Mothers Who Work Happier Than Stay At Home Moms

You know, sometimes I admire scientists ability to get paid for obvious studies like this one. The research found that mothers who work are happier than those that are stay at home moms. I could have told them that and I’m not even a woman or a parent.

But I am a work-at-home blogger and I’ll be honest, I miss going to work and socializing with my co-workers. It got me out of the house and into society. I’ve also seen what my stay at home niece goes through with her kids crying, screaming and sometimes even fighting over the stupidest things with their siblings like they both want to play with the same toy. It makes me wonder if I was ever that bad as a kid? So what parent wouldn’t want to get away for a bit and socialize with some adults, even in a somewhat stressful job? Add to that the misguided thought that making money is the pinnacle of one’s existence and that somehow mothers who stay home with the kids aren’t as productive. That theory must have been thought up by someone who doesn’t understand how difficult it is to manage a household and deal with the young ones all day. I’d say it’s as difficult as any job, only without the social benefits. People also tend to be happier when they have a bit of their own money in their pockets to cover the bills or go shopping, an activity that has been shown to alleviate depression. So the idea that working women are less depressed is not very shocking at all.

Another portion of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s findings is that women who work full time are not as able to nurture and be with their children as much as mothers with part time jobs. I think I need to sit down from that surprise. Did it really take a study to figure that out? Being able to balance a full time career with children has always been a struggle versus someone who works part time and has more hours to spend with their kids. The only thing that was a bit new in their discovery was that part time mothers seemed to be more sensitive to their toddler’s needs and able to provide better learning opportunities than stay at home or full time mothers, which was an interesting snippet.

The data, extrapolated from the case studies of 1300 women who participated in the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, will be presented in the Journal of Family Psychology in December.

BTW, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate that researchers are working on making our lives better, I just sometimes don’t see the point of researching what is already pretty much commonly known, like that study where people who didn’t get enough sleep were found to be tired the next day. Whoa.