The Effects of Early Maternal Employment on the Cognitive Development of Children in Fragile Families in the United States

Abstract

In my thesis, I analyzed the effect of maternal employment on children’s cognitive development, as measured by their verbal, reading, and math abilities at age nine. I used a sample of children from primarily low income, single mother households in large U.S. cities in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. This question is particularly relevant because of the growth in single motherhood in the United States and the rise in maternal employment among mothers with young children. My results indicated that the full effect of maternal employment, some of which occurs through the additional income that employment generates, is positive and significant for the verbal, reading, and math abilities of the nine-year-old children in my sample. When interaction terms are taken into account, maternal employment has positive effects on the cognitive development of children whose mothers are single, have relatively low income, or have at most a high school education, but a negative effect on children who live in two-parent households, have relatively high income, or whose mothers have at least some college education. These results supported my hypothesis that maternal employment would be beneficial to the cognitive development of children from lower socioeconomic status families, but detrimental to children in higher socioeconomic status families.