We live in diverse family settings. I grew up in a single parent household with my ‘working mother’ who somehow worked a full time paid job and worked to make our family household a home. I thank God for her sacrificial life of love.

Of course the term ‘working mother’ is generally used to mean ‘working in paid employment mother’. But being the full time unpaid mother looking after the household, the home parent, is also ‘working’. Although not all families have this choice, the issue of parenting and healthy family life is a vital one for our society.

These research findings are a sure ‘BBQ stopper’. See for example the varied comments on the article. 

Australians have become more conservative in their views on key gender issues since the 1990s, particularly on the role of working mothers, a study shows.

People are much less inclined to believe a working mother can be as good a mother as one who stays at home full-time, for example. And they are more likely to think it better for the family if the husband is the main breadwinner and the wife has chief responsibility for home and children.

Article and comments, ‘Attitudes harden towards the lot of a working mother’.   A stalled revolution? Gender role attitudes in Australia 1986-2005 will be published in the forthcoming ‘Journal of Population Research’.