Mothers' Jobs Have Modest Effect on Children

By Linda Jacobson

Whether children are harmed by having mothers who work outside the home is a topic of great debate.

But a new study, published this month in the journal Developmental Psychology , concludes that the negative effects on children aren't very great. In fact, the researcher who conducted the study concludes that some children benefit from the income that their mothers bring to the household.

Elizabeth Harvey, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, analyzed data from the long-running National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor, to determine how parental employment affects children's academic achievement,...