Learning From Mum: Cross-National Evidence Linking Maternal Employment and Adult Children’s Outcomes

Kathleen L. McGinn; Mayra Ruiz Castro; Elizabeth Long Lingo

Article | Work, Employment and Society | June 2019

Learning From Mum: Cross-National Evidence Linking Maternal Employment and Adult Children’s Outcomes

by Kathleen L. McGinn, Mayra Ruiz Castro and Elizabeth Long Lingo

Abstract

Analyses relying on two international surveys from over 100,000 men and women across 29 countries explore the relationship between maternal employment and adult daughters’ and sons’ employment and domestic outcomes. In the employment sphere, adult daughters, but not sons, of employed mothers are more likely to be employed and, if employed, are more likely to hold supervisory responsibility, work more hours and earn higher incomes than their peers whose mothers were not employed. In the domestic sphere, sons raised by employed mothers spend more time caring for family members and daughters spend less time on housework. Analyses provide evidence for two mechanisms: gender attitudes and social learning. Finally, findings show contextual influences at the family and societal levels: family-of-origin social class moderates effects of maternal employment and childhood exposure to female employment within society can substitute for the influence of maternal employment on daughters and reinforce its influence on sons.

Keywords: female labor force participation; gender attitudes; household labor; maternal employment; Social Class; social learning theory; Social mobility; Employment; Gender; Attitudes; Household; Labor; Learning; Outcome or Result;

Format: Print

Find at Harvard Read Now

Citation:

McGinn, Kathleen L., Mayra Ruiz Castro, and Elizabeth Long Lingo. "Learning From Mum: Cross-National Evidence Linking Maternal Employment and Adult Children’s Outcomes." Work, Employment and Society 33, no. 3 (June 2019): 374–400.

This teaching plan serves as a supplement to the cases “Chief: Role for Carolyn Childers,” “Chief: Role for Lindsay Kaplan,” and “Scaling at Chief.”

Article | Quarterly Journal of Economics | May 2020

Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment

Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low and Kathleen McGinn

Using a randomized control trial, we examine whether offering adolescent girls nonmaterial resources—specifically, negotiation skills—can improve educational outcomes in a low-income country. In so doing, we provide the first evidence on the effects of an intervention that increased noncognitive, interpersonal skills during adolescence. Long-run administrative data shows that negotiation training significantly improved educational outcomes over the next three years. The training had greater effects than two alternative treatments (offering girls a safe physical space with female mentors and offering girls information about the returns to education), suggesting that negotiation skills themselves drive the effect. Further evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment, which simulates parents’ educational investment decisions, and a midline survey suggests that negotiation skills improved girls’ outcomes by moving households’ human capital investments closer to the efficient frontier. This is consistent with an incomplete contracting model, where negotiation allows daughters to strategically cooperate with parents.

Keywords: Negotiation; Competency and Skills; Training; Age; Gender; Education; Investment; Outcome or Result; Developing Countries and Economies;

Citation:

Ashraf, Nava, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low, and Kathleen McGinn. "Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment." Quarterly Journal of Economics 135, no. 2 (May 2020): 1095–1151. View Details

Cite View Details Find at Harvard Register to Read

Faculty & Research

Learning From Mum: Cross-National Evidence Linking Maternal Employment and Adult Children’s Outcomes

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author