My children are raised and turned out very well. They are productive and responsible .They are financially stable. They have all managed to buy houses but 2 of the 3 have to run AirBNB's to make the mortgage work. They are all in different fields and have chosen very different kinds of spouses. I think that they are quite self actualized, kind and fun to be around. They are all over 30 and only one of the 3 of them has chosen to have a child; one child. The other 2 are still balancing all of these issues cited here and seem worried to take the leap.
I had the option to stay home and did so. I enjoyed being with them and we had enough money. My husband would have worked 18 hours a day even if I worked as well. His identity and satisfaction was in his professional life. I am lucky to have been well educated because the marriage did end in our 50's. I had always worked part time-often unpaid, but nonetheless highly visibly and with real achievements-published work, responsibilities for agencies, committees. Thank goodness because not only did I have contacts but I also had some self confidence. I'm working now and do not mind the lower salary because at my age the insurance benefits and pension are more important. But my SS is very low and 1/2 of his is 30% more than all of mine. So I would warn younger women. You are giving up some financial benefits in your old age because many marriages end. You give up significant power. Factor that in.
17
The paucity of part-time positions is what makes it hardest to balance work and family. Women AND men should have the option to work part-time, as the best way for parents to share child rearing duties. In my profession, urban design & architecture, there are just no part time jobs. You either work full time with lots of expected evening meetings and being on call all the time to meet client expectations (at least at a private company), no matter how late the hour; or you don't work at all. The workplaces and norms of deadline expectations need to change drastically, so that employees can have reasonable turnaround times for work; companies need to stop bidding each other into the ground to win jobs because then they depend on free evening labor. Ironically, having more women-owned companies would probably lead to more sane approaches to work and deadlines, but many women are too busy trying to juggle their work and families to be changing the policies at such companies.
10
After 20 years of marriage, I divorced. Thank heavens I always continued to work 25 hours a week while raising our girls and could fluidly go back full time. Still I loved the part time work and the ability to be present for the girls during their young years. I remember arranging daycare before Emily was born, and then once she was in my arms, and it was real, I said no she will never go there. I found a mom friend to watch her two days a week. Every year was a new schedule, a new struggle, but part time work helped me keep my professional career and my sanity as a parent by allowing me to be a hands on mom. Now the girls are 20 and 17 and I have a thriving career. I feel so blessed by my good fortune to have found a company that allowed me such flexibility.
7
KISS, don't have any children if you need to work to support yourself.
Having a child is a large expense, don't expect other people to pay to feed, cloth and shelter you and your children.
Being single you should not bear a child if you are unable to support and take care of it/them. Paying another person to raise your child is like disliking it for being born.
Think, please THINK
1
@R A Ebitz So you believe only those born or married into wealth should have the opportunity to have a family/ children?
Are you concerned about your where your tax dollars are going? You should take a look into corporate welfare. I bet you pay taxes, but do you know who doesn’t? Amazon, BP, our President. Seems unfair, no?
6
@Caroline
what's wrong with planned parenthood (before pregnancy of course)?
Without wallstreet and corps in US, you wouldn't have your basic comfort. think again
Motherhood is "work" - a LOT of work. There is NO respect for Motherhood here in the United States. In fact, there is NO respect for "family" here in the United States. Its a serious problem. Shame on us. We're back in the space of the Industrial Revolution where both parents and ALL of their children six years and older had to work. We're all institutionalized. Wake up people.
13
The REAL problem is that many men aren't doing their fair share at home. Women are often expected to balance a full time career AND do the majority of the household and child-rearing duties, whereas men oftentimes are only expected to focus on their careers. Of course many women are burned out. It's sad that instead of fighting against these gender norms and demanding that their partners contribute equally, many women are giving in to these archaic gender roles and leaning out of their careers.
The way we're approaching this conundrum is completely backwards. Instead of asking, "Is it possible for women to balance career and family?" we should be asking, "What can we do to make sure men and women are contributing equally to family life, so that people of all genders can fulfill their true potential inside and outside the home?" As Gloria Steinem said, "women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it,"
13
We also undervalue grandparents as back-up parents. Too often this undervaluation results from desires and beliefs of both parents and grandparents. My genealogical work has taught me that grandparental involvement is VERY helpful—and that its absence generally results in stagnation or declines in a family's 'development'. In addition, science tells us that grandparents are likely a key reason for humans' development.
Parenthood is rewarding, fulfilling, etc. It is one of the ways that we 'go forth and multiply' our abilities to use and to choose between the resources that are available to us. And to help our children to do the same; to build upon those who came before.
4
This sums it up perfectly for me as a stay at home mom who never expected to be one: "As women do more paid work, men have not increased their child care and housekeeping tasks to the same extent — another surprise for young women who, research has shown, expected more egalitarian partnerships." This is one of the main reasons I quit my job as an engineer (outearning my husband) to stay home once my second child was born. I was tired of doing it all, and no amount of discussion could truly change my husband's habits. I thought I married someone different, and although he's not a bad guy, he openly admits he doesn't enjoy spending time with his young kids, and he doesn't feel the same sense of obligation as I do to pull his own weight with housework. Sure, he will help with anything I ask him to, but it's like he's doing me a favor rather than being an equal and taking responsibility for housework and childcare. So I did what was best for me and my sanity and quit my job. It's not a perfect solution, but it was the best option available. If I had an equal parenting partner, it's very possible I'd still be working. However, I love having this time with my kids and am grateful to be able to stay home with them right now.
24
I will never forget when my husband wanted me to thank him for cleaning the cat box. Enough said....
6
Next, what are the implications for all the men in the equation?
The lesson is clear to any would-be fathers/husbands: Ignore the fleeting notion that gender norms aren't expected of you. Keep that nose to the grindstone and the eyes on the prize: A good enough to support the family as it stands!
Clearly motherhood doesn't or shouldn't dictate the life path of all women or men, but for straight would-be parents, biology and our neoliberal regime (which nonetheless taxes us at essentially social-democratic/scandinavian levels) mandates the traditional roles.
What a bitter pill for young men who are simulateously tarred as oppressors while truly needing to bring home the bacon. What does it take to be a father?
3
@GenXBK293 If we are taxed at the level of Scandinavia why don’t we get the same childcare, health care and education benefits?
4
"The lack of family-friendly policies in the United States..."
That sums it up with disgusting accuracy.
Like that debacle in the White House, I'm not sure if it's a symptom or a deliberate objective of the worst manipulative elements of human nature.
When my wife expressed her disappointment at our lack of grandchildren, I replied that I didn't miss the great apprehension I'd feel for a child being brought into this society today. She hung her head and agreed. Then she volunteered in a special ed class where her remarkable gifts of compassion and empathy worked startling breakthroughs with sad, severely withdrawn children who began calling her "Grandma".
She passed on five years ago but the memory of her Goodness and the spiritual imperative that directed her informs my prayer that the predominantly feminine nurturing instincts of women will continue to awaken and arise to heal themselves and the defects of our broken culture. That could sound a call to arms within the male enclave to restore and fulfill the ethos of Provide & Protect,
7
It is what it is, and I really admire moms that give their best to be all that they want to be, whether to be a career woman, a homemaker, or both. I'm facing the same issues being a new mom myself. What helps is having a community. If we all are disillusioned about the realities of juggling all these things, then let's be disillusioned together LOL. Join a community. Lift one another up. Rant if you must. Share "bad mom" best practices. Just know you're not alone. We'll survive and thrive like the moms that went before us.
6
@HSuarez
"What helps is having a community"
AMEN!
2
I feel like this article is largely unnecessary and that the main takeaway is pretty obvious to those of us who are working mothers (or just mothers in general). When you have kids, everything changes. You are pregnant for 9 months, give birth (one of the best days of my life), and then attempt to breastfeed for a successful amount of time. Leaving your baby after maternity leave is SO hard. Which is why so many of my college-educated friends are now stay at home moms. Because leaving our babies really isn’t “natural”. Combine that with the invisible workload that all mothers bear, and it’s no wonder that most of us would prefer to stay at home. I will always be a working mother, but that means I will often be stretched thin and will often have a hard time being fully present in both roles.
10
When I had a child in 1985, I found that I could not be the modern superwoman who could manage it all with grace and efficiency, even with my college degree and a husband who willingly shouldered much of the work. It's embarrassing still to say that I don't have a paying job outside the home.
3
Not only do they underestimate the cost of motherhood. They also OVER estimate their abilities and self worth.
2
What this article is alluding to is women must work a lot harder should they choose to have children and with wages remaining stagnant for decades, it is becoming more and more difficult to afford them. Policy is the Establishment's way of penalizing women for wanting both a meaningful career and children.
With the implementation of Reaganomics, more and more families required both parents to work in order to make ends meet. Single parent households have been on the rise and will continue to do so.
Rather than bashing women and their choices, how about the Establishment, who claims to promote family and pro-creation, develop policies that actually support that view?
5
As a grandmother whose single daughter became a "mother by choice" in England at age 42, I see her as having made good decisions. After spending so many years as a single, she was ready to change the direction of her life. She works for a major University in the UK in a 9-5 job, had 6.5 months maternity leave and has her daughter in an excellent university sponsored child care facility. Life is hectic but doable. She is a wonderful mother and enjoying every minute of it.
4
@Beverly Friedman
what humblebragging. Please do not even start to compare the benefits of being a single mother in the UK versus the disgrace happening in the US. What was the point of your post? To make all the American working mothers who have no maternity leave and no access to free day care feel bad that they are not enjoying every minute of it?
Nobody cares that you need to fan your insecurities about your daughter being a wonderful mother in public.
1
@Corina agreed, I got two weeks of paid leave after my son was born, I’m lucky I didn’t need a C-Section! I wish I could enjoy motherhood like they can in other parts of the world
4
This article hits home for me as the mother of a preschooler in a highly educated university community of families — most of whom live far from extended family who could help with things like childcare pickup, daytime appointments, sick days, etc.
My "mom" friends followed their husbands to the university, where the men work crazy hours — nights, weekends, etc. — on their career-building post-docs, medical residences, research positions, etc. Most of the women stay home, work part-time or freelance. And there is absolutely no way the husbands could devote themselves to these super-demanding jobs if their wives weren't available for sick days, daycare/school pickups, after-school activities chauffeuring, parent-teacher conferences, classroom events, etc.
If both parents worked as hard as the men do, they'd need to hire significantly more help. Not just full-time daycare - that ends at 6, and a lot of jobs don't allow you to get there in time. You'd need an extensive coordination system of babysitters and nannies to fill in for the absent grandparents/relatives.
And why is it so often the women's career that (frustratingly) goes back burner? As others have noted, breastfeeding and newborn care is a full-time job. Out of necessity, women step back at that moment. I also observe a lot of 40ish moms, having worked for 20 years and often invested heavily in fertility treatments, desiring to be more present for their kids than high-power jobs permit.
24
I’ve been thinking and thinking about this article. It rings so true to me, a STEM PhD and mother of two school-age kids currently working part-time - while my husband, an MD, enjoys a high-powered academic research career.
