Posted on 08/26/2020 8:03:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
'After adjustment for demographic and socioeconomic factors, the group most likely to attend selective colleges were students in male breadwinner-female homemaker families.'
Teens whose mothers worked part-time or not outside the home were significantly more likely to be admitted to and attend a highly selective college or university than teens whose mothers worked full time, finds a study out today from the Institute for Family Studies. The study controlled for external factors including family income, parental education, the child’s sex, race, and family composition.
“Students are more likely to be accepted by and attend highly competitive colleges when their mothers are at home than when their mothers and fathers both work full time,” it concluded. The study examined nationally representative, longitudinal federal data about more than 17,000 American ninth graders.
Forty percent of the children studied had two full-time working parents, 57 percent had two working parents with mom either working full- or part-time, and 24 percent had a father who worked full time and a mother who did not work for pay. The children’s education outcomes were highest with the traditional male breadwinner, female homemaker arrangement. Families in which the father worked full time and the mother worked part-time saw comparably high academic achievement among their children.
“The additional time, energy and attention that stay-at-home-mothers were able to devote to supervising their children’s studies and peer interactions and to participating in school-related volunteer efforts seem to have paid off in terms of their offspring’s academic success,” study author Nicholas Zill said in a statement.
The graph below from the study shows children’s selective college attendance by parental work arrangement. The blue bars are the raw outcomes, and the yellow bars are outcomes adjusted for the demographic information mentioned above (family income, parental education, etc.).
“After adjustment for demographic and socioeconomic factors, the group most likely to attend selective colleges were students in male breadwinner-female homemaker families. The odds that students in this group would attend selective colleges were significantly higher than those for families where both parents worked full time (odds ratio of 1.57),” Zill’s study found. “Students whose fathers worked full time and mothers worked part time also had significantly better odds of attending selective colleges. The breadwinner-homemaker group and the full-time working father/part-time working mother did not differ significantly from each other.”
“Highly-selective colleges” in the study “are those whose first-year students’ test scores placed the schools in the top fifth of baccalaureate-granting institutions.” Such institutions include Ivies and highly competitive state schools such as Princeton, the University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford, and Duke.
Also significantly, children whose mothers did not work outside the home achieved at an elite level even though their family income was a median $20,000 less per year than the families in which the mother worked either full or part time. In the study, the families in which both parents worked full time earned the most money (median income $80,000), but parental attention outperformed money at securing children’s education prospects.
Research going back decades finds other significant family and public benefits when people, especially mothers, work part-time or not for pay instead of in full-time paid employment. The 2000 bestseller “Bowling Alone,” for example, included original research and summarized other research that finds women who work part-time are significantly more likely than both full-time paid female employees and full-time homemakers to invest time into their communities.
“Women who work part-time, especially those who do so by choice, volunteer more, entertain more, and visit more with friends more than do full-time employees or full-time homemakers,” writes author and sociologist Robert Putman. Volunteering has an obvious social benefit.
The rest of the book also explains why “private” social behaviors such as visiting with friends and inviting people over for dinner are crucial to a well-ordered society. It’s because people are happier and function better when they have strong friendships. Isolated people are more likely to create problems such as idleness, ill health, addiction, and violence that they ultimately force other people to solve, typically through expanded government programs.
Twenty years ago, “Bowling Alone” found massive reductions in community engagement since the 1950s and attendant increases in social disorders that stem from loneliness. The biggest contributor to plummeting relationships in America, Putnam found, was Americans’ screen addictions — then largely television, now mostly our cell phones. Another major factor, however, accounting for up to 15 percent of the massive drop in social connectedness in America, was the increase in full-time working mothers, both single and married.
Contrary to the reigning narrative that women want to live similarly to men by investing their major energies into full-time paid employment, Putnam found “virtually all the increase in female employment over the last two decades of the twentieth century was by necessity, not by choice.” Further, “Women who must work full-time are the least likely to visit with friends, to entertain at home, or to volunteer” (emphasis added in both quotes).
