy characteristics of industriousness, social compatibility, self reliance, maturity, intelligence and responsibility. Because children identify with their parents, the feedback from such positive influences tends to be positive as well because many of these positive characteristics are imparted upon them.
A child who observes the competent coping abilities of a working parent learns in turn, how to cope with life’s problems. At first this may translate into an improved sense of self-reliance and independence for the child as well as an improvement in the ability to be socially compatible. As the child grows, it can further render a child more emotionally mature and hence more competent in dealing with responsibility and task completion such as is needed for school work and extra curricular activities.
A study by Hoffman in 1974 corroborates these observations and therefore one can conclude that, in general, the working parent provides a very positive role model for the child in a family where both parents are employed. (Hoffman 18) Attitudes of working parents pertaining to achievement, responsibility and independence affect both male and female offspring. There seems to be more beneficial effects felt by daughters of working women than by sons; however, this neither implies nor concludes that males do not receive some positive effects due to maternal employment. (Spitz 606) Hoffman has concluded that daughters of employed mothers tend to be more independent.
Further studies have demonstrated that a mother’s employment status and occupation tends to be a good predictor of the outcome of the working mother’s daughter, since daughters tend to follow in their mother’s footsteps. Typically, working mothers held higher educational aspirations for their children and furthermore, most daughters tend to achieve higher grades in school. (Spitz 606) It is also important to note that both male and female children acquire more egalitarian sex role attitudes when both parents work. Boys with working mothers showed better social and personal skills than boys of non-working mothers. On a negative note, middle-class boys tend to do worse in school when their mothers worked.
One can conclude that males may be negatively affected when their mothers work, but males and, to a greater degree, females are affected in many positive ways with regards to achievement in independence and responsibility. Adequate child care is a necessity for parents who both work. It is often complicated to balance both the parent’s and child’s needs when using child care. However, it may be possible to satisfy the demands of both if forethought and prudence are applied. Many cultures worldwide realize that a child’s nurturing can be acquired from a variety of sources including both adults and older children. Children can be as comfortable with grandparents, neighbors, professional child care attendants, and babysitters as they are with their own mothers. In fact, a variety of sources for nurturing not only provide the child with a variety of role models, such as in the case of grandparents, but it also provides them the ability to compare these role models and to choose the appropriate characteristics which they will adopt as their own.
Working parents are in a good position to prepare their children for that type of lifestyle. Healthy family dynamics including team work, sharing, and responsibility, are more easily adopted when they are already familiar. As far as quality of parenting, it has been observed that women who are highly satisfied with their roles whether they work or not, display higher levels of warmth and acceptance than do dissatisfied mothers and these positive feelings are reflected in their ! relationships with their siblings.
Finally, when considering quantity of time spent on parenting when both parents work, it has been concluded by Hoffman in 1974 that there is no consistent evidence of deprivation felt by children of employed mother’s. In fact, mothers who were better educated and employed outside the home spent more time with their children even at the expense of their own leisure and sleep time. (Hoffman 76) Hoffman also proposes that the time spent on employment simply substitutes for time previously spent on needless or less important household tasks which can be performed by others or not at all. Researchers question the validity of measuring the number of hours a mother spends with her children. Hoffman found that while working mothers spent less time with their children , the time spent with them was more likely to be in direct contact with them. Mothers who are at home full time spend only 5% of their time in direct in! teraction with their children. (Hoffman 75) Employed mothers spend about the same time reading to, playing with and otherwise paying attention to their children as do mothers who stay at home. (Hoffman 76) Because society has changed, the family’s function within society has changed as well. Parental roles have been modified to meet these changes. Today, the family’s most important task is to provide emotional security in a vast and impersonal world.
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