Does Mothers’ Employment Conflict with Child Development? Multilevel Analysis of British Mothers born in 1958 Running Title: Mothers’ Employment and Child Development

Acknowledgements This paper reflects work begun under the ESRC Programme on Children 5-16 (grant L129100268), and developed under a grant from the Smith Institute. We are grateful to colleagues in the ESRC Project, particularly Dick Wiggins and Andrew McCulloch for work on which we have built, to colleagues at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, particularly Peter Shepherd, for support in using Cohort Study data and to Anna Vignoles, Shirley Dex, Nikos Tzavidis and to referees for their comments. We are also indebted to the members of the NCDS cohort for the time they gave to produce the survey. Responsibility for opinions and any error is our own. Abstract Does maternal employment, while children are very young, affect children's development? We link cognitive and behavioural scores of school-aged children to mothers' employment during preschool years using virtually unique data for two generations in the 1958 British Birth cohort. Our multivariate, multi-level model controls for mothers' own cognitive and behavioural scores in childhood. Results are mixed and minor, confirming other British studies at mid-childhood. Reading is, significantly, slightly poorer where less educated mothers work in the child's first year of life. We found few other interactions with employment, but did detect intergenerational transmission of behavioural as well as cognitive characteristics.