Member Article

Women find motherhood 'more satisfying than work"

Women find more satisfaction in motherhood than in full-time work, a report by a centre-right think tank has concluded.

The Centre for Policy Studies has released a report called ‘What Women Want’, which argues that the Government should “stop pumping billions into institutionalised childcare” and allow women to choose how to bring up their children instead.

A YouGov survey for the report found 12% of mothers wanted to work full-time and 31% did not want to work at all.

Only 15% of mothers with children under five thought that the mother, in a family where the father worked and there were two children under five, should work full-time, the poll found and 49% thought she should not work at all.

The report also said that fathers asked the same question offered “an almost identical response”.

The poll also found 19% of women, and 28% of men, working full-time would not work if they did not have to.

The Centre for Policy Studies also called for a “profound cultural shift” in which the “establishment should stop forcing women into a mould, and allow them instead to realise their ambitions”.

“Instead of finding satisfaction in full-time work, most women realise themselves in their other roles as carers, partners, community members, and above all mothers,” the report said.

It called for “a value system that is family-centred, not work-centred” and said this means “rehabilitating free emotional services, from cooking family meals to volunteering at the school fair”.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .