Effects of Maternal Employment on Children: Evidence From Research1

Social concern for the children of mothers who work outside of their homes has had a long history. It began with the industrial revolution in England and Europe when the invention of machines outmoded home industries and forced not only men but their wives and children into factories and mills for their pittance living. The problems of the latter part of the eighteenth century and of the nineteenth century were the problems of the poor working class. Mortality statistics indicated that the babies of factory women died in alarming numbers. There was evidence too of increasing juvenile crime developing in the overcrowded new industrial centers (15, p. 4'). Mixed motives instigated the zeal of philanthropists to do something about the deplorable state of infants and children, left without care while the mother worked long hours away from home. There were those who wished to keep the working class alive because industry needed them and