Perhaps this has been commented upon already but a perverse side-effect of couples like us is that having the wife work PT, low-key or not at all strongly enables the husband’s career. My husband travels extensively for work and can immerse in a project when need arises. Ironically, the support I provide our family makes it very difficult for working parents to compete with him.
25
@CT I totally agree with this comment. I also think that all of these articles that focus on women, but not on the entire family are missing an important issue. Every family does what works for them socially and financially. If a two-career couple has kids, someone actually needs to sometimes talk to the kids, take them to school and doctor appointments and generally look after things. In the absence of a grandparent or strong family network, it will fall to the woman, usually because the man makes more. And at the end of the day whether it is the man or the woman who is working more, why should both people work 80 hours a week at a job?
7
I'm sure the GOP will read this and decide to underwrite the costs of motherhood, right? They want to do away with Planned Parenthood, make it harder to get condoms...clearly they want more moms and more babies. So why not put our money where their mouth is?
6
Nowhere does the author mention that in previous generations working moms were both younger (with younger parents!) and more likely to live near that younger family who would help take care of the kids. We have no family nearby to help out -- this is a big downside to being a working mom with kids.
18
Having children is mostly overrated. People put rose colored glasses on when looking in the rear view mirror. Married and childless at 74 and VERY content with my life, career, relationships (including some with children), I have no regrets. Looking at many of my friends I can say (in retrospect), one of the reasons not to have children is that they "never go away". Except when long term care of parents is imminent.
And then they are very busy. Cynic? No. Realist? Yes.
21
@glo - Interesting comments, but I don't think the point was whether or not parenthood/motherhood was good, bad, or indifferent. I think the point was that for good or ill, many (if not most) people seem to choose it so here's what you are in for.
In America, having kids makes bad financial sense, especially if you're a woman. I am really grateful I've never been susceptible to idealistic fantasies about family and children. I wonder how many women who've had kids secretly wish they could take it back.
18
@Katie Taylor
Almost no woman I know regrets having kids, neither those my age (late sixties) or my kids’ ages. And I have discussed this with many other women,
Do many of us wish it was easier to combine kids and a career? Of course. But most of us don’t regret the choices we made, even those of us who had to give up a lot to have children.
I do think the pressure for every woman to want children is ridiculous, but it is equally ridiculous to say most women will regret having them. Good thing most don’t think like you do or the human race would go extinct. Survival of the species is the ultimate goal of all life, after all.
10
A little late to the comment party, but here's a few observations from a (currently child-free) college educated woman who most certainly does NOT underestimate the difficulties of combining work and parenthood. Having worked in education, mostly in the capacity of teaching kids in their homes, I've observed countless families at their most intimate moments...
1. Everyone is giving 110% of their capacity, and whether the man's capacity and woman's capacity is different/equal doesn't matter; everyone feels filled to the brim and assumes the other person can't possibly be doing as much as he/she is. Resentment develops.
2. You can only parent along a spectrum of parenting deemed appropriate and acceptable by society. The calls for "free-range" parenting are ridiculous, as, in the present day, you can get DSS called on you for unsupervised kids. Also -- your kid's the only one not playing sports and doing Russian math? They're the weirdo and now you're responsible for your kid being ostracized.
3. The world is increasingly more competitive and international students are creeping in and slyly diminishing domestic kids' chances at our top colleges. Look it up. More competition develops, making parenting more all-encompassing. Who wants their kid to fall behind?
4. Uncomfortable, I know, but maybe the biology of men and women.. *gasp* ..has something to do with how all of this plays out.
12
Regarding point 4, please note the article points out that this decline has not occurred in countries with policies supporting working parents.
17
@Ej - Good thoughtful post. Point 3 was especially good, not the least of which the part about busybodies who feel the need to save free range kids from their parents.
2
I love the statement, "The new analysis suggests something else also began happening during the 1990s: Motherhood became more demanding. Parents now spend more time and money on child care. They feel more pressure to breast-feed, to do enriching activities with their children and to provide close supervision."
Hello, Motherhood has always been demanding. Perhaps the real change is that the babysitter (doing the job of mother) started asking for more money. I had my children in the early 80's and thought I would go back to work as a clothing and fabric designer. I discovered motherhood was a full time job with no pay and little respect. I thought about all the things listed above, as my mother did before me, and tried to figure out how to do both as best I could. The family came first. Its not a new problem, it is the century old problem.
21
@Robin
The lack of respect for “women’s work”is also an age old problem.
A friend once told me she realized when she had her own kids that she had undervalued and underestimated the job that traditional mothers like her own (a mother of six) have always done. She had subconsciously internalized the culture’s disdainfulview that child rearing and home making are easy and require no skill. She also realized she respected work that was paid more than child rearing. She was sure she could handle a career and motherhood without breaking a sweat. Even women devalue “women’s”work.
59
It seems to me that what is described in this piece is at least partially a consequence of growing income inequality in the US and lack of investment in services such as public education and transit. Growing income inequality creates anxiety in parents that their children will not be able to adequately support themselves without a "jump start" in childhood that leads to better schools, more skills, and in the end, decent economic opportunity, which is available to a diminishing slice of workers. Neither can parents trust that public schools will provide an adequate education, and so provide additional activities, tutors and sometimes private school if they can. Finally, kids can't get around in our car culture. There is a German kids book entitled something like "Jan and Julia get lost." They are kids under 10 who take the bus downtown to go shopping and get lost, and the police return them home. In the US, the parents would be reported to social services and the children would be removed from the home. It's hard to work when you have to drive your kids all over.
21
This is no mystery. I am college educated and have a graduate degree. Once I started having babies and realized what a headache childcare is, I switched to per diem so that I didn’t have to deal with it. Dealing/finding/scheduling childcare is the hardest part of working.
We’ve had lovely daycare experiences until they decided to shut down. I’ve tried nannies. One highly recommended nanny (in her 50’s) didn’t think my kids were old enough to rat her out when my son told me she didn’t put my daughter in a car seat. I’ve seen nannies gather at the park to chat. One of them (who never let the two year old out of his stroller while she chatted) put playground bark in her little charges pant cuffs so that the parents would think he played at the park.
A girlfriend of mine got a nannycam and busted her nanny for never picking her baby up. She would prop a bottle to feed and changed him ONCE right before the mom came home.
It all comes down to this: no one (except close family) is going to take better of your children than you are. We live 3000 miles away from grandparents. My kids are older now and I get help from college kids now (which have all been fabulous). But if I had to do it all again I would still make the same choice. I’ve never regretted all the time I got to spend with them. I can now work part time and still be involved in their lives. Yes, my career took a hit and there’s no telling what I could have done but I watched them grow up. And that is enough for me.
32
@Liz - Good post. No one is going to take as good of care of your kids as you.
2
Seems to presuppose everyone wants to work. Not working is my ideal. Perhaps many educated women prefer to avoid working too. Why work if you don’t have to?
10
@Adam - Try raising a few kids and tell me if you are not working. It is a 24 /7 job with no vacation or benefits. As woman who has owned and worked several restaurants as well as raised two children, I say give some RESPECT to the most demanding job in the world...Motherhood.
25
If you don't have to work outside the home that's great. You must be rich enough not to worry about retirement (that's years of Social Security contributions you're not making) or being impoverished by divorce. Just try getting back into the workforce at 50 after years as a SAHP.
2
In terms of the impact having children has had on my career - if I’d known it I would not have had children.
12
My take (with nearly menopausal hindsight), is that I was hoodwinked by hormones. I thought I really wanted, NEEDED, to have kids, but the bottomless pit of heartache from ending up with a bad marriage when kids are involved defies words. Everybody loses and keeps on losing. Now that I’m past the Mommy, filled with raw emotion (when other people’s adorable kids performing in elementary school shows would bring inexplicable tears to my eyes and I wanted to take care of everyone), I can’t grasp what I was thinking. Clearly, I wasn’t. BEWARE of the hormones, ladies. You have NO idea how powerfully they alter rational thought.
16
I fail to see how increasing rates of breastfeeding is listed as a contributing factor for increasing costs of childcare. If anything, then choosing to use formula is what costs more --in terms of direct costs (the cost of formula) and indirect costs (a statistically significant increase in medical office visits, days of missed work/school).
4
@Laura
Breastfeeding, along with pumping, can take on average about 8 hours a day. That's an entire full time job seven days a week. Additionally, for those of us who work while breastfeeding, there is the cost of a pump, pump supplies, etc, as well as the lost work time of pumping breaks. Also, there's really not the peer reviewed research to back up any "significant increases" in illness in formula fed babies these days.
35
The authors never say breastfeeding contributes to the cost of childcare. They imply that it takes more time than not breastfeeding, and therefore makes it harder for the women who choose to breastfeed to also work full time. When your baby is attached to your body you can’t do much else; when someone else can feed your baby miles across town from where you are, you’re much more likely to be able to.
19
@Laura - Initially having difficulty with, and ultimately, after six painful, sleepless weeks, choosing not to breastfeed was the best decision I ever made for my sanity (and my husband's). Baby is fine and we're much happier. Breastfeeding really is a full time job!!
3
It is no coincidence that fertility rates are plunging.
16
I'm well aware of the demands, living in a state with young parents and large families and a very gendered division of labor. Happily childless!
12
Two words: public policy. Look at other countries. We are building our own dystopia.
And those here who complain about the coworkers who are mothers and require "accommodations" -- they are raising the people who will govern you when you are old. Support them, thank them. Depending on whether you help out, you will find yourself an old person getting shoved aside in the grocery line by an arrogant middle aged person who never learned any manners or compassion. Or maybe I just described you now?
48
I was caught up in the demands of motherhood in the first few months as a new Mom, then I realized that a lot of the increase in expectations for mothers came from stay at home mothers who felt the need to validate their decision to stay home. If you just recognize that most of the demands are nonsense derived from insecurities about the moms, not actual needs of the kids, you can provide more than adequately for your children's actual (not imagined, not keeping up with the Joneses) needs, have happy children, and be a happy working mother.
31
what are you talking about, exactly? Aren’t the demands of infants - feeding, sleeping, diaper changes - the same no matter who your mom is? what other demands of infancy did stay-at-home moms make up?
13
Think beyond infancy, which is a very short period of a child’s lifetime. Do children really need to be scheduled 24/7 in sports leagues, sports camps, music and drama lessons, dance lessons with not only recitals but competitions, etc? Mothers do up the competition in what makes a “ good” mother, and the shame is, as a teacher, I hear the children cheering when it rains so they do not have sports practice because they feel so over- scheduled. I read essay upon essay from children who long for a bit of free time, time to do what THEY want to do, not what is decided for them by adults.
16
Yes, but LT said she was caught up in the demands of motherhood “for the first few months” ie early infancy.
