The introduction of women into the labor market has added a new role to the mother's traditional function of carer, namely the role of the provider. These tasks, which may or not be shared with their partners, should be considered as to their influence on their children's education. This research attempted to assess how children themselves perceive the way in which they are being educated by their working mothers. To find the answer to this question, the Parental Styles Inventory was used on 160 young people between the ages of 12 and 24, comprising 88 females and 72 males, the children of engineers, doctors, lawyers and psychologists. The results show that the mothers, regardless of the their professions, make little use of positive educational approaches (positive monitoring and moral behavior) which lead them to increase pro-social behavior, and often resort to negative practices (physical abuse and stressing supervision) in order to gain control over their children. These mothers end up demonstrating high rates of negligence since their children feel they are not being taken care of. Professional mothers are apparently unable to reconcile, in an adequate fashion, their professional and maternal responsibilities since they have not been able to incorporate into their knowledge base the guidance provided by the available literature that focuses on parenting.
Parenting styles; Mother; Marital relations
