Parenthood isn’t a career-killer. The effect of parenthood is not that severe as people imagine. In fact, economists with two or

admin2015-01-31  30

问题     Parenthood isn’t a career-killer. The effect of parenthood is not that severe as people imagine. In fact, economists with two or more kids tend to produce more research, not less, than their one-child or childless colleagues. But female economists in particular can pay a price in terms of productivity after becoming mothers, especially if they’ re young or unmarried.
    That’ s, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a working paper("Parenthood and Productivity of Highly Skilled Labour: Evidence from the Grove of Academe")published this month by Matthias Krapf of the University of Zurich, Heinrich Ursprung of the University of Konstanz and Christian Zimmermann of the regional reserve bank.
    "There is a widespread conviction that motherhood is extremely costly in terms of professional career advancement. In particular, it is often argued that the only way for young women to make a challenging career is to remain childless," they wrote. "Our study of the academic labour market arrives at a somewhat less dreary picture: we do not observe a family gap in research productivity among female academic economists. Moreover, motherhood-induced decreases in research productivity are less pronounced than usually purported."
    The authors in early 2012 surveyed about 10,000 economists through the Research Papers in Economics online platform, matching the academics’ answers with their publication records. They gauged an economist’ s productivity by looking at their output: published research, weighted by journal quality. Some of their findings are as follows:
    "Mothers of at least two children are, on average, more productive than mothers of only one child, and mothers in general are more productive than childless women. Fathers of at least two children are also more productive than fathers of one child and childless men. Toward the end of their careers, however, childless men appear to be somewhat more productive than fathers of one child."
    Parenthood does appear linked to lower productivity while the children are 12 and younger: mothers average a 17.4% loss, while fathers average a 5% loss. A female economist with three children, on average, loses the equivalent of four years of research output by the time her kids become teenagers.
    Women who are married or in a stable relationship "do not have any drop in research productivity in the three years following childbirth." For single mothers, research output drops by roughly a third over the same period.
    Female economists who have their first child before the age of 30 are less productive, while "for older first-time mothers, the effect remains negative, but it is much smaller and lacks statistical significance."
    Male economists without tenure become more productive after having a child, while tenured male economists won’t be more productive. There is no similar effect for female economists.
What is the main idea of this passage?

选项 A、Parenthood will kill one’ s career.
B、How does having kids affect one’ s productivity?
C、To be mother means less productivity.
D、More children, lower productivity.

答案B

解析 主旨题。文章开头讲到,“为人父母并不会扼杀一个人的事业。”但根据全文来看,为人父母会对人们的工作效率产生不同程度的影响,包括积极影响,如有孩子的女性总体上比没有孩子的女性工作效率更高,也包括消极影响,如在30岁之前生第一个孩子的女性经济学家的工作效率较低。综合来看,本文主要讲述了为人父母对一个人工作效率的影响。B项符合。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/xLh7777K
0

最新回复(0)