This completely glosses over the cost of childcare in favor of "child care hours." One child in daycare in MA costs more than our mortgage -- two in daycare would usurp more than an entire income, and we'd be better off letting that cancel itself out and one stay home. The reality is that a father doesn't lose time on the promotion ladder to pregnancy and maternity leave, and isn't asked to "prove" his worth after bearing those children. And, not to mention, grandparents are working longer in life to keep up with their own costs, so the network of family child care is significantly smaller than it might have been.
I think college-educated women like myself are not "surprised at the difficulty" of parenting -- simply making the smart financial choices for their households.
34
@New Mom
Smart as long as your higher-earning spouse stays married to you. I have friends who made the decision to not work, or work less, only to find themselves divorced and trying to make ends meet. For that reason alone, women should continue to work, even when childcare (temporarily) eats up their entire salaries.
28
I truly believe that women should not give up there careers if the can, especially with risk of divorce and women needing to keep “a foot in the door” in their professional life and ability to make a living. Better to have both parents working and each contributing to the shared child care, household “work” and family finances as best they can even if it is difficult. If the wife gives up her career to raise children and the husband gets to focus solely on his career, the inequities of the traditional roles associated with raising a family are magnified. And research has shown that when fathers contribute to household chores, children grow up with a stronger sense of equality between genders. As I have told my dear friend, who is now an empty nester, when commenting on her retired husband’s lack of contribution to household chores, that her many years of being a stay-at-home-mom “trained him” to view household tasks as solely her “job”.
7
The years of full-time daycare are fleeting. I know more than a few impoverished former SAHPs. Don't drop out of the workforce if you can help it.
4
Two highly paid earners in a household with children means dry cleaning, lunches out, transport,
childcare expenses, outsourcing just about everything...from accounting to landscaping to building projects around the home,
all paid in after tax dollars. That is insane. Better for one earner to bring in the cash and the other earner to manage all facets of the nest...untaxed.
5
@BBB Depends on how much money you make.
5
@BBB For some, the cost of a psychiatrist would be required to stay home. I say choose. Hard to have it all.
4
It depends on your tax bracket. And the SAHP it s gambling that they stay married.
3
I don't buy the "Men aren't taking up the slack" trope. At least not in the educated households that I see where two careers are even thought about. Many men I know share duties.
Furthe I'm sure the "studies" centered on "housework" only.
How many women chip in on that deck being built? Installing new electricity in a house? Working on the car? Taking away that old washer dryer and putting in the new ones? Yeah - all that stuff MEN are (usually) doing while women chase the kids around. Quantify that "work sharing".
Gender roles. They're there for a reason.
9
@Ignatius J. Reilly OMG, like my husband does any of that stuff!
13
@Ignatius J. Reilly
You're supposed to get a new washing machine every 8-10 years. The last time my husband and I purchased one (in 2015), the total time involved was about six hours-- including researching which brand to get, going to Lowes to buy it and schedule delivery, waiting for the delivery people to show up, and letting them in the house while they installed and removed the dryer. Even if we hadn't sprung for delivery (like when we bought a new refrigerator), it took about the same amount of time, except that instead of waiting for the delivery truck we had to borrow a friend's pickup.
That works out to about 45 minutes of time per year (averaged out over the shortest possible washing machine lifespan). Actually doing loads of laundry takes that much time in a month!
A lot of the jobs you list-- building a deck, installing electricity, working on the car, etc-- aren't constant, ongoing tasks, they're one-off jobs. It's disingenuous to compare tasks that take up hours of time every day to jobs that can be done once a year.
And your "gender roles" comment is bunk. My husband and I split our tasks evenly (each of us takes the other's least favorite, and we share the rest), regardless of some antiquated idea of who should handle what.
26
@Ignatius J. Reilly Putting in a new deck is a once every ten year project. Few men "work on the car" any more. The guys from Home Depot take out your old washer dryer when you buy a new one. Cleaning, childcare and making meals (and cleaning up after them) are day in, day out, 24/7 chores. "Gender roles" appear to be an excuse for you to justify being a freeloader.
10
Here's a thought. Don't give in to societal pressure to be a super parent. It's stupid and you don't have to do it. Choose a spouse who believes in equity in childrearing and then hold them to it. Done and done. We can only do so much to change politics and society (and we should absolutely do what we can) but we have lots of control over our own choices. Jeez ladies, make the life you want for yourself.
19
@Dee oh, yeah, that works. Because we know so well what it takes to be a parent and can foresee the future with such perfect clarity. My husband and I had many discussions about how we would share parenting equally. Ha! I do about 75%; he does about 25%. The kids barely notice him but never leave me alone. I've talked, yelled, begged; nothing changes. He's defensive; I'm bitter. Counseling hasn't worked. Divorce is expensive and damaging socially and financially, and it sure won't lessen my workload. Most of my equally educated friends have the same issues. Equally shared parenting is a false promise sold to us in our 20s. Sign me: Resentful wife.
12
Have fewer children. The world is full of unwanted, unloved children...as the pro-life movement wages war on women and their BORN children.
13
Another article that simply can't understand why today's parents find It was NEVER the case that people could work full time and raise children. Men NEVER did that. They could freely pursue careers that demanded long hours in the workplace because their wives were home raising their children and keeping house for them.
You can only off-load so much of that onto paid labor. Today's parents are trying to "do it all" in order to "have it all", and discovering that it can't be done.
Second wave feminism dropped the ball when we didn't demand that "full time" (and all the career momentum and benefits that one deserves for work done for one's company) stop being defined as "40+ hours" so that both partners can contribute equally at home and in the workplace. People also should not be penalized for going part time or stepping out of the workforce in order to care for their young families. If you do that, expect to spend the rest of your career in dead end "mommy track" or "daddy track" positions.
26
You can't expect people to accommodate you if you leave the workforce. The world doesn't work that way, fair or not.
1
These studies once again neglected to mention the role of fathers. Until men take 50percent of the child rearing responsibilities, it will always be harder on women. The US also needs to respect working parents and require businesses to give family leave. Childcare should be supported and subsidized.
I worked and continue to work . I only had one child though, I can't imagine having more and keeping a job. My husband us a complete contributor to child rearing and took six weeks off my our son was born to take care of him after my six weeks off.
13
I worked for 20 years after grad school and before having children and had moved up the ladder to a job I loved. My eldest went to day care until Kindergarten and while it was the best facility we could find, it was not great. There were too many mornings when as a toddler he cried as I left for work, had to go even if he wasn't feeling well... I worked a 12-hour day and got to see him 30 minutes at night before he went to bed. When my daughter was born 5 years later I couldn't go through that again and regretfully stayed home, continuing to consult in private practice but basically foregoing my career dreams. I have two fabulous kids now and with the demands of growing up - sports, academics, the intense competition for college, and the social worries - marginalization, getting in with the wrong crowd - I couldn't have done it with a full-time meaningful job. Add to that a female boss who sidelined fast-tracked women as soon as they had a child. I'm working again now that the kids are grown but at a lower-paying, much less satisfying job. We have struggled to finance college and won't retire - something that would never have been an issue if I could have continued with my career. Regrets? Sometimes. But there was really no support so in the end, there was really little choice.
38
@Laura
The last sentence says it all.
12
@Rebecca b Yes. This country says we "love children" but does absolutely nothing to support the people who are raising them.
5
I always worked. I was a great mom, very active in the schools And community. I love motherhood; I never saw it as an either/or-- working was just part of it.. I believe my son is proud of me, as I am of him. Mostly I had fun! We love in a tough time and country. Unless a couple is rich, it's hard to imagine ultimate retirement if you only had one income to take you there.
10
When I read these studies, I consistently look for one word and fail to find it: LOVE. The truth is, we parents (I am the wife of this NYTimes-reading couple) underestimate the amount of love we feel for our children, the intensity of it, and the emotional rewards of parenting and family life that are absent in work life. Love is hard to quantify. It doesn't fit into easy categories that questionnaires offer. For many of us, the pleasures and rewards of family life take us by pleasant surprise and we make many "sacrifices" to spend a few years with our children while we can. Our son is now away at college, and I don't regret working part-time so I could maximize my time with him. It was a choice I was able to make because my husband worked more hours than I, and because I had a mother who also helped with childcare out of love for her grandson. It was hard, but we enjoyed it. I wonder if the question of enjoyment of parenting was a category in this study.
28
@Leo Schmdit
I’m totally with you. I am still unsure of why parenting articles focus on the HoW versus the WHY in most publications. We are a dual income family and have gotten comfortable with what we need to do juggling the demands of long hours, childcare, school requirements with no extended family in the city to help. But we have the perspective to step back and understand we knew what we signed up for because parenting means selfLessness as a precondition. Still always a surprisingly silent topic on parenting articles.
1
This Just In: Women Work Harder Than Men (haiku trilogy) "Most couples still don't - share household chores and child - care equitably"; "If you want children - to have quality lives, give - them quality time"; "It's both easier - and harder than ever for - Moms to have careers"
18
In our family we are returning to extended family for childcare options. I know that part of my planned retirement in a few years will be part time childcare of expected grandchildren. We have discussed and planned around this. My adult daughters (a social worker and teacher) know they will have to sacrifice-either income and time or work part time and sacrifice income that way. This country does not seem to understand what we put young families through. And the GOP pretends it is a family friendly party. What a joke. Meanwhile we give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. That greed and the hubris of those at the top will be our nation's undoing.
52
@Eva lockhart The GOP is friendly to a certain type of family, the kind with a high earning dad and a stay-at-home mom.
2
I don't think it's any mystery that it's well-educated women who are most surprised by the difficulty in being parents. Because that is the group for whom standards of parenting are so high. This is really an upper middle class and above thing. Poor parents aren't spending 20 hours a week shuttling their kids around to underwater basket weaving classes, I assure you. People who say "society's expectations for parents have changed" are really saying that they only hang out with people of their own socio-economic class and don't realize this is a phenomenon particular to that group, not particularly to society as a whole.
These are hyper-successful, hyper-competitive people. It's no surprise they turn child-rearing into a competition as well, and then judge one another for not measuring up to impossibly high standards.
72
I agree with your comment. Raised by a single mother who wanted us to have well-rounded educations way before it became a trend/ necessity, we attended Chinese school, karate, piano, gymnastics, and violin classes but not all at once and we were responsible for busing/ walking to classes our selves. Mom also wanted us to have fun : no pressure to be a black belt or first violinist. I think parents and kids put way too much pressure on themselves.
11
@A - Good post.
I so related to this. The problem isn't the job; my job is flexible, family friendly, supportive, etc. The problem is modern motherhood. The pressure to involve your children in lots of activities and to give them every advantage, real or imagined, possible, is very strong. I'm not even sure how you'd change this...it's just the turn our society as a whole has taken. My children did swimming, tumble classes, and music classes all before the age of 2. It's hard not to feel like you'd be doing your kids a disservice if you opted out, because everyone around you does the same.
21
Schools are also insanely demanding of parents. Only 25-30% fo schoolweeks are 5 day weeks with no requests (requirements) for parents to show up or have them home for a day.
