Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement

by John Hattie

Maternal employment Since the 1980s, the majority of American mothers have been in employment, although the claim that this was somehow detrimental to their children was still a widely held belief. Goldberg, Prause, Lucas-Thompson, and Himsel (2008) showed that the effects of maternal employment on achievement were indeed trivial (r = 0.032). They could not find differences with respect to SES (middle/upper r = –0.043, lower-middle r = –0.055); ethnicity (white r = –0.028, majority African American and Hispanic r = 0.020), child's age (pre-school r = 0.020, elementary r = 0.061, high school r = 0.019), family structure (one parent r = 0.149, two parent r = –0.009), or whether the work was part time (r = 0.042) or full time (r = –0.005). It does not matter to a child's achievement whether a mother works outside the home or not.

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