Working mothers can limit children’s skills

Rise in older mothers in 30 years has impact on offspring’s emotional development, study finds

THE rise in older, unmarried, working mothers has contributed to a slump in children’s social and emotional skills, particularly among working-class boys, a UCL study suggests.

The researchers found the gap between children with the highest social and emotional skills and those with the lowest had widened over 30 years.

It was particularly acute among boys where the gap had increased by as much as 30 per cent in the past 30 years although the difference between girls had also risen.

The UCL academics, who compared 9,545 people born in 1970 and 5,572 born in 2000/02, identified three key societal factors to explain the decline in skills among some children, after filtering out other potential causes.

One was the age at which women started having children, which has risen from 26 to 29 on average in the 30 years since 1970, and the increasing number who had jobs, up from 42 per cent to 62 per cent. At the same time the proportion of unmarried mothers had increased dramatically, from 5 per cent in the 1970 cohort to 36 per cent for those born in 2000.

Prof Orazio Attanasio, a co-author of the study, said: “Mothers are having children at an older age, when they are more engaged in the labour market, which we find matters for socio-emotional skills.

“But mothers are also more likely to be unmarried ... which might be associated with a more stressful lifestyle. Changes in these factors explain about half of the cross-cohort increase in inequality when it comes to a child’s externalising skills.”

It is the first study of its kind to compare the changes over time in children’s “internalising” skills, described as a person’s drive and determination, and “externalising” skills – the ability to get on with other people.

Such social and emotional skills are increasingly seen as critical in determining children’s future behaviour and their future health by determining their likelihood of becoming smokers or being overweight. According to the researchers, a child with high “externalising” skills exhibits less restless, hyperactive and anti-social behaviour, while a child with better internalising skills is less solitary, neurotic, and worried.

The slump in social and emotional skills was more evident in children from poorer, less educated families.

However, the impact of being in a fatherless house on children’s social and emotional skills had declined.

Other factors such as shift work schedules and financial stress could also have a negative impact on a child’s social and emotional development. The quality of the time parents spent with their children was also found to be more important than the quantity.

The UCL researchers said children’s social and emotional skills they measured at age five, earlier than most previous studies, were significant predictors of unhealthy behaviours later in life.

Gabriella Conti, associate UCL professor of economics, said: “Showing that these early skills are predictive of different outcomes later provides a key rationale for the role of early intervention in reducing inequalities.”