Maternal Employment and Children's Cognitive Ability in a Gender-Inegalitarian Society.

Maternal employment in regular full-time work is negatively associated with children's cognitive performance in Japan. The negative association is limited to the employment of mothers with a high school education or less. Mothers' nonstandard employment is unrelated to children's cognitive performance. Analyses examine children's cumulative exposure to mothers' employment. The estimation of marginal structural models facilitates causal inference.