Daughters of working mothers enjoy better careers and higher pay than those raised by women who stay at home, according to a Harvard study.
The effect was particularly marked when women worked before their daughters turned 14, perhaps because girls accepted from an early age that a job was a normal part of life.
The study, conducted by Harvard Business School, used ten years’ worth of data from 25 countries and 50,000 adults. The researchers found the daughters of working mothers earned about 6 per cent more than their peers on average, but in the US it was as much as 23 per cent more. They also achieved higher status at work.
One in three daughters of working mothers were managers, compared with one in