There’s good news for Jewish moms everywhere. It looks like your ability to nag your daughters makes them successful–all that guilt-tripping may just result in higher ambition and drive, apparently. Recently, the University of Essex conducted a study that showed that girls who have mothers who nag them were more likely to go to college, get better-paying jobs, and avoid teen pregnancy.
The study was led by researcher Ericka Rascon-Ramirez who followed the lives of over 15,000 girls between the ages of 13 and 14 from 2004 to 2010. What she found may or may not surprise you: Daughters who had hands-on parents (particularly a “main parent” aka Mom) ended up being influenced by that parent’s high expectations.
According to the study, your kids don’t have to be “listening” either. Basically, there is no way to ignore your Jewish mama. Rascon-Ramirez explained, for instance:
“In many cases, we succeeded in doing what we believed was more convenient for us, even when this was against our parents’ will. But no matter how hard we tried to avoid our parents’ recommendations, it is likely that they ended up influencing…choices.
What our parents expected about our school choices was, very likely, a major determinant of our decisions about conceiving a child or not during our teenage years.”
Of course, this doesn’t mean if you’re the chill mom that your kid is going to grow up to wreck havoc and create disaster scenarios, either, but being a large presence doesn’t hurt either, as the study found that “parents with high expectations can reduce a teenager’s chance of becoming pregnant by four per cent compared to parents with ‘middling aspirations’.”
I can say with the utmost confidence that this is true just from my experience alone–if I got anything below a 90% on a test, my mom was immediately like “Why not the 95%?” She pretty much also made sure I was prepping for the SAT and thinking about college since 8th grade. Yup, thanks, Mom.
Read More:
3 Ways to Handle Your Toddler’s ‘Why Phase’
Mayim Bialik: Why I Refuse to Get My Kids Smartphones
Quiz: Which Celebrity Jewish Mother Are You?
