Work your butt off! | Teen Ink

Work your butt off!

May 6, 2016
By Ashleigh241 BRONZE, Scappoose, Oregon
Ashleigh241 BRONZE, Scappoose, Oregon
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Work your butt off!
Growing up has a lot of challenges, sometimes you don’t get to choose your battles. But if you could choose would you want to have a working parent vs. a stay at home parent? My mom had just been divorced a year after I was born, but it wasn't just my mom and I. I have two sisters as well and to add on to all that responsibility alone my mom was going back to school. Growing up with a single parent it was hard but it pushed me to be responsible for myself and to realize how tough the world can be. Staying at home as a parent gives some benefits but it has been shown that working as a parent gives a huge advantage to their children. It is better for children to have parents that work because working parents give the children an understanding of the real world, although since the first year of a child's life is so important, one parent should stay home for at least the first year of the child's life.
Parents want the best for their children, and many parents believe that working all the time is less time around their child. What many parents don’t know is that “daughters of working mothers are more likely to be employed, hold supervisory positions, and earn more money than the daughters of women who don’t work outside the home” (Fisher). It’s not just daughters, sons of mothers who work also have benefits, “researchers also found a statistically significant effect on the sons of working women, who are likely to spend more time caring for family members and doing household chores than are the sons of stay-at-home mothers” (Fisher). Having a parent who is working gives the child an early understanding about the workforce and creates curiosity on the idea of working. Kids want to be involved, and want to be like their parents. Some kids go to take your child to work day and because of this they are introduced to something that stay at home parents can’t offer.
A normal but substantial problem as a parent is working so often, because they will not be around their children as much. Parents love their kids and it is very important to be around them, but actually working is more of a benefit than you think. Having a mother who was constantly working, I was always thinking on what having a job would be like, and being an adult. Having a mother who was at work quite often gave me the viewpoint of what adulthood would be like. It gave an advantage and in a way prepared me before i experienced it myself. Individuals who have not been in this kind of situation have less of an idea on what working parents are like and are use to their stay at home mother or father or possibly both.
Work has swarmed over the lives of most parents living all around the world, but is it as bad as it sounds? Children of all ages are affected by this in a positive way. A study has shown with working parents that “Daughters of employed mothers have been found to have higher academic achievement, greater career success, more nontraditional career choices, and greater occupational commitment” (Hoffman). Kids are achieving more with their parents working than them staying at home. In some studies, “children of working mothers showed higher levels of achievement and lower levels of internalizing behaviors such as anxiety and depression.” (Pelcovitz). Working parents are at work just as much or more than they are at home although, studies have proven positive effects over a period of time.
A situation both the parents and children get put in is when the mother or father is working quite often and they don’t get much family time. Research that was completed on the topic showed that  “Children of mothers who worked full-time in the first year of that child’s life received modestly lower child cognitive scores….”(Pelcovitz). The first year of a child is very important, They need their mother and father and really, is one of the most important parts of their life. During that year “a very important process is taking place in the child's life, that of socialization.  For children this is called primary socialization in which the child develops language, individual identity, the learning of self-control and cognitive skills. Also, the child learns the internalization of moral standards, appropriate attitudes, motivations and a basic understanding of social roles….”(Hillebrand). With parents working constantly they miss the first learning stage of their child and can create a negative lifestyle for their kids.
Working parents seem like a negative aspect since they are not home with their children, or spending as much time with them as they would be as a stay at home mother or father. Even with the disadvantage of time lost due to a full-time job, positive aspects seem to show in kids both younger and older. But it is also important to have at least one of the parents at home for the first year because within the first year of the child's life it is an immense growing period for them. They receive many benefits for having their parents work and because of them working constantly, the kids obtain a natural understanding of what the real world is like. After talking about why staying at home parents are a lot less beneficial how could you not want to go back to work to support your family?

 

 

Works cited:
Fisher, Gabriel. "Working Moms Have More Successful Daughters and More Caring Sons, Harvard Business School Study Says."Quartz. Quartz, 23 June 2015. Web. 07 Mar. 2016.
Hoffman, Lois Wladis. "The Effects of the Mother's Employment on the Family and the Child." The Effects of the Mother's Employment on the Family and the Child. Parenthood in America, 15 Oct. 1998. Web. 02 Mar. 2016.
Hillebrand, Randall. "THE WOES OF THE WORKING MOTHER An Essay Addressing the Effects of a Mother Working Full-time Verses Staying at Home Believersweb.org." THE WOES OF THE WORKING MOTHER. Believer's Web, 23 Mar. 2003. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
Pelcovitz, David. "The Impact of Working Mothers on Child Development | Everyday Jewish Living | OU Life." OU Life. Gladstone OR US, 03 Jan. 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2016.
 



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