NCSU economics professor Dr. Melinda Morrill has some bad news for working moms. In her study comparing health statistics of school-aged children with working mothers to those with mothers who stay at home, Morrill found that the children of mothers who worked were 200% more likely to be hospitalized overnight, to suffer an injury or poisoning, or to have a asthma attack.

Morrill's study looked at 20 years of health statistics involving approximately 89,000 children aged 7-17. Her results differ from previous studies that indicated children of working mothers were healthier, presumably because of higher income, greater access to health insurance, and increased maternal self-esteem. Those studies were flawed, according to Morrill, because they had reversed cause and effect. That is, the stay-at-home mother group had numbers of moms of children with such severe medical problems that they required full-time care or supervision, effectively eliminating the option of the mother to work outside the home. But these children weren't getting sick because their moms were home; their moms were home because the children were so sick.

When Morrill used advanced statistical techniques to account for such issues, she found that the opposite was actually true--that children of stay-at-home moms had highly significant better chances of avoiding injury and poisoning, hospitalization, and asthma attacks.

Morrill clearly wants to avoid setting off another "mommy war." She states "I don't think anyone should make sweeping value judgements based on a mother's decision to work or not work." "But," she continues, "it is important that we are aware of the the costs and benefits associated with a mother's decision to work." Apparently, one of those costs is increased health risks for the children of working moms.