A piece by Tom Whipple in today’s Times:
Mothers of children under the age of three are less happy if they stay in full-time employment, a study has found.
The study is the latest to investigate the consequences of recent social revolutions in women’s employment. “More than 50 years ago, Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique challenged the image of harmonious middle-class domesticity and advanced the idea that homemaking makes women unhappy,” [J4MB: Well, that would be the authoritative work on women’s happiness in relation to family life and paid employment] writes Dana Hamplová, from the Czech Academy of Sciences, in the Journal of Happiness Studies. “Yet, even after decades of discussions, the question of whether working mothers enjoy better subjective quality of life than stay-at-home mothers is still unresolved.”
The survey of almost 5,000 mothers from 30 European countries looked at responses to the questions “How happy would you say you are?” and “How satisfied are you with your life?” The study found a small but significant increase in happiness among mothers who were not working, compared with full-time workers. In a comparison with part-timers the difference was not significant.
Dr Hamplová said there were several hypotheses about the effect of staying in work. According to some, having multiple roles in life enables people to be more content. However, particularly for those with young children, there is a competing theory that parents can become overloaded with commitments.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
I’ve said this loads of times, but these parents (usually mothers) should be helped out of work to free up jobs for people who will prioritise them, and we need to go back to the days when men’s pay was supported at the expense of women’s to enable them to support a family.
Were they allowed to do so, I expect a lot of SMEs and even big companies would rather write out a cheque for twelve months’ money and secure a resignation than support the year’s leave and potential part time return.
Certainly in Cambridge I reckon Boots have lost a lot of custom because of women working around school – you try to get served before 9.30 or after 3.00 while in Superdrug round the corner they employ school leavers and there are no problems.
In the dying days of the Coalition Govt Cameron’s ideas man commissioned a report into employment law which came up with the idea of the compensated no fault dismissal, basically a personal redundancy. However, as ever the Govt bottled it and specifically excluded any issues arising from a protected characteristic from it – otherwise without doubt those who would be paid off in this way would be pregnant women and those who had protracted absence due to mental health issues.
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Women know that their children need them most in the first few years of life, and when they can’t see them, their lizard hindbrain starts worrying about sabre-tooth tigers etc. When the kids get older the father becomes more important. Headlines should read Science Again Confirms Obvious on this one.
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