For the child packed into her car seat every morning, the recent headlined study on working mothers may have a life-changing impact. Sadly, this study has gotten plenty of attention but little cautious analysis.
The Boston Globe proclaimed: ''Study says working mothers don't cause children harm.'' The Washington Post: ''Mother's employment works for children.'' And almost every news program echoed the press release of the American Psychological Association: ''New longitudinal study finds that having a working mother does no significant harm to children.''
Time to get out the briefcase? Not exactly.
The headlines have little to do with the text of the articles and even less to do with the real findings of the research. The danger is that questioning parents will be falsely reassured by this sloppy reporting. We expect more accountability from our medical writers, but apparently not our ''child and family'' reporters. Is less at stake?
The study creating the breathless headlines is by Elizabeth Harvey, a psychologist currently at the University of Massachusetts. It was published in this month's issue of Developmental Psychology. In this study, working mothers' children scored equal to children of at-home mothers on cognitive and emotional measures.
Harvey proudly announced, ''Being employed is not going to harm children'' - apparently comfortable basing her comments for policy-makers on data collected from a decidedly unrepresentative sample of women.
Consider the demographics of the mothers studied: The mothers involved were twice as likely to belong to a minority group. They were twice as likely to be single mothers. Their family income was less than half the national norm. And they were significantly below average in intelligence.
Given this, it's reasonable to question the quality of the less-advantaged child's home and neighborhood. For instance, one of the most powerful indexes of child developmental risk -no father in the home - is shared by half of the children in the study.
Harvey admits these potentially significant ''background variables'' may have been omitted. Buried at the back of her research, Harvey herself states that these ''results may not be generalizable to older, higher socioeconomic status parents.''
Should concerned parents take the leap of faith required to extrapolate this data to the general working public? Reporters have not hesitated to do so, but sensible parents should.
In fact, the real news in the study may be the fact that a mother's employment may vary across socioeconomic lines. This has policy implications that may not sit well with many critics of welfare-to-work efforts.
The positive effect of a mother working may counteract the negative effect of separation from the child -particularly in disadvantaged circumstances.
However, when a married, middle-income mother is able to keep a child at home in a good environment - a mother's employment may be a bigger loss to the child. Unfortunately, we don't have enough studies looking at the impact of work on children of high-functioning, high-income mothers.
This study also found that what is good for a poor child - dad working more hours, mom working, early parental employment during a child's life - has the exact opposite developmental effect on high-income children.
For example, when poor fathers are working more hours, children's cognitive and academic achievement scores are enhanced. But for higher- income fathers, increased working hours led to lower cognitive and academic achievement scores.
It is dangerous to use science for political agendas or personal absolution. But this may be a reason for the media circus.
''Working mothers have a lot of guilt,'' Harvey said. She hopes this study will ''alleviate some of that guilt.''
That's probably why the media seized on Harvey's conclusion that there's ''no difference'' between children whose mothers were employed or not employed. The phrase ''no difference'' plays to the heart of Americans' real concern: Will my children be OK if both of us work full time?
But experts agree that psychological tests are limited and often inexact. For instance, the ''self-esteem'' measure is a self-report survey, meant to assess confidence about school and self-worth. As any therapist or probation officer will point out, even sociopathic teens are likely to feel ''good about themselves.''
Is the study assessing capacity to love, intimacy, commitment, spiritual strength or independent morality? No. Do we care about these things? I hope so. Our consciences, our common sense and our children themselves tell us how important our presence is at home. The real lesson of the study is to knock off the simplistic, dangerous headlines.
Diane Fisher holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and is a national advisory board member of the Independent Women's Forum.
Comments on this posting?
Click here to post a public comment on the Trash Talk Bulletin Board.
Click here to send a private comment to the Junkman.