While politicians of both major parties focus largely on making it more possible for mothers to work full time away from their children through redistributing taxpayer money into programs such as paid leave, a substantial portion of working mothers work more than they want to. Many would prefer to invest more attention into their families and communities. Lots of working moms feel trapped, and most politicians promise to throw a pillow into the cage rather than opening its doors to set women free to better balance relationships and money.
As Putnam noted 20 years ago, “We found that part-time workers are typically more involved in community activities than either full-time employees or people who are not employed at all. Not everyone wants a part-time job, of course, but many do, and America’s public, nonprofit, and private institutions have only begun to address the challenge of restructuring work to meet that demand.” This situation hasn’t measurably improved since.
Research also confirms the obvious fact that receiving lots of their mothers’ attention is crucial for children’s development. As Erica Komisar writes in 2017’s “Being There,” “the most recent research has shown that a mother’s unique presence is critical to the emotional development and mental health of her children in their early years.”
It’s not just the early years where a mother’s presence is important to children’s growth, either. A Stanford University study of 66,000 children in Norway found that an increase in stay-at-home parents for older children increased their academic achievement. While early childhood is obviously a crucial time for emotional and brain development, so are, say, the middle school years.
Children simply need their parents, no matter their age, and benefit from increased parental attention. This isn’t rocket science. Anyone could tell you this. The reason more people don’t is that it has become a political statement to say the obvious, because some people and factions are financially, emotionally, socially, and politically invested in separating parents from children. Thus the manufactured social pressure for women to turn off their instincts to nurture and tie sex to marriage.
There’s more tax and lobbyist money to be made on subsidized daycare and dual incomes, after all. At least until increasingly parent-deprived generations of children accumulate less and less emotional and intellectual capital to power our economy and society. That is already happening, but it doesn’t have to continue.
"Looks like University of Illinois!"
If you want to live in a safe “nice” neighborhood it takes money. I have 3 boys, 2 acres, a large house in a very nice safe town that is 99% white. It takes money. Luckily my wife only works part time and from home. Our boys are thriving. But we busted our ass to get here. Not going to apologize either. Study, get a scholarship, get a degree in a STEM field, be an officer in the military, stay married, be involved with your kids. All is possible in the USA if you’re willing to work for it.
We all know it’s true, but I hate reading about it. Now the colleges will deduct points for kids who DO NOT have to deal with career-driven moms.
“In the study, the families in which both parents worked full time earned the most money (median income $80,000), but parental attention outperformed money at securing children’s education prospects.”
That makes no sense? They are saying that kids whose parents DO NOT keep up with the Jones’, but rather spend their time being real parents, do better? I’ve always heard that the woman needs to work, so that the family can ‘live better’ (or that mom is bored staying home).
“Putnam found “virtually all the increase in female employment over the last two decades of the twentieth century was by necessity, not by choice.””
“Necessity” is a very subjective word. Does that mean living in the ‘better house’ with the ‘better schools’, and then negating all of that with kids that grow up to be losers (per the article)?
“Except for a few intelligent parents, American society will plug their ears and ignore such information.”
One of the prime reasons why men look elsewhere.
And the Democrats want them to stay exactly as they are now.
This article begs the question as to why caring, involved, stay-at-home parents would want to have their children sent to “selective” colleges, such as Stanford, that would go on to destroy their children by indoctrinating them with their atheistic, communistic, race-class- gender world view.
“There are great hidden costs to not having mom at home. Like divorce, affairs, childcare, house cleaning, maintenance of everything, support for husband to go get it, driving, cooking, all that.”
In my case I was able to work a lot of overtime and higher-paying shifts, thanks to my wife being home to take care of the kids. It’s not that complicated.
I also think a lot of dual-income pairs don’t really do the math, when it comes to having the wife work (in most cases). We considered it after our kids were grown, but why bother? In addition to what you mention, every dollar she would have made would be taxed at our marginal rate (and we’re in Texas - in most other states you also have the same thing at the state level). Plus she would have to pay into Social Security, which would be fine, except she’ll never get more from it than as my spouse, so that money is GONE too (completely), due to her shorter, less-paying work history. On top of that, my employer wanted something like $200 a month more if her job had medical available, which probably would have been the case. And not to mention that she would have limited vacation and all that crap.
