Kids of working mums do not suffer academically

Children's academic performance is not harmed if their mothers go out to work during the initial years of their lives, a new research has revealed.

The comprehensive research by the Independent, which is the analysis of six studies looking at 40,000 children over the past four decades, has found that there is no link between mothers continuing their careers and kids going on to achieve less at school.

Studies of previous decades showed children's literacy and numeracy levels were around two percentage points lower when mothers worked, but now it was seen that kids born in 2000 or 2001 showed no significant difference in cognitive ability or behaviour at the age of five irrespective of the fact that weather their mum's go for work or not.

Children born after 2000 were the first to benefit from universal early years teaching as well as better maternity leave.

Professor Heather Joshi, of the University of London's Centre for Longitudinal Studies, who wrote the report, said that more than 90 per cent of those children had some kind of formal education between three and five, compared to "around 40 or 50 per cent" in the 80s.

The research will be presented in central London at a Campaign for Social Science event on longitudinal studies attended by David Willetts, minister for Universities and Science.