GettyA woman only needs to announce her pregnancy and the inquiries begin: What are you going to do after the baby? Will you work or stay home? For so long the implication behind that question, when directed toward a woman for whom staying home is even a fiscally possible option, has been this: Are you going to choose you or your kids?
Old fashioned as it may sound, the belief that stay-at-home moms are better for their kids is one onto which many Americans cling. Recent research from PEW tells us that a third of us think that mothers who don't work are best for their children, while just 16 percent say a mother who works full time is ideal.
Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowStudies on the Working Mom long assumed that she is bad for her kids—all that remained was figuring out just how bad. Now some social scientists are flipping these assumptions on their head, looking instead at the way working moms might actually benefit their kids. And their findings are something to celebrate.
Leading a study for Harvard Business School's new Gender Initiative, professor Dr. Kathleen McGinn found that girls with working mothers have more fruitful careers; they also earn more and climb higher than their peers who had stay-at-home mothers. This means that if you want your daughter to be a #bossbabe, the best thing you can do for her is get to work.
More From ELLE

Tell us a little bit about the study.

We used data collected by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) across 24 countries in Latin America, Europe, North America, and Asia to study the influence of maternal employment on adult children's work and home outcomes. Looking at survey data from over 20,000 women, we found that being raised by a mother who worked outside the home is associated with positive outcomes for women at work and at home. Daughters of mothers who worked outside the home for pay at any point before the daughter was 14 years old are on average more likely to be employed, hold supervisory responsibility at work, earn higher income, and spend fewer hours engaged in household work each week than daughters of mothers who never worked outside the home for pay when the daughter was under 14 years old. That said, mothers' employment does not significantly affect the number of hours adult women spend weekly caring for family members.

What is the impact on boys?

For men, being raised by a working mother doesn't influence outcomes at work, but is significantly related to time spent caring for family members. Compared to sons of mothers who never worked outside the home when the son was under 14 years old, sons of mothers who worked outside the home spend more hours caring for family members each week, on average.

Did these findings surprise you?

It's straightforward that daughters of working moms are more likely to work themselves. But the increase in likelihood of supervisory responsibility for daughters who chose to work surprised us. This suggests that working moms are signaling more than "it's normal for women to work outside the home"; they're also signaling that it's normal for women to be powerful, to be in charge. This hasn't been explored before, as far as I know.

Any sense of why this is the case? Is it the role model effect, or something more?

We've run a series of analyses to pinpoint why we see this pattern of results–positive career outcomes for women and positive outcomes at home for men. It's a role model effect along two dimensions: Working moms affect their children's gender attitudes, their beliefs about behaviors that are "right" and "normal" for women. We see evidence of this in measures of gender attitudes, too.
"Adult children of working moms have much more egalitarian gender attitudes."
than adult children of moms who stayed home full time. Working moms also model a set of skills, ways of managing an active life at home and at work. We're currently investigating the relationship between working moms and their children's work/home coping skills as adults.

And these findings aren't just limited to Western countries and the well-off, right?

The men and women we studied come from 24 countries around the world. In each country, the surveys were completed by a representative sample of the population in that country. Very few of the respondents are "well off" in the sense of having incomes more than one standard deviation above average income within the country; similarly, very few have incomes more than one standard deviation below average income within the country.

I can imagine some more traditional types raising an eyebrow over the absence of insight into the emotional well-being of the daughters of working mothers. As recent Pew studies show us, many still hold onto this idea that mothers who don't work are best. How would you respond to those that might say, Sure, these women are doing better at work, but are they are living happy, stable lives?

I find it interesting that these perceptions persist. Over the last 20 years there have been many studies exploring the effects of working moms on their children's well being. The consistent takeaway across these studies is that children of working moms, when they're children, are higher achieving and have fewer behavioral problems than children whose moms are not employed. These effects are strongest for children from low income families. While the findings from past work suggest daughters of working moms are more likely to lead happy, stable lives as adults, they don't look at happiness directly, and they don't study the children as adults. In our own study, we can look at self-reported happiness of adult children of working moms, relative to adult children of moms who didn't work outside the home. We find that being raised by a mom who works outside the home has no effects on adult daughters' or sons' self-reported happiness. Controlling for education, employment, income, and other demographic variables, children of working moms and children of stay-at-home moms report equal levels of happiness as adults—not happier, not less happy.

There seems to have been a shift among social scientists in how they approach working moms. For so long it seemed like the goal was to discover how bad they are for children, now we are starting to hear how good it is for them. In short, we, the Working Moms, are no longer assumed to be a problem. What's going on?

Across most of the countries we studied between 2002 and 2012, gender attitudes are becoming more egalitarian over time. As people come to see working women as "normal," working women face fewer barriers at work and in society. So, working moms today have a different experience than working moms 25 years ago; as a result, their children are likely to experience their moms differently too. Another thing that's changed, though not evenly across countries, and not sufficiently for all income levels, is the quality of childcare available for families in which both parents, or a single parent, work.

Do you have children? Did these findings offer you any personal relief?

I have one daughter. She's 23, and she's a rock star. We're our own, mini, mutual admiration society.

What do you hope women will take away from this?

Whether you stay at home full time or work outside the home part time or full time, parents do their children a favor by helping them see women and men as equals. Giving your children opportunities to see and know people—men and women—who make lots of different choices at work and at home will help your children see lots of options possible in their own lives.