2
Or maybe they just like being at home with their children, or love homemaking. I did. Working outside the home is not the goal of all women and some of us have a radical progressive politics and feminism which see the value of family as key to the health of the entire culture and country., and indeed, whole world. Second wave was just one step on that path. Women rise!
19
@Sandra Cason The entire article was literally about mothers who had no intention of being "homemakers" and were caught off guard by the the demands of modern day motherhood.
27
Women are surprised about how hard it is to have children and keep working. WHY ARE MEN NOT SURPRISED?
Oh.
"As women do more paid work, men have not increased their child care and housekeeping tasks to the same extent — another surprise for young women who, research has shown, expected more egalitarian partnerships."
41
@Kay
The article leaves out the funny catch that in these same types of specific carrer minded households, the men may be and probably ARE (in my experience) pitching in more.
That statistic most likely is for men in ALL householdsl.
It and you are not being fair to the guy/couple in the minority who are doing the right thing and sharing.
And it's also giving you an easy scapegoat against the facts - hat it may not "all be possible" in reality to have it all.
1
I don't like the way the article repeatedly says "women got it wrong." As if scolding "Those silly women! They thought they could work and raise kids, but they were wrong!"
It takes 2 parents to make a child, so family life is never just a woman's issue. And it's amazing that the research breezily "didn't analyse father's role in depth"....why on earth not?!
That said, this article begins to address real time/resource issues for parents that have not been widely articulated. For middle class families, societal demands and expectations of parents (again, not just "moms") have increased dramatically. And if kids have any special needs or interests, the hours required are extreme. I spend easily 20+ hours/week on our 2 kids' doctor appointments, emails, forms (...and more forms and more forms...this pdf, that link, this sign-in, etc.), school meetings, textbook ordering, school project supply purchasing, school picture processing, gift buying, teacher appreciation donations, finding that special vitamin that the dr wants the kid to take, ordering new glasses, etc. The demands are endless. So, yes, many parents (mostly women) end up staying home or reducing work time to become an executive assistant, nutritionist, driver, tutor, etc. for each child. I find the parenting time requirements much heavier as kids get to be 10+ vs when they were young.
One suggestion: if schools would reign in their demands, this would reduce parents' load by a lot.
30
IKR! Getting paid better wages for longer hours, that's ... What! And who would pressure a mom into breastfeeding?? Surely not the baby!?
4
It's always been hard to work full time and have children. Duh!
It's why there are GENDER ROLES. So now stop blaming the patriarchy and admit it's because you want and have kids. it's why men are usually the bread winners and make more than women in the end.
You can't have it both ways.
5
I fully relate to this article. I am an attorney in New York with two children and my husband is a stay at home dad. We decided this was the way to go because he was ready to give up his former income-earning occupation managing a night club, whereas I still liked my job and earned a lot more. So I don't have the option to leave my career, even if I wanted to. Maybe that makes it easier in some ways. However, while I hate to enable gender stereotypes, I do think that many men find it less stressful to leave child care to their partners who aren't working outside the home, whereas many women feel (whether because of instinct or socialization or both) that they can't let go of any of the quality time or decision making, even when they are working full time as well. I still feel like I have to research and plan enrichment activities even though my husband will do all of the shuttling around while I'm at work. And yes, my parents both worked, and yes, I think the pressures are higher to be perfect parents today than when I was a kid, while the expectations at work are often greater as well. I wouldn't choose to give up either part of my life, but the balancing act is a constant source of stress. And I work for a firm that is relatively respectful of family obligations; I can't imagine hacking it as a Big Law mom.
32
As a young woman lawyer who was told growing up that I could “have it all” (e.g. have a fulfilling career and work/life balance), I am realizing how unattainable that standard is in today’s world. I often think about who is happier - the woman who is working part time or has a 9-5 job that has more time to cultivate the kind of family life she wants, or the woman who is pursuing her dream career / has financial independence but is overwhelmed by her schedule and stress. The answer has made me and other young women lawyers I know rethink our own lives and happiness (although we love our jobs and want to continue to do them).
By the way, the most surprising thing I’ve learned post law school is the number of my male classmates who have sought out partners who have better schedules than them or stay at home wives. I thought that my male lawyer friends would be more progressive or desire educational and financial equality with their partners, but I think they understand the struggle of having a hard schedule and the benefits of having someone with more flexibility to help with their home life. I also used to think that men my age (millennials, in their 20s) would be more keen to shy away from traditional gender roles, but I think the increasing amount of time and money it requires to take care of children has changed that.
29
@Ashley I graduated from law school over 25 years ago. Most women lawyers I know no longer practice law. I think there is a statistic that women who go into big law, work for an average of seven years and then drop out forever. Luckily, I got an in-house job close to home six months before my first daughter was born and have been there for over twenty years. Paying for quality daycare for my two girls' first five years was astronomically expensive, so I was working for like $6 an hour after those costs and taxes. It is so hard to have it all for women in the United States. I was allowed four weeks off after the birth of each daughter...four weeks! But I was lucky because it was a paid leave. Ha!
20
I'm a man, and I'm happy to say that as a stay-at-home dad, I have not been caught off guard at all. Not in the least. Sure, I gave up a career that I spent years working towards, including earning a PhD, and I've had to decline the few work opportunities that started to develop. I've totally removed myself from any hope of ever having a career, aside from Walmart greeter maybe. I have little interaction anymore with mature, intelligent adults, so I think I'll be ready for that job when the time comes. As for money, as a man I've found that I can just go into my front yard and pick dollars off the tree I have there. But boy, I sure do feel bad for the stay-at-home moms out there, who apparently don't have such trees, and who seem to somehow get invested in their educations. Not us men! When I do feel bad, though, I reflect on the general statistics and trends that are cited in this article, and they make me feel better. Now if I could only figure out how to get accepted among the moms -- then I'd have a community!
15
I am sorry but I really have to take issue with these assumptions. Wake up! It IS hard to do both and it always has been. Sacrifices must be made that affect your career and your children. It is a balancing act and it is HARD and FRUSTRATING. It is, however, doable. After working so hard to practice law in NYC for nearly thirty years and to raise two children, I am saddened to think that the next generation of educated, motivated women are finding it too difficult. There are many reasons for this, but the increased difficulty of child-rearing is NOT the explanation.
12
@Jane Welsh Men have always been able to have children and also a fulfilling career, if they chose to. Because women picked up the slack. Now women work and still pick up the slack.
27
" They feel more pressure to breast-feed, to do enriching activities with their children and to provide close supervision."
You mean, to be actual parents? None of us can have it all. There are only 24 hours in a day, and something must give. Either we raise our children or we pay people to do it for us while we work. The demands of having kids hasn't changed, we are simply being fed the illusion that you can "do everything" and you can't. One has to have less and one has to have more. Especially when children are young. I for one am glad that I chose my family. I find so much joy in the love of my family and they're so fun too!
15
@Dani You can't have it all. But your husband can. He gets to have a family--your family--and his career and financial independence, too. Why shouldn't you?
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@Kay Men don't "have it all." They tend to work more and see their kids less, and be less involved in the kids' activities.
4
@kas. I would rather put more time into my career than to stay at home, where I am bored stiff.
2
I get bombarded by articles focusing on studies such as these, likely because I’m a working mom. One thing they all seem to acknowledge is that, over the past few decades, men, generally, have failed to contribute more to housework or childcare even though they contribute a smaller percentage to household income than in the past.
This seems an easy fix, but the people who are best-placed to make that change (i.e. men) are rarely the targets of such “news.” Whereas working moms are constantly being told something that they already know: that they do a significant amount of emotional labor on top of their jobs. How ironic! A study about women doing emotional labor needs to be pointed out to men and explained to them, which is emotional labor in and of itself.
I think a change in reporting and a change in the way these studies are presented — not “this is a working woman’s problem,” but rather, “this is a working father’s problem with a solution” — would yield greater results.
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@Kerry Your point about pointing out and explaining emotional labor to men is spot on. My husband had no idea about this aspect of parenting until I explained it to him.
8
@Kerry Hey, I'm pretty liberal and I would support a universal basic income or something along these lines, but I absolutely disagree with the idea that women are suffering more because their own hormones require them to have feelings. So because women have more "emotional labor" would you also say that men have more "solution oriented logical labor". It doesn't make any sense. Again, I would support something like a universal basic income, but the idea of paying people because they have to take care of their babies sounds ridiculous.
I've also seen studies that women may have higher standards and may also overestimate their self reporting of doing household labor.
I agree but would paraphrase the work that naturally and unconsciously falls on women as mental not just emotional labor. The list making, researching, scheduling, coordinating etc always falls to most of the strong working moms I know. I have come to the conclusion that even though gender norms may contribute a little, some of this is inherently biological. Most of the husbands of these women do help and are hands on parents, but they need assigned clear cut tasks at home. These intelligent, compassionate, progressive men almost uniformly seem incapable of the planning, coordinating, fussy tasks like finding and making happen enrichment classes, birthday parties and play dates, ordering household supplies and majority of the logistics it takes to run a household with kids. The men may do these tasks when asked but I have not seen any of them do this on their own or volunteer. Giving them benefit of doubt, I think it really just does not occur to them naturally. You have to set realistic expectations of a partner and outsource when possible for everyone’s peace of mind. Women also need to realize done is better than perfect and let go in many areas when balancing work and family.
14
Can we please have subsidized dog care, as well as subsidized child care? Pets are an important part of many modern families.
10
What did women expect? I suspect, perhaps, that the ladies saw a door that said "men only!",(as they had years before when boys kept them out of the tree fort), and they were incensed. What the girls didn't understand was that along with chummy clubbiness came segregation-abuse of each other by violence-and men doing stupid, nonsensical things like drinking themselves to death.
Being allowed into the men's reserved section meant you get to pick your nose and scratch your belly with your belt off, as you smoke cigars and tell nasty stories. Men, on the other hand, all had the bizarre idea that women sat around in luxury all day, cared for by thousands of liveried servants, eating fine chocolates and being massaged , and escorted to the salon and pool.
Occasionally women had babies, but those were trials they pushed into the hands of underpaid-(or overpaid)-professionals who managed or failed. In the end, men felt, they would still get the bill. . .
I am positive that both halves of the human family operated with the sure knowledge that "they" got the short end of the stick and did the "real work". Many women now, are seeing that few things have really changed since 1945-except now antibiotics don't work much anymore.
Humans , it seems, are all suckers for the it really IS "greener on the other side of the hill" line they are sure they are being wrongfully denied.
6
@meloop They saw "a door marked 'men only' and were incensed" ? The door women saw (and we are talking about WOMEN, not girls) was the door to wages for the work they did.
3
The national statistics shows the birth rate in the U.S. is declining and the academics are wondering why? May I suggest they read the comments posted to this article?
17
Any Quest presents problems and complications that one only
feels viscerally by enduring it.
if one knew how much a task takes, we would have fewer volunteers for, medicine, engineering, mountain climbing, motherhood.
