The name is absent

Distal family factors

from the substitution of time away from the child into work related activities. It has
also been argued that work may involve stress and increase tiredness which may
influence mother-child relations. However, other factors such as pre-schools and
quality of parenting could offset these negative effects.

The economic model argues that the choice between employment and pre-schools
induces income and substitution effects that affect children’s outcomes. Maternal
employment increases household income and hence the availability of monetary
resources to invest in developmental activities for children. At the same time,
mothers’ employment implies a substitution of time away from children and the
activities that promote their development, which reduces future attainment. More
complicated models have included factors that affect both the income and substitution
effects such as availability of formal and informal pre-school mechanisms, number of
hours worked, flexibility of the labour market, age of the child, part-time
employment, among others.

The strength of the income and substitution effects have been subject to theoretical
and empirical debates. Bianchi (2000) presents evidence from mothers’ time diaries
that the reduction in time devoted to children from working mothers is small
compared to non-working mothers. Han et al. (2001), on the other hand, argues that
combining employment with the use of pre-schools may lead to greater tiredness and
more stress which could negatively impact on the child. Similarly, Anderson et al.
(1999) mentions that working mothers’ breastfeed for shorter periods and early
switching to formulae feeding may have detrimental effect on children’s
developmental outcomes (Anderson et al., op cit). Joshi (2000) maintains that the
income effect has the potential to counterbalance the substitution effect. She mentions
that as long as employed women purchase ‘quality’ of pre-schools and goods and
services to improve children’s cognitive and educational skills, the future of their
children should not be jeopardized.

Though many interesting empirical studies have tried to quantify the magnitude of the
effects of maternal employment on child development, the estimation has been
complicated for several reasons. First, unobservable characteristics can induce a
spurious relationship between employment and outcomes, rather than a causal
relation. For example, committed parents may be more attached to employment and
more involved in children’s education. Hence, the positive relation between
employment and educational attainment is the result of parental commitment. Second,
a full structural model should allow for the endogeneity of explanatory variables, such
as the decision to participate in the labour market as well as the choice to have
children. Finally, it is important to control for unobserved heterogeneity in the
population.

Contrary to the theoretical predictions mooted above, empirical evidence has shown
that there is little effect of maternal employment on child development. Most of the
recent evidence finds that the role of the mother as care provider has been assisted and
in some cases substituted, by availability of pre-schools, a more active role of fathers

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