Jezebel
and NBC
News have pieces on motherhood and stay at home moms. I imagine this has
something to do with mothers’ day over the weekend, no?
There are roughly 5 million stay-at-home moms in the US. The
NBC article asserts that conventional wisdom says stay-at-home moms can afford
not to work, but experts are now countering that idea. Instead stay-at-home
moms are unable to find work and then decide to stay home. Stephanie Coontz, a
professor of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in
Olympia, Washington and co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families says, “They
[mothers] just don’t think they have enough education and skill…where their pay
would cover their child care, transportation and clothes.”
This is a compelling point. For those of you unaware, the
costs of having a child are rising quickly, and there is a new assertion that
the rising costs might be why more and more women are indifferent to having
children. Regardless, daycare can run in the hundreds of dollars a week.
The articles both state that while there are plenty of
middle class, college educated women staying at home with their children, there
have been several studies conducted in recent years which found that
less-educated moms who live in lower-income households are more likely to stay
home with the kids then more-educated moms or those in households with higher
incomes. An analysis of government data on married mothers between 25 and 54,
prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families found that women whose
husbands were in the lowest 25% of the male earnings distribution were most
likely to stay at home full-time.
The second most likely group of stay-at-home moms are in the
top 5 % of the economic spectrum. Paula England, a sociology professor at New
York University found in her recent research that more-educated moms are more
likely to be employed because they can obtain employment that pay well enough
to make it worth the economic investment. England says, “Women who can’t get
good jobs anyhow—maybe not enough to cover their child care costs or maybe not
worth it in meaning—are the ones who are more likely to, if they have a
husband, make the calculation (to stay home). It really is kind of the opposite
of what a lot of people believe.”
England noted that there is a small portion of stay-at-home
moms with very high-earning husbands, but most often, the better job a mom can
get the more likely she is to be employed. A Gallup analysis of 45,000 adult
women from last year found that 75% of college-educated women with kids under
18 were working compared to the 48% of moms with a high school degree. Gallup
also found that 77% of moms with household incomes of $90,000 or more were
working, compared to 45% of moms with household incomes less than $24,000.
Rose Kreider, chief of the Fertility and Family Statistics
Branch for the US Census Bureau, says her research also suggests that instead
of an “opt out revolution” of highly educated married moms wanting to leave the
workforce, many moms are younger, less educated, Hispanic and/or caring for very
young children could be left out because their employment options are all
low-wage and not enough to cover child care costs.
A Pew Research Center report from March found that 32% of
moms with children under 18 think the ideal situation is to work full-time, and
47% said they would like to work part-time. Additionally, 20% said they would
prefer not to work.
I’m not interested in the mommy wars or the feminist baiting
with the whole feminists are hypocrites for staying at home with their kids.
This feels like the first time we’re actually engaging how class impacts the
decision to stay home with your children or work. The conversation may start to
include discussions of low-wage labor that doesn’t cover child care costs.