Your mind goes up the mountain first, then the real task is getting your body and your equipment up there. To "realize", in Spanish, is "dar la cuenta" , to give the cost, calculation account.
“You can have it all, just not all at the same time.” Betty Friedan
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/730948-you-can-have-it-all-just-not-all...
5
Reading this article and the comments from a perspective of
79 year old: What happened to the 40 work week?
The wealth of our earth has been sucked up into the bank vaults of the plutocrats. Those 100 hour work weeks should require two and one half workers and less profit for the wealthiest rentier class.
With two parents each working 40 hours a week, it should be possible to have children with reasonable levels of work for both parents.
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@memosyne This is a much underappreciated element of the problem, thank you!!!
7
@Kay Agreed and with new technology (automation, THE INTERNET) jobs can be done much more efficiently nowadays. We should actually be working less than 40 hours and still be able to get the same amount done.
1
@memosyne
Where is the outrage at employers and ourselves for working too many hours?! This is not a parenting issue. This is a worker's rights issue. We deserve lives outside of work whether we are parents, regardless of gender, ect. The article references long, inflexible schedules. Well, flexibility is irrelevant if you are working all of the time.
It is clearly a culture we have all bought into and accepted. It is a blind spot that our jobs ask humans to function like computers, that don't need exercise, light or love. Higher income families don't need subsidized daycare, they need reasonable expectations.
1
As a two-career couple, we think we stumbled on a make-do (not perfect but endurable) solution: part-time employment for one us, that salary just barely covering in-home child care until all three children were in school. While a number of years of work equated to essentially one income (and a very humble house and unreliable used cars), it came to a close quicker than we could imagine. The part-time work was fulfilling, enabled my husband to become the morning parent (while I snagged the prized school-pickup duties) and gave me a jumping off point for Act Two. Something to consider if the alternative is to leave the work force and rely on one income. It does require some foresight though, before the big house and expensive cars lock you into something you do not really want.
20
@Kate D'Andrea
Yes. Thank you. In my experience with, enlightened friends having kids (usually a household where a woman has aspirations on a career is pretty enlightened) there is shared responsibility like yours.
I don't buy the easy target of "Men aren't picking up the slack". It just doesn't ring true to me. How did they quantify that? And like yours, men have to put off certain career aspirations too and stay at home.
But the "man are slackers" trope sure gives a lot of women in these comments and the article itself a scapegoat against what has been known for eons - having kids takes up a Mother's time no matter how you slice it.
2
@Kate D'Andrea Sounds like a great plan! My husband and I did that. We didn't have a big house or expensive tastes, but it worked pretty well, until the Recession came, just when the youngest started Kindergarten and I was getting ready to ramp up my career. While we are employed now, he is not at the level he was at pre-recession (in marketing) and I have been forced to explore different fields, due to a shrinkage of opportunities in my former (but well-loved) career. If only the economy were more predictable, and your foresight didn't get pulled out from under you midstream!
3
I wonder how what percentage of mothers are faced with children with chronic health and/or behavior issues that make their lives far more complex and leave them with little or no sleep for years. Consider asthma, type 1 diabetes, life threatening allergies, cognitive issues, orthopedic issues, genetic abnormalities, the list goes on. As women wait to have babies in their 30's and 40's and use fertility treatments to get pregnant, the percentage of infants with these issues rises. I know this because I lived it with my child and just the doctor appointments, emergency room visits, and not sleeping through the night until age 5 convinced me that working was too much for me.
17
The author writes that during the 1990s "motherhood became more demanding."
Really? I always thought that the needs of the newborn have remained constant for centuries.
The fact of the matter is that with the spread of technology, homo sapiens become more and more aware of what it is they DO NOT have. Women can hardly be blamed for wanting it all.
Which to me is ironic, because in my opinion, there is nothing more meaningful, more consequential, more significant for humanity than the ability to create life. Women alone possess this ability, and for this alone they should be adored, idolized, loved, put on a proverbial pedestal.
There is no male achievement that comes close.
6
@Frank J Haydn It seems that more helpful than being adored, idolized, loved and put on a proverbial pedestal would be the relevant men stepping up to do closer to half the work involved.
13
@RMB
I'm almost 59. I raised my kids for many years singlehandedly because my ex was ill.
I do not comprehend how men cannot be involved in the care of their own children.
Being a working mother was hard but my husband was an active partner. My son started day care when he was four months old and grew up to be a happy, motivated, disciplined, and all-around awesome teenager who does well at school, does chores, has a job, plays sports and so forth. I know lots of moms who stayed home to raise their kids and the kids are a disaster. Working or staying home with kids - neither guarantees anything. It's hard either way and there are trade-offs in everything. Maybe one solution is that fathers/paratners need to be more involved - since when are kids the sole responsibility of mothers?
26
I assumed I would work full time and parent, as I began having babies in the mid 90's. I think for our generation, the pressure of being the a full time career woman only, was reduced. Thanks to those before us, we knew we had a choice. What brought me out of the full time working world was not being overwhelmed at the tasks of parenthood, but overwhelmed with just how much love and attachment I had for my kids. No one could ever have explained it to me. I knew I had one shot at raising them, so worked part-time. There are challenges no matter how you do it! Mine included, but I am so happy for the choice I made.
22
@Al Yes! I have seen many women, myself included, experience something that *really* caught us off guard
about becoming mothers, which was how much love we felt for the babies and how much we wanted to be there with them, raising them ourselves.
18
@DG Do fathers not love their children?
1
Yes but I have seen only a minuscule percentage actually not have their career define who they are more than their roles as husbands and fathers. This is changing but men find their value in work. Luckily for women, we are able to find out value in whatever brings us the most joy- work, kids or both. I hope men can have that choice as easily as women one day.
2
I had no choice but to work full-time. But to make it work we lived in a small rented apartment within a 2 mile circumference that included home, work, kids' public elementary, middle and high school. And the middle and high schools were not stellar, amazing schools, they were nearby good enough schools. As well, we paid rent all those years, instead of owning something, which would have been way out of reach in the area near my job. Even so, every day was difficult, but at least it could work and did work. A commute would have made it impossible.
8
Many people I know have volunteered to provide childcare for their grandchildren during the first year of life. This incredible act of love is being motivated out of a recognition of the need for two incomes and the high cost women ( or men for that matter) pay for leaving the workforce, even for a short time. It is also acknowledgment of the very high cost, and in some cases, lack of available quality childcare.
I'd like to do that too except we will need to arrange a relief baby minder for the days when I am caring for my elderly mother who is suffering with Alzheimers.
12
child care costs have always been high. as a 71 years old with 2 kids and a grandchid on the way, it seems obvious that the cost factor not being recognized is the amount of money ( non salaried) that stay at home moms were paid.in the past the cost for a female spouse to stay at home was usually much less dollarwise,then now .More equal pay make losing her income much more of a burden.Also not included was the benefit of extended family for child care, much less available now .
4
As a mom of two young kids in a dual working home, I find this article is very on target with my experience. The workplace is not set up for two working parents unless you want to outsource your children (not meant negatively). Until equal pay, less costly child care and equal participation from a mother and father occur, we are not going to see much change.
The higher educated world has created a fairy tale that it can all work.
19
@Kate Yep. Second wave political correctness is definitely not for the lower classes....
This article doesn't mention the lack of part time work opportunities for women who want to use their education to work in non-service sector industries. Many women (such as myself) might want to be home full time when their kids are very young, work but mostly during school hours when they are older, and finally return to work full time.
By the way, as long as employers have a responsibility to provide health insurance, that fixed cost will make it less economic to hire employees for fewer hours. Shifting the burden of providing quality, affordable health insurance off the employer and into a single payer program would enable more job sharing, which would draw more women back into the work force.
33
Another piece is at the other end of the raising kids spectrum:
Women in particular often care for parents with dementia or other ailments, finding the care for having a parent in a nursing home or even more expensive, a "memory care" unit a financial downward spiral unless you do it at home yourself.
For all the talk and it is all talk, about loving those fertilized eggs, the reality of right wing politics is families doing it all and paying for it all, alone.
29
We need two-income families....yet schools, child care, doctors visits and time with our children are relegated to the fringes of life. Each family must find some ad-hoc system that may work until a child/family member is handicapped or ill. At that point the entire system breaks down. With health insurance tied to 50% of the workforce job changes become fraught. For the other 50% it is becoming increasingly unaffordable. Schools have half days that count as full instruction days. We commute.
30 years ago I gave up work. Freelancing meant beginning my work day at bedtime....impossible to sustain. Working part-time meant, as one interviewer said, he pays full-time rent on desk space. With a 50 minute commute, the only possible childcare was live-in. Adding up transportation and childcare essentially I would be working for the mere "privilege" of working while still responsible for illnesses, school and doctor visits. Professionally, I would not be considered a serious architect but a draftsman who had difficulty working outside a 40 hr week. (My husband neither could nor would commit to shouldering some of the burden.)
I had the alternative of not working, but very few of us do. Until society recognizes that it has a vested interest in the well-being of our families, this will continue.
But our present Congress with its recent tax bill has shown it respects and rewards income by passive "accruing" rather than actually working a 40 hr week.
18
@Susan
Why do we need more two income families? Maybe the answer is living more simply, for all of us....
1
The US government should impose higher taxes on its companies and use the taxes collected to help lessen the burden of poor mothers.
It will bring great benefit to the US as its population will grow tremendously.
2
If government didn't steal an ever larger part of our incomes there would not be a need for 2 incomes families. In NY one income is largely eaten up between sky high property taxes and child care.
6
@PeteM1965
The fix to that, Pete, is for every American to have some skin in the game come April 14th tax day. For some time half of the U.S. does not pay any federal taxes - the same half that receives the lion's share of government (state and federal) hand outs.
4
@Margot Actually, it's the Mitt Romney's and Donald Trump's of the world who don't pay taxes. Do you realize how much money is hidden offshore? Make these people pay their share. And corporations, too.
Then talk to me about poor people.
5
Nonconforming data is sometimes instructive. I do most of the housework and quit my job to work part time at home to raise my child after my wife did the really hard part (childbirth). Did it hurt my career? Absolutely, but I was fortunate to have the financial freedom to do what I thought was best for our family.
Being a primary caregiver is rewarding and exhausting. If anyone claims you can have it all under the family-unfriendly policies of the US, they're kidding themselves.
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"The cost of childcare has increased by 65 percent since the early 1980s." During that same period, according to the Pew Research Center, "today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers."
Right there is one of the major causes of the problem for working women trying to balance jobs and family.
The obscenely wealthy in this country have brainwashed us into believing that taxes are bad, and most Americans want to pay as little as possible. They have no idea that what my friends and family in Europe pay in taxes gives them free health care, child care, elder care, university education and other needed services that many of us in the United States simply cannot afford. Taxes are a much better and more efficient way to finance such services. People get a lot more for their money!
Until the American people are made to realize what a better deal Europeans have, and we could have too, nothing will change.
NYTimes readers really could benefit from some in-depth articles delineating what people in various European countries pay in taxes and what they get for their money.