Easy decision, for us. We just downgraded our ‘lifestyle’ a tad and actually came out ahead!
[It’s amusing to hear men on this site blame Kellyanne Conway for her daughter’s behavior. The kid is a bad seed and her father is obviously a bad role model. Why not blame the father at least equally?]
Same here. Basically.
“Same here. Basically.”
...and it’s a lot of math to add up. Not to denigrate other people, but I suspect few bother to do it. They just ‘assume’ that they’ll get what they think they need. Most of us here are parents, and you better believe that I will go through the math with my kids if they get into having to make that decision!
Troubled children buy lots of stuff to compensate. Good for capitalism.
Individuals who never get married can tend to be materialistic and fill the void with lots of purchases of cars, jewelry, clothing, eating out, etc. Good for capitalism.
It definitely is a good strategy for an individual to get married and have kids, but what makes sense for the individual is not always what makes sense for the market.
Why do you think companies build products to fail after a few years? Is that good for the individual or for the company that wants to sell them more crap?
Why are there so many restaurants (or used to be before the lockdowns) when it makes more sense for people to cook and eat at home? Why Starbucks when you can make yourself a cup of coffee at home for 25c or less rather than $3 or more? Why do mortgage brokers encourage people to get loans for more than the value of the house so they can do immediate renovations with marble countertops and stainless steel appliances?
The market needs an ever increasing pyramid of people to feed the Returns On Investment necessary to keep the stock prices up and rising.
If the population ever flattens out or starts to decline then they will have to get each person to buy even more crap. That's why both the Dems and the Pubbies are in favor of mass immigration because they know the system will fail with the current birthrate among citizens.
Also its a very hard sell to get older people to buy more crap, which is probably why healthcare costs are so high. You can't get old people to buy Porsches and pearl necklaces, but you can get them to spend thousands to keep a little bit healthier and live a little bit longer.
And yes I read George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty and initially thought "Oh what a wonderful positive take on capitalism." But the idea that all, or even a bare majority, of transactions in the market are altruistic in nature is Pollyannaish to the Nth degree.
Since KellyAnne had the good job and her husband is a loser, he was the one who should have been home raising the kids.
Wow you have a very skewed view of capitalism.
Capitalism rewards thrift, industry, innovation, honesty, and hard work.
Divorce impoverishes people.
Capitalism does not have an official position on it any more than any other economic system does.
Kudos to you and your family! You’re right, it does take money, and it takes time if you don’t have much money. We scrimped and saved, and there were many lean years. We could only afford one car for a long time, until we got it paid off. We drove it for many years after that, but we did get a second car once we had our finances in better order.
We didn’t take lavish vacations. Usually we could only afford a weekend getaway, and very often that was tent camping. I stayed home with the kids, but I volunteered at church, their schools, and in the community. I cooked many many meals from scratch (I still do), and I shopped at resale clothing stores (still do that, too). I did make it a point to get each of the kids two new outfits each season so they wouldn’t feel like everything we had was used.
I think it’s really important for people to make a budget, and stick to it. It can be revised till you come up with a plan that works for you, but it was very important to me that we save money each paycheck. It eventually added up. I’m so glad we did what we did. We have very little debt. We are still paying on our house, but we can finally see light at the end of that tunnel. Credit cards aren’t used much, but when they are, they are paid off in full every month. We had a plan, and we worked that plan. It’s been discipline and perseverance that has gotten us through.
[Since KellyAnne had the good job and her husband is a loser, he was the one who should have been home raising the kids.]
It’s not up to you to decide what people need.
We are free.
If high quality coffee is important to me and cheap tennisshoes are your thing fine. Some spend their money on golf. Others on vitamins. Others on horses. Who cares. We decide what we want to buy.
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