Maternal Employment and Children Development
Department of General Studies
1. Due to more women joining the workforce, many families rely on nannies to take care
of their children. What are the advantages and disadvantages to this emerging social
trend? Discuss some possible solutions to overcome the challenges.
Planning and preparing:
You must select at least 2 sources relevant to your chosen topic and create a reference
page using APA format. Ensure your sources are reliable. Wikipedia will not be accepted.
Submit the reference page to your teacher prior to the assessment.
For the report, you must use AT LEAST two sources (bring them to the assessment).
Using in-text citations, you must incorporate two direct AND two indirect quotes using
BOTH sources in your report (with a total of 4 citations). These should be followed by
your personal opinions or comments. Submit all citations to your teacher prior to the
assessment.
Remember, if the information originated from one of your sources and not from you,
you need to either quote it or paraphrase it AND cite it accordingly, otherwise it is
considered plagiarized.
Write a one-page outline as your notes (no sentences or paragraphs) which needs to be
preapproved by your teacher and will be returned to you on the day of assessment. You
will use these notes and your sources to write a report of 500-700 words in class on
Blackboard (with Lockdown Browser) on the assessment day. You will have the whole
class time (110 minutes) to complete this.
Solution
Introduction
The number of entries of women into the workforce has been on the rise, especially
considering the current stage of the twenty first century. Childcare responsibilities have,
therefore, greatly shifted from being more of maternal; and instead, most children are normally
taken care of by nannies. This social trend has raised concerns from majorly politicians and
social critics since the development of children, due to the trend, would be inevitably affected.
To that effect, this paper is focused on giving the advantages and the disadvantages of this new
social trend, and, considering that it is a challenge, discuss possible solutions to it.
Advantages
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (2015), it has not been affirmed
scientifically that children are normally affected when their mothers are working. The
development of a child is, on the contrary influenced by the family’s emotional health in relation
to the working mother. When a child receives the required emotional adjustment and is well
cared for and loved, they would thrive on their wholesome development regardless of whether
the mother is working or not. Additionally, working mothers will still be looked upon by their
children, regardless of the nannies being in charge of their daily care. When they manage to
balance between their parenthood and their job, they consequently make the best role models for
their children.
Disadvantages
According to Hsin and Felfe (2014), there is a lot of literature that links maternal
employment to cognitive development effects on children. This is, specifically more vigorous
when the children are in their early stages of development. During these stages, basically when a
MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT AND CHILDREN DEVELOPMENT 3
child is under the age of five, maternal care is highly needed. It is obviously clear that nannies
cannot provide such kind of care. The effects of the lack of maternal care have gone further to be
linked to poor academic achievements. This is based on claims that, maternal employment
reduces the time that mothers get to spend with their children, which is of uttermost importance
for the development of children. Based on the study conducted by Hsin and Felfe (2014),
working mothers normally find it difficult to balance the time they should spend with their
children with the time they should be at work. In so doing, it could be considered that children,
in this case have gone to the extent of being compared to the jobs of the working mothers.
Possible Solutions
The American Academy of Pediatrics (2015) affirmed that the relationship between child
development and maternal employment is not scientifically developed. Based on this knowledge,
mothers or parents should not let their employment get between them and their children. To
replace for the time that they could have spent with their children, mothers could sacrifice time
set aside for their personal or domestic engagement to be with their children. Additionally, there
should be a trade between quantity and quality in terms of the time mothers spend with their
children. A good illustration is, according to Hsin and Felfe (2014), household mothers could
spend time housekeeping, cooking and cleaning when their children are around. Since a nanny
would have taken care of, such activities, working mothers should, therefore, take time to engage
their children in playing activities, writing their assignments and reading.
Conclusion
With more women joining then workforce, creating a new social trend in terms of child
care, the world has to device ways to ensure that the children efficiently develop without
MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT AND CHILDREN DEVELOPMENT 4
working against women’s employment. Based on research conducted to write this paper, the only
connection established between child development and maternal employment is emotional. It
could, therefore, be overcome by shaping the right emotions for children in working-mother
families. Ultimately, employed mothers should find time for quality engagement with their
children.
MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT AND CHILDREN DEVELOPMENT 5
References
Hsin, A., & Felfe, C. (2014). When does time matter? Maternal employment, children’s time
with parents, and child development. Demography, 51(5), 1867-1894.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4860719/
The American Academy of Pediatrics. (2015). Working Mothers. Retrieved from
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/work-play/Pages/Working-
Mothers.aspx
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