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Are you a working mum? Then avert your eyes - yet more guilt trip inducing research has just been released. This time, we are, apparently, harming our childrens' development by going to work.
The study, Doing Better for Families, was put together by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which represents 34 industrialised nations.
It found that half of British mothers now not only have the temerity to go out to work before their child's first birthday (no!), but they are more likely to 'rush out to work' than those in other Western countries, thus ignoring (gleefully, no doubt) the research that suggests stay at home mums have better behaved and more academically adept offspring...
The helpful and supportive report goes on to state: 'In the UK, early maternal employment (full-time and part-time) appeared to have a very small negative association with vocabulary test scores for children aged four to five. However, the association persists, and is somewhat larger for children aged seven.'
Working mums also have a 'serious effect on behaviour and attention spans by the time the child is seven', the report continues, pointing out this is more apparent if mum went to work before the child was six months old.
Norman Wells of pressure group Family and Youth Concern, said pressure on mums to return to work was making kids lose out. He told the Daily Mail: 'Too often the needs of children take second place to the desires of a minority of women to impose their feminist agenda on every family.'
Right...
What do you think about this report?
And indeed Norman Wells' comments about 'feminist agendas'? I
s your need or desire to go to work imposing a feminist agenda on your family?!
Or are you - like most of us - thoroughly sick of working women being judged and criticised?