Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Phil Bryant's worst enemy? Science.

I know this is going to come as a complete shock to most Mississippians, but it appears that, like most of his ideas, Phil Bryant got his thoughts on women in the workplace from Fox News.

Last week, Fox News put together a panel of men males to discuss the news that the Pew Research Center had found 40% of American households have a female primary breadwinner. (The horror!)  Naturally, they spewed alarm, anger and disgust about this.  And of course, they framed the whole thing in terms of society falling down around us.  Further, according to Juan Williams, "I just can't see how you can argue this."  Of course you can't, Juan.  Bless your heart.

So yesterday that liberal rag Scientific American published a piece in response to claims that children from households with working mothers somehow suffer.  The thing is, they don't suffer.  At all.  And there is a meta-analysis of 69 studies conducted over 50 years involving 128,738 children to prove it.  Here's the closing paragraph:
So, there don’t seem to be strong differences in children of stay-at-home and working mothers. When there are differences, they actually trend towards the children of working mothers having more positive academic and behavioral outcomes, and these positive benefits are especially noticeable in lower-income households, where the added financial security provided by Mom’s income does a whole lot to improve a child’s prospects.
Science: Phil Bryant's worst enemy.

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