(Of course it helps that none of the EU nations spends almost a trillion dollars annually to enable a military-industrial complex to engage in wars and military adventures in 76 countries around the planet.)
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@Samsara: Oh, the happy socialist myth: "I'm paying a little more in taxes but look how much I'm getting in return!" But since taxes are a function of income or consumption, what your good fortune really boils down to is: "Someone besides me is paying a lot more in taxes and getting a small fraction of what they should be getting in return." Paying ten percent of your income for family health insurance sounds great if you're making $40K, less great if you're making $100K, and really horrible if you're making over $250K.
2
@Earl W.
Um, have you priced self paid health insurance? 10-12K per person per year.
2
Motherhood has always been 'costly' as it is hard to raise kids. Not just from a monetary perspective, but an emotional one. You must be patient, must be willing to allow your precious babies to grow and take risks and face consequences as they age. Motherhood is NOT for everyone. However, I find most stay home these days because they want to raise their kids vs. having someone else raise them. Contrary to many comments that indicate women have no choices and 'it's not fair' they cannot both work and care for their kids, women do have choices and life isn't fair for anyone! Get over yourselves and relish the years if you can afford to raise your own kids. If you cannot, please don't have kids. As far as the non-peer reviewed paper that this article is based on, women are surprised at the effort and time that go into raising kids when they wait to have them. That's because they are now thinking and reading and stressing every decision they read on the Internet vs. having them when they are young and clueless.
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@Ma "If you cannot, don't have kids." This is obviously written by someone who has the access, the income, and the knowledge ( with no religious inhibitions) to prevent or terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Not everyone is like that. Also, circumstances change. People lose jobs. People lose income. People lose spouses. People lose health. Elderly parents need assistance. Unlike pets, children cannot be dropped off at the ASPCA when you can no longer afford to stay home with them. And finally, should someone HAVE to remain childless just because our society is still living culturally in the 1950s? Or is this modern eugenics?
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Or maybe she's willing to live more simply in order to have more love in her life. That
's my choice. Political correctness is not for everyone.
As a father with a newborn, I'd like to share my observation. What irks me the most about several of my peers, is that they're maintaining jobs solely for the sake of being able to say "I'm a working mom/dad," when in actuality they're netting very little after paying for child-care in NYC. If your salary is 35k yearly, and childcare costs you nearly 20k, you're taking home essentially nothing. Again, I'm referring to those in relationships with a partner earning a significant income, NOT single mothers/fathers. They're putting their egos ahead of their children's well being, and essentially turning their noses up at the thought of being home with their children.
6
@Austin Consider this. The equation is not about what you earn after child care expenses. Those expenses will last only for a few years, but the investment you are making in your career will matter later. And those child care costs should not be netted against only the woman's salary; after all, the children being cared for are his, too.
And are you saying that women work for their ego's but men don't? If staying home were that fantastic, you'd see more men do it.
Once they are all in school, the mother can ramp up again. And you can't predict the future. If he should become disabled or die young, or if they get divorced, they'll both be mighty glad for her having a developed career. (Regarding divorce: he will pay less in child support/alimony if she has a work history.)
15
@Austin Could be, or maybe it's that they're worried that stepping out of the workforce for 5+ years will make them unemployable when they want to go back?
15
Consider also that women sometimes want to stay home with their children, in spite of also loving their careers. It's a hard choice and a dangerous one. If you stay home you are at the mercy of your wage earning spouse and your social security takes a big hit, as does your career. And it's rare to actually have this choice.
This generation has it tougher, I think. With the cost of health care, the noose of student loans, no matter how well they plan, our system is stacked against them.
17
This is such a first-world, upper-class problem. For centuries poor women have worked while raising children, often far more children than the one or two we see in the US today. And they didn't have diapers and washing machines and ipads and tv. Or sick days. Go back about 150 years, and being a parent often meant losing at least one child.
Motherhood hasn't gotten harder. People just expected it to get easier. If these college-educated women are surprised at how demanding parenting is, that's their own fault. Talk to your colleagues and friends and family who have children, budget, and look at company policies on time off (i.e., do your research), and you'll easily realize how incredibly difficult it is, and always has been, to become a parent, and especially a mother.
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@Claire Then reach the obvious solution: don't have children. As long as it is harder to become a mother than a father, women should boycott having babies (see: Japan).
Then watch better policies come around.
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@Kay Fine, but by then you have probably passed by the fertility window. I sure wouldn't do that just to make a political statement.
I think the job is to try to change the minds of those who don't want any taxation for "family-friendly" national policies . Maybe when they are finally convinced that the US has reached 3rd world status they will come around.
Interesting article, good points, but what will it take to make this situation better?
2
After 35 years my husband still can’t figure out if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean or dirty. He had no idea who the kid’s teachers, doctors, or friend’s names were.
To this day he has done little in the household but occasionally take out the trash.
Luckily he does one thing extremely well which allowed me as an “ older” mom to stay home and hold down the fort.
Now in my 60’s with everyone well established and earning their own livings
here I am, bored out of my mind with no real place to utilize my energy or rekindle my career. A new transition.
What to do? There is simply no way to have your cake and eat it too.
But if I had to do it all over again, I would.
Now as young adults my kids and their friends remember all the fun little moments and good memories.
Sadly, continuing my career never would have allowed those moments to happen.
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@LJB count yourself lucky your spouse allowed you to choose.
7
or you could just view it as blessing to have had this experience, rather than a sadness. not all women have this choice. poor single mothers don't. @LJB
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@LJB My mother worked full time my entire childhood. Guess what: I remember the fun little moments and good memories, too.
I also remember her getting up every day and getting dressed (no business casual then!) and heading off to work--whether she felt like it or not. As a result, I harbor no entitlement to have another adult support me.
It is ever more expensive to raise children. Child care, college and health care costs have risen far more than incomes. So, importantly, has housing. You can pay for private school or pay up to live in a neighborhood with good schools. Very, very few people today will be able to provide a middle-to-(lower) upper-middle class lifestyle (college, a summer vacation, secure retirement) on one income. Glad you daughters had a nice childhood. As mothers, they will likely have to work.
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This also explains why men are typically paid more than women: employers know that men are less likely to be distracted by child raising responsibilties.
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@Robert No it doesn't. Single childless women of every age are still paid less. Even if the women in question are mothers, the argument is pretty flimsy; Mommy will be so-o-o-o concerned about Baby at home that her poor weak little brain will get all fluffy and confused! Sorry, I don't buy it. It's like saying we should pay middle aged men less because they might be sports fans who will be distracted by baseball and football and their poor weak brains, sodden with beer, will get all fermented and confused, and they won't do as good a job as women
1
So many of these comments are so depressing. I don’t understand why so many find it necessary to attack, judge or belittle other women’s choices. If you don’t like children, that’s ok - you don’t need to heap your sarcasm and self importance on those that do. If you don’t like Mother’s in your workplace because they ask for “accommodations”, you can still be kind and try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes (for once, it would seem). Where has the kindness gone? Are we really all out to get each other and compete at the demise of the many? Perhaps these attitudes are a large part of the very problems we are discussing. Be nice... we are all trying. You can be different from someone and still see shared human similarities - and even be friends or lend a hand.
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@Jen I think it is because we live in a very competitive workplace. It's not like those with kids don't question the motives of those without kids (or are single.) Perhaps consideration and kindness is needed for everyone, not just for those with kids.
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@Jen
It works both ways. Parents and Moms in general have no use for single people. An article in this very paper "Pregnant Mom's NEED Pregnant Friends". Hunh? Friends won't do?
Ever try to eat lunch as a single person in a park while "Mommy Brain" is all around? You get stairs, kids called after and clutched close. Ever get sick of "Family Size" written on everything? Ever go to an ice cream parlor after school (In park Slope!) and wait as the Mom's and children take forever and act like no one else is around using it as their play pen?
The whole world is geared toward offspring. Constantly. It pretty much for makes capitalism, "insurance", environmental destruction, selfishness, fighting for resources and war.
So when some people see added sense of entitlement around having kid they sometimes have to throw a few stones.
3
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”
5
Thinking and wishing don't make or change anything .. kids take time and money .. always have ..always will.
Being delusional -- is not being caught off guard
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The opportunity costs of having children are highest for those parents we as a society would most like to have offspring. Sadly, the converse is also true. If the human race wants to preserve the Earth’s environment and eventually travel to other habitable planets, we will have to seriously consider strict population control and eugenics. The current hands-off approach has been an ecological and genetic disaster and will likely lead to a mass extinction of so-called homo sapiens.
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who do we think should have children? you lost me there....the rich?
@Earl W.
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If by "the rich" you mean those who contribute the most to society, then yes. While there is not a 100% correlation between income and traits that society values highly, that's the way to bet. Put another way, would you rather the right or left tail of the human bell curve survive into the next century? We overshot a sustainable global population through policies of benign neglect and now face stark choices.
Another study reported but not properly vetted, used as a platform to make a statement. It is preposterous to discuss opting out of the workforce when over 30% of babies are being born to single women. The economic realities of supporting children and paying bills challenges the study’s conclusion which apply to an upper income, well educated demographic (i.e. the NYT readers) where couples can exercise choice, and the father can support the multiple activities that probably include “Coding for Tots”, not to mention “the demands of STEM classes, screen time rules…” What is the fathers' role in mothers opting out?
WARNING: danger zone for career oriented women! Reentering the work force after a 10 year hiatus when all your children are perfectly groomed for top tier colleges will be challenging. You will be competing with women 10 years your junior, and better educated to negotiate the slippery slide of the workplace where tech is changing everything. Not to mention that 50% of marriages end in divorce. Where does that leave you—if not financially disempowered? You flirt with risk when you minimize you own financial opportunities in the pursuit of your children’s success. There is a mythical archetype at play here between motherhood and power, more easily brokered at home than the workplace.
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@Carla Mann - spot on. You make one decision that turns into others (stay home one year turns into 5, 7....) and what if your spouse leaves? There are no guarantees. Interesting to put that alongside competitive parenting (focusing all efforts on the kids) - it's a huge gamble. On the other hand, most mothers love their kids to bits and just want what's best - it's hard to drop that 3 month old off at daycare. High-stakes financial choices mixed in with the deepest emotional connections (joys and fears) -- modern American parenting. (I live in Germany now with 2 young kids -- it's a different world.)
4
It was nice to read an article that captures what I have been feeling over the years. Both my husband and I have masters degrees. When we had our first child we calculated the cost of child care, commuting, etc and I would only be bringing home a bit more income but our stress levels would certainly go up. I have stayed home for over 12 years now, but in the meantime I have kept my work skills fresh by being an adjunct professor, freelance consulting, volunteering in my professional organization conferences, and more. I recently interviewed for a position and while I did not get it I was encouraged by how readily I had references speak for me and when the phone call came the only reason I did not get the position was that the job requirements needed one (out of many skills) that I did not have as any part of my background. I treasure the family time we have had over the past twelve years and while we do have to watch our budget a little more, our quality of life has been fine. I hope to re-enter the workforce in the next year or so. It may not be right where I left off, but hopefully it won't be too far from there.
