A Longitudinal Study of Maternal Labour Force Participation and Child Academic Achievement

Abstract

The associations between maternal labour force participation and child academic achievement were examined in a birth cohort of New Zealand children who have been studied from birth to age 18. The results of this analysis suggested the presence of small associations between the extent of maternal labour force participation and scores on standardised tests of word recognition, reading comprehension, and mathematical reasoning. Similar associations were found between maternal labour force participation and success in school leaving examinations. These associations arose predominantly because children whose mothers worked had better performance than children whose mothers who had not worked in paid employment. However, patterns of maternal labour force participation were also related to a series of family and child factors including: maternal education, family socioeconomic status, race, birth order, family composition, early mother-child interaction, and child IQ. Adjustment for these factors reduced associations between maternal labour force participation and academic achievement to the point of practical and statistical nonsignificance. These results were found to be robust and similar conclusions were found for (1) a range of measures of maternal labour force participation, and (2) subgroups of the cohort defined by gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or family type.

Study Habits of Secondary School Students of Working and NonWorking Mothers

“…The findings of the present study are partly agreed with the earlier findings of Sharma (1986) [7], Harwod & Feruson (2000) [8], Akhani et al (1999) [9] and Attri (2013) [10] who reported that some of the areas of the study habits are affected by maternal employment and some areas are not.…”

Deviant partner involvement and offending risk in early adulthood

“…This analysis suggested that there were small but statistically detectable tendencies (p < .05) for this sample to under-represent children from family backgrounds characterised by early motherhood, single parenthood, Maori or Pacific Island ethnicity, lower socioeconomic status, and lower maternal educational achievement. Whilst these results suggest some bias within the present sample towards the under-representation of children from socially disadvantaged family backgrounds, it is unlikely that this bias will materially influence results since previous efforts to correct for non-random sample loss have shown these effects to be negligible (Fergusson, Horwood, & Lloyd, 1991;Horwood & Fergusson, 1999).…”

Parent, child, and contextual predictors of childhood physical punishment

“…There were however, small but statistically detectable tendencies ( p50.05) for this sample to under-represent children from families characterized by early motherhood, single parenthood, and lower socio-economic status. Whilst these results suggest some bias within the present sample towards the under-representation of children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, it is unlikely that this bias will materially influence results since previous efforts to correct for non-random sample loss have shown these effects to be negligible (Fergusson and Lloyd, 1991;Horwood and Fergusson, 1999).…”