Despite the juggling act required to hold down a job and care for children, moms who work report they’re healthier and happier than moms who stay at home when their kids are babies and preschoolers.
What’s more, women who worked part-time
fared the best, trumping the stay-at-home crowd and, in some cases, full-timers, on measures of health and stress, according to a study that appears in December’s Journal of Family Psychology.
“Employment helps women and their families,” says lead author Cheryl Buehler, a professor of human development and family studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC-G), who says the real message of her study is this: get a job, whether full-time or part-time.