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@MJH, I am looking for part-time jobs so I can be at home part-time but in my field (statistics) there are not many of these. Your post gave me hope that I can still maintain my career in other ways. If possible I would love to hear more about what you did to remain marketable to employers.
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How can you be a wife, mother, housekeeper and a full time scientist who commutes long hours to work? It is very simple. You do everything badly.
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@NJG That's what I do!
Don't forget assortative mating and the very long hours that high earners must put in during prime child rearing years.
Case-1: He's an investment banker, she's a traveling sales executive for a pharmaceutical company.
Guess who's going to bail out on their career? She is.
Case-2: He's a dining hall employee and a local college. She's a nurse. Guess who's going to bail out on their career? Neither...because they just can't afford it. They'll just have to figure something out.
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@Bob: Case-3: He's a dining hall employee at a local college. She's a nurse. They very wisely decide they can't afford children and don't.
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@Earl W.
Interestingly that was exactly my remarkably frugal sister and brother-in-law's situation 34 years ago. Her union membership insured that they always had health insurance and she had a period of maternity leave when the kids were born. He stayed home when the kids were little and drove a limo on weekends...gradually transitioning to full time work when the kids were older, went "latchkey" (as we all were in the 60s) and "enrichment" was limited to weekends. BTW...they STILL have a rotary phone LOKL>
Many women of my generation (should have had children in the 1980’s) didn’t have children because we knew what was involved and never felt secure enough economically to do it on our own. With the high divorce rate own our own was likely. We did notice that a lot of men either never supported their first family or chose to use their support of the first family to be cruelly manipulative. And we saw decent women be just as stupid and cruel in return. So we didn’t have children. My point is that the costs have been a motivation longer than contemplated in this article.
8
Researchers ought to consider another element: the attitudes of men in the issue of women's careers.
Men, from their earliest years, have been tended to by women - their mothers and aunties, grannies, baby sitters, Sunday school teachers, Cub Scout den mothers, public school teachers for at least the first 6 or 7 years, and so on.
Is it surprising that husbands automatically assume that their wives will be charged with most of the care and feeding of the children? That is what men learned in their own childhood experiences; they naturally assume that it is the role dictated by nature even if modern conveniences of living have made careers available for their wives.
Great that a second income is available for the family, but in the meantime, there is a natural order in the home...
Bob Foster, son, brother, husband, father, father-in-law, uncle, great uncle, widower.
[email protected]
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Moms, I love you, but the title of the article leaves me incredulous...have you never been to the store and seen the dead-eyed parents and their tired/crying/whining offspring? Haven’t you seen friends and family run ragged by trying to fulfill the societally expected demands of modern kids...no one I know has been able to successfully push back. Kids are wonderful, fun, exciting and endearing but if you have any doubts - please carefully observe the world around you so I don’t have to hear “I could have never imagined how difficult it is to be a parent...” again and again...
I know - so cynical - I say, realistic...
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Ivanka, where are you? Weren’t you supposed to fix this for us?
1
@Alyson She was working with Rubio who came up with the scheme to give up some of your retirement security for paid new-infant leave. (It did not include either adopted children or ill family member care.) In other words it is a bill that is a mere token effort and ...probably...one more insidious attack of the affordability of SS as it would take money out of the system now.
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Some day this culture will make the connection that the epidemic of anxiety among young people today has something to do with our unquestioned acceptance of daycare for the very young. Especially the pre-verbal young. Pre-verbal kids need a mother-- or a mother substitute who is giving them the same level of attention.
There is something vehemently anti-woman to the notion that the mass divisioning of infants from their mothers would not affect us as people. Why do we imagine that there is no loss for the baby to lose the care of their mother... ? This is untrue.
Self regulation is a skill that is learned within a bonded dyadic relationship, 0-3, with someone who "reads" your emotions, engages with you, and helps you regulate feelings externally. This is how human beings learn to interpret and manage their feelings for themselves: someone else does it consistently and lovingly.
The needs of the very small are met one on one, not one on five. The needs of the very small are met in intimate relating with a beloved mother/carer.
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@Megan YES!
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@Megan...thank you
100% agree and perfectly stated!
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@Megan
This is an interesting idea but I have two concerns with your argument. First, the 1:1 dynamic of a mother to child assumes the child in question is an only child. In many situations that is not the case and you approach the 1:3 or 1:4 ratio found in many daycare centers. Second, it assumes a relatively low level of care/attention paid by the care giver at a daycare for the children entrusted to their care. My son is in daycare and his caregivers read his emotions, engage with him, and teach him to manage his emotions in a consistent and loving way (and also taught me how to be a better parent). I would definitely consider my son's caregivers in his daycare as a viable "mother substitute". I think we need to remember that both a mother and a daycare facility can be equally beneficial or detrimental to the well being of our children. Not all parents are born knowing how to best care for their children and I think it can be a little simplistic to assume that a mother automatically knows how to best care for her child.
In my opinion the real problem to address is how to increase the quality of care across the board. As a society we should invest in making quality daycare affordable to all parents AND we need to increase education in parents to ensure they understand how to nurture their children.
1
When I was working full time (I left Corporate America for self employment at age 41), there was no way my responsibilities to my job would have allowed dating, let alone parenthood. I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised that being a full time working mother would be difficult.
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I am not a parent and I came to that place due to both circumstances and choice. At my age, the question of children is moot unless I adopt or mentor. I always felt that I couldn't have it all; that the costs of motherhood would preclude me from the other things I love to do, creatively and personally, and I wasn't willing to pay the price.
I did want to pass along the thoughts of one of my coworkers, whose wife left the work force to take care of their sons, and was never able to return. They both regretted that they made that decision. At the time, it didn't make sense to spend the equivalence of one person's income on childcare, so she stayed home. Those numbers made sense at the time, but they realized that kids eventually grow up and the longer a partner has stayed at home, the harder it is to get back into the work force. All of his wife's contacts who seemed enthusiastic about her at year one were not so interested years later. She was never able to get back in, and well after her kids have needed her direct supervision, has been bored and disappointed not to be working. His advice to career minded parents, especially women, is to stay home no more than 2-3 years. While he made enough money to support his family, the burden was always on him to earn it. And the amount of earnings that they could have made as a two-income family was lost.
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@Diva Not to mention her lost intellectual potential/contribution and satisfaction, perhaps even self confidence. Why should women be 'washed up' just because they raised their kids who are now out of the house? I get it as an employer - less risky to hire someone who's been in the workforce the past 15 yrs - but still a shame. Thanks for your comment.
7
Not for nothing, but I believe Jordan Peterson points to our societal ambivalence towards motherhood as a major contributor to the income gap.
We don’t treat raising a family and something on par with a prestigious career. I think that’s pretty clear when you look at how many young couples forgo having children. I see way more “pet parents” than actual ones in my part of the world.
It seems as though neither men or women are particularly interested in housework and child rearing. “Second Shift” is well-over 20 years old, and here we are discussing the same problems.
13
This article lead is misleading. Most women _are_ able to have children and work. A small but persistent fraction don't. The authors are surprised that older mothers are more likely not to work but this is obvious when you consider how much more energy younger parents have. In addition, my own observation is that mothers apply a lot of pressure to themselves and overparent which has limited benefits for the kids. There is a correlation between stay at home parenting and a lack of independence in the children. My personal experience is that kids do not need a parent at home, particularly once they reach school age. My own four kids all liked daycare -- it is like an extended recess with their friends who are just a whole lot more fun than adults -- sorry parents. They always complained if we picked them up early.
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@JW most parents I know say that a parent at home is most beneficial to kids in the teen years, not the preschool ones.
2
Except that school/aftercare is closed at least 2-3 days/month plus spring and winter breaks, and there's usually a week before school starts when all camps are closed.
This article really delves into the ins and outs of motherhood and the choices people make. As a retired NYC Public School Teacher and Assistant Principal, I made a choice not to have children. For one, I was inundated with children all day long and second, as an Assistant Principal, with long work hours, raising children seemed out of the question. Yet, I know many, many women who work and raise children. For awhile, I really saw the impact of maternity leave on the work force, especially in a school with a hundred teachers and constant pregnancies and leaves. It was a real struggle to find suitable replacements, but that is another topic. I have friends who are doctors, lawyers, editors, and more who have managed to balance a career while raising children. They have had full time nannies, daycare, relatives and godmothers and Aunts (I fall into the latter two categories) to help. The rewards of a two family income are immense, but not if all the money is drained into childcare. And then again, my sister-in-law is a stay at home mom with a college degree whom I cannot imagine will be competitive in the work force after 18 years of raising kids. Our system is somewhat warped. Many women I know are the breadwinners (my doctor friends) and, if anyone should stay at home, it should be the man in these situations. It just seems like high powered and demanding jobs are a "rat race," as my father used to say. Unforgiving with little room for what matters most, health and a family.
5
Why do women feel the need to have children when they have it all without them? The pressure to "have it all" is dying off with younger generations of women growing into adulthood, making the clear eyed choice that their lives are just fine without the pressure, forfeit and sacrifices.
Sure, kids are a fulfilling pursuit, and a social status quo, but critical thinking is beginning to win out societal pressure, and women come out the winners overall when the choice is there own.
15
Since when did motherhood become a bad thing? Name any other career that let's you shape the future like raising a child. Name any other career that pays you more than a family around a dinner table.
Is raising a child really leaving the workforce or is it simply a career change? Maybe moms don't get a "paycheck" but there are other rewards. Maybe there's no 9-5 but that doesn't make it any less of a job. Maybe the problem is our society is so caught up in the making money "rat race" that they've forgotten women may find a life outside of it.
I wonder what our country would look like if it decided to love family life above money, love kids over careers, and love giving rather than getting? If we can't serve each other (dads, moms, and kids alike) then I don't think we've truly learned to live. Unless you know how to give up everything for someone else you're still living in your own little world.
I'm not negating the fact that women have been suppressed for years! My mom was a full time pastor my whole childhood and you wouldn't believe the backlash from people in the religious community! I get that. It needs to change. But you can't throw out the baby with the bath water and say all moms are suppressed by men. That's only true in some cases. The rest of the time it isn't. :)
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@EM Do working fathers not "raise" their children? Are they not sitting around that dinner table, too?
If staying home to raise kids is so fantastic, why do more men not do it?
6
This study describes my experience exactly – born late 1960s, highly educated, and thought I would always work. We shifted our work hours to limit the amount of time our son was in daycare and I gave up breastfeeding. But after my son’s daycare(s) were repeatedly unreliable, we agreed to expedite baby #2, and I would take a few years off to raise them. I was lucky, though, in that someone hired me to freelance within weeks of leaving my job and that grew into a 20+ year consulting practice where I have long-surpassed my husband’s income – while staying home. Perhaps my situation was unusual but being a stay-at-home-parent isn’t always an all or nothing choice regarding work, especially in the age of technology and freelancing. And yes, I even have my own 401k. I hope in follow up studies the researchers explore whether geographic separation of families is a driving factor in these choices. When grandma isn’t around the corner, the costs of child care with a stranger are hard to swallow financially and emotionally.
