Women with children are more productive at work

Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Missouri, United States, measured productivity in workers of both sexes with and without children over 30 years of academic life in order to understand what impact the maternity career of highly qualified women.

Researchers (all men, as highlighted by the Washington Post, which echoes the research is done) recognize the difficulty of measuring work performance in highly skilled workers (how the precision of a surgeon measured the ability of a consultant or the negotiating capacity of a project manager)?

The solution I found was to limit the investigation to count the number of academic studies published by a group of 10,000 male and female economists.It is assumed that anyone who has an academic degree has higher studies and scientific publications also can easily locate and quantify to draw conclusions, reports Expansion.
And the results were surprising: in the case of men, parents without children or only one published the same amount of academic work, but men who had two or more children were more productive than the previous two groups.

But most striking is that this effect was more pronounced in the case of women.Those who did not have children during their first five years of career were less productive than those who gave birth at least once, and this difference was even greater when the women had gone through two or more deliveries. In all cases, the mothers of larger families were more academically productive.

Aid for maternity benefit to work

The researchers emphasize that the review is based on a very specific sample of women who enjoy a privileged economic conditions, access to family planning and have been enjoying breaks and subsidies motherhood and work-life balance.

Also, the authors, given his good financial condition have also been able to use childcare to enable them to extend their workday. "In a work environment of low-income women and low-skilled is usually much more hostile" recall.

They found that productivity falls by 15 to 17% among women with babies or young children. For mothers of large families, job performance suffers by 9.5%, 12.5% ​​with the second child and 11% with the third child.

"In other words, having three children means taking a loss of work productivity by 33% throughout the career of the researchers who are mothers, the equivalent of four years of academic life. When you have young children, the impact on the work is remarkable, "says The Washington Post Christian Zimmerman, one of the researchers work.

"But once the children grow up, mothers shine from the standpoint of productivity and stand out from that of your colleagues," he adds.

The study also noted another striking effect: all the mothers interviewed said they felt guilty about having to eventually leave work to go with your child to the doctor, leave work early for a party or for failing to pay attention to a conference after a bad night.

The hiperorganización, necessity and quality

But once this stage is passed, the authors, while investigating mothers of large families suggest they achieved professional success in higher proportion than the rest.

Perhaps they feel more safe due to their seniority in their professional work, because his reputation was consolidated, or maybe the job is a way to disconnect for a while the endless and exhausting routine of work at home ... or maybe blunt occupationally more easily because the need for raising a family has made them hiperorganizadas people.

In fact, this is the hypothesis that is handled, as it has been proven countless times to be arranged is a significant professional success factor, and therefore could be the component that has most influenced the results of this study, Expansion concludes.