CUSSW Professors Chosen as Top 20 Finalists for Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research

CUSSW Professor Jane Waldfogel and Assistant Professor Wen-Jui Han, along with Teacher's College faculty member Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, have had their article -- "The effects of early maternal employment on child cognitive development" -- named among the top 20 finalists for the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Work-Family Research. This award, a joint project with the Center for Families at Purdue University and the Boston College Center for Work and Family, is intendedto raise awareness of excellence in work-family research among consultants, scholars and practitioners and recognizes the"best of the best" in a given year. Thirty leading scholars from 3 countries examined over 2,000 articles published among 52 leading journals tocull these top papers. The paper written byWaldfogel, Han and Brooks-Gunn,which first appeared in Demography, provided new evidence about the effects of early maternal employment using longitudinal data and more rigorous analytic methods than prior studies. They found that children whose mothers worked full-time during the first year of their lives did not score as well on cognitive tests at age 3 or 4, effects that persisted into childhood as the children were re-tested at age 5 or 6 and 7 or 8.

Awards will be presented in February in Orlando, Florida at the annual meeting of the Alliance of WORK/LIFE Professionals, the Business and Professional Women's research conference, and in New York at the Conference Board/Families and Work Institute work-family conference in June.