Exploring Maternal Employment and Teen Academic Success in India

Academic performance plays an important role in producing the best learners to nurture great leaders to contribute towards a bright future of the country’s socio-economic development. The relationship between maternal employment and the academic performance of adolescents has been a subject of growing interest, particularly in India, where traditional family structures intersect with the evolving economic roles of women.

Maternal employment refers to the labor force affiliation of mothers with children of 0-18 years. This term however includes a wide variety of labor force participation patterns, ranging from full-time work and part-time work to contractual work and home-based employment.

Academic performance in this context is the student's educational achievement measured through grades, and test scores along a holistic school achievement. This study investigates the impact of maternal employment on the academic performance of adolescents, emphasizing the role of mothers in shaping their children’s social, cognitive and academic development. Specifically, it examines the effects of maternal work-related stress and reduced parental supervision on the child’s academic outcomes. Adopting a quantitative research design the study includes a sample of 150 parent-child pairs (children of age group 16-20), selected through stratified sampling. To ensure validity the Likert scale employed for assessment has been adapted to ensure minimal potential biases in measuring dependent and independent variables. Confounding variables have been controlled by selecting participants with comparable family structures and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Additionally, the study explores sub-variables such as maternal work-life balance and emotional stress to better understand their potential influence on academic performance. The findings of the study indicate no significant correlation between maternal employment and teenage academic performance. Contrary to common assumptions, maternal employment stress does not impact a student's educational outcome. The research suggests that maternal stress, often associated with employment, does not negatively affect children's academic outcomes. Instead, the results suggest that most adolescents are capable of managing their academic responsibilities independently, regardless of their mother's employment status. These findings contribute to the discourse on work-family dynamics, highlighting the adaptability and resilience of adolescents in balancing academic demands within diverse family structures.