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@AE Your situation IS unusual. Most women who leave the traditional work force don't have such lucrative offers made to them.
8
As a man it may be dangerous for me to weigh in, but weigh in, I will. My perspective includes having a wife and daughter, both with doctorates.
My sense is that we have a generation that doesn’t understand relinquishment. Let us leave out for a moment children born as a result of birth control failure. One can’t have it all, something has to give. Who should do the giving is a conversation worth having for couples. Choices involve losses and relinquishments. If one wants to work full time in a demanding job adding kids to that is certainly stressful. Yes wealthy people can hire help, what’s the impact on kids of being raises by nannies. We seem surprised by the needs of kids. Is it possible that many families with two working parents don’t even stop to think about the impact of adding kids to the equation . Yes I believe that very young kids need a parent mostly available during those first three years. As a retired psychologist the fairly recent focus on attachment, the significant psychological struggles of today’s college students and the burgeoning mental health needs of young children suggest we are missing something .
We can blame social media, cell phones and the speeding up of change, but the surprise that parenting is hard, takes time and may interfere with a career is quite something. Couples need to think long and hard about their careers, adding kids or not and what they might be willing to give up to attend to kids.
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@Jonathan Lewis
Yes, but the point isn’t that mothers are still relinquishing way more than fathers, and that the rate at which we were successfully closing the gap with more equitable parenting roles is slowing. How many men actually feel that parenthood would be so demanding that they actually forgo having children? I did.
3
It takes a great deal of courage to not knuckle under the cultural press to have children.
Fathers seem more involved in parenting than ever before, though what worries me is the image of families at home together all on their own phones or laptops . That isn’t being with ones kids. There are many many variables that go into attempting to explain the epidemic of anxiety , depression and personality issues our kids and adolescents are struggling with today. Is it possible that everyone working and fitting kids around these busy lives is one of those variables .
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@Jonathan Lewis Why would it be dangerous for you to chime in? It's your right. Not only is it your right but you ARE right, 100%.
It is interesting that on the one hand women feel they are cheated from following their chosen career path and on the other hand certain (not all) women’s groups oppose the concept of Shared Parenting in the setting of divorce. A good example is the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association. They oppose a proposed Shared Parenting bill agreed to by multiple stakeholders in the state that formed a Working Group under the Patrick administration. Shared Parenting would provide them more time and resources to follow their chosen caree path. Perhaps they want to have their cake and eat it too?
6
@fhschwartz If shared parenting were more common inside a marriage, perhaps women would be more open to the possibility of it after a marriage fails. Alas, too many women know just how little Dad even knows about his children's day-to-day needs because he's so rarely around to experience them and even less rarely called upon to meet them.
5
@Alice Olson Absolutely. It is amazing how a man who is uninvolved as a father will fight for the right to have his fair time (with a hired caregiver) just because he wants to be seen as an involved father. I went thru a divorce and was appalled when my soon-to-be ex-husband told me he "did not want to waste both weeks of his vacation with his daughter." Yet he crafted a schedule at first so that she could not spend 2 consecutive nights/week with me. It was about him, not her.
1
After a quick look at some of the comments, I notice that many people wrote about the mothering culture today which starts with 24/7 "babywearing" and continues to 24/7 helicoptering. But there was only one mention-that I could see- about education careers. With the women's movement and the coeducation of so many colleges and universities and the diminishing respect for teachers came the decline of both sexes (but particularly women) entering teaching as a career. My husband and I both worked in public education for our entire careers. We both have degrees from prestigious colleges, and three Master's degrees between us, but for us, teaching was a career that enabled us to make a contribution to society, earn decent livings, and most importantly, spend lots of time with our daughter. It can be done. And in this turbulent time, we desperately need more highly educated, thoughtful teachers, don't you think?
17
Teaching allows you to spend lots of time with your daughter? Most teachers i know th at work in the NYC public schools do not have that privilege.
@OTquilter
Perhaps some of the loss of respect for careers in education is due to the "lots of time" not on the job. The summer vacation was originally designed so children could help with growing season on the family farm. Year around schooling and year around teaching could correct this anachronism, help with childcare needs and the summertime loss of learning that is so well documented. The 188 days of required time in the school (in some states) just doesn't measure up to the demands made by other professions, and yes these other professions demand off the clock training and effort also.
2
It's sad that mothers "feel pressure" to breastfeed, and to provide close supervision and enriching activities. These should be the natural joys of a few fleeting years. The "rug rat race" is also a burden of our own making.
Both parents make good money and know they should share in ALL domestic endeavors, but the workplace, community and cultural norms of cutthroat competition and consumption (more, more, more--what else is living for?) still can't provide for a more natural way of life regarding child-rearing?
It's time to re-examine our values in the context of the world we have made, with its disappearing glaciers and nature-deficit disorder-affected people. It may already be too late.
6
Sometimes not working can be a rational economic decision in the short term. My career derailed when I lost my dream job after my company shut down and my husband was earning lots of freelance income in addition to his regular job. Given the hours of the next job I took, the realities of child care meant that he was turning down lucrative freelance work so I could go to a job that paid less. None of the other work available for me at the time paid enough to justify child care. Then my husband lost the stream of freelance money after 2008, and to elide the difficulties of the intervening years, I'm just now getting back to earning what I did in 2001, which was gateway pay for a job that was proving what I could do.
I was reminded of this the other day when one of the people my husband manages turned in his notice because his wife had calculated that with child care figured in it actually cost them a couple hundred dollars a year for him to work. So he's staying home with the two kids. The pronoun in that sentence is a kind of progress, I guess?
We have got to work toward a society that encourages human flourishing instead of subordinating all aspects of our lives to generating profits for the 1 percent. There is nothing natural about our current economic system; it's artificial and suffocating.
17
When women leave the work force, it can be very difficult to get back in. Psychologically she may find disrupting home routines unacceptable and employees see a large resume gap so the likelihood of getting a good job lessens. In my own family, the women who left the work force when their children were young, now have low paying part time jobs and no retirement. I had more stress in my kids early years. They turned out fine and we have been able to pay for their education and save a good amount for retirement. My advise to any woman is " do not leave the work force" continue to work, even if its part time.
13
Commercial work involves activities that are detrimental to society -making and advertising products that cause harm. A good example is the modern pharmacy. The healthful products are at the back of the store. The check out area is surrounded by cigarettes, alcohol, and junk food. Women may be more aware of the moral challenge.
Balancing career/work and family life is very challenging wherever you live but the U.S.A is so behind in maternity leave , family policies etc., compared to all other industrialized countries, making it much harder for families to raise children. Unless that changes these problems will continue. Policy makers should take a look at Europe and especially Scandinavian countries and finally make the changes needed. For this to happen the overall mentality in the country needs to change. There needs to be a belief that having children is not just a personal family matter and that children are the future generation. The state/government needs to invest in families and support them.
27
I find that what essentially is the root of the problem is how our society views work. Depending on the field- there are standards of what is considered full time 40-60 /hrs per week- and often those companies do not allot for part-time contracts. Until this ideal changes, then we will always find women (and some men) taking leave or dropping out of the workforce to care for their children. This is a 24 hour society compared to those of decades ago...making it harder on mothers (& fathers) to balance career and family life.
10
@Doc. Exactly. When I was a child in the 1950’s, my father had a professional job with the federal government in Washington, DC. He worked a standard 40-hour week, never worked nights or weekends, and always took his vacation. He advanced to the highest possible level in his career and retired at age 58 with an excellent pension and medical insurance. During my work lifetime, I saw the 40-hour week go out the window for any upwardly mobile professional. Employers expect employees to get the job done, no matter how many hours they must put in. Often that means 60-hour work weeks or more. The digital age has made matters worse. One is now expected to be on duty whether one is physically in the office or not, and that means 24/7. Little time and energy is left for nurturing children.
12
It's been more than 40 years since women - of any ethnicity, age, socio-economic status,parent or no - entered the workforce in large numbers.
What endures is this truth, which you'll find placed at the end of a paragraph and wrapped in parentheses:
" (Women still do the bulk of child care, even in two-earner families.)"
THAT is the issue. As they say, "all the rest is commentary."
35
@Berkeley Bee yeah except men have invented a thousand and one ways to make child care easier. And honestly raising kids isn't that partially difficult. I was doing the bulk of the child care for my younger siblings (the oldest of which is 6 years younger than me) before I was even a teenager (cooking, getting them baths, doing laundry, changing diapers, etc.)
Also just because both partners work, doesn't mean they do anywhere near the same amount of work. It's like the "wage gap" myth. The majority of "full time" women work less than 40 hours a week whereas men work 50+hours on average.
2
@James “men have invented a thousand and one ways to make childcare easier”? Really? Men have, specifically? That seems like a bizarrely gendered claim...do you have any info to back up that the advancements in childcare have come from men?
2
@James
This is the first time I have seen these statistics, James. Could you please cite their source?
1
Scanning the comments, I don't see anything about "surprise" pregnancy. About half of my friends, including those who were married, have had "surprise" children, even using birth control. A birth control method that has a 1 percent failure rate means 1 percent PER YEAR. All the comments about "deciding" to have a child are leaving out this important factor. Biology still affects our opportunities.
12
"It takes a village, but there are no villages." This quote is from the article "In the Absence of the Village, Mothers Struggle Most," and spells it out clearly.
Everyone suffers because we lack a village structure, and mothers suffer especially so. There are no groups of trusted aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends to keep the family knit together and provide a safety net.
Childcare should be part of the social framework in America so that children and parents get more of what they need. The isolation of the modern family is costing all of us dearly.
48
Countries that invest in supporting families will naturally surpass those who don't. There is already evidence of this happening if you look at the productivity of the workforce in countries that have strong social programs supporting child-rearing families. The UK and the US are lagging far behind many Western European countries in this area and will pay the price in economic growth and productivity.
22
I tried not to scream when I read this article, but I sure wanted to. Let me assure you that, as someone who raised two children (born 1979 and 1983) while working at a government career, things were no easier for me and my friends than they are for working mothers today. I breastfed each my daughters for more than two years, did "enriching activities" with them, and provided close supervision. The "pressure" to do these things is not new. Also, FYI, there was little or no support for working mothers when I was having my children. This, too, is not new.
My two daughters (with five children between them) also work outside the home and never considered not doing that. Sure, motherhood is costly and, at times, exhausting. So is a career. Sure, our society should do more to support families. But some of the pressures I observe new mothers putting on themselves are of their own making. You can't believe you have to hold your child 24 hours a day and then wonder why you are exhausted and your child is still waking up multiple times a night at the age of 5. It's okay to tell your children that you don't have the time or money to support their doing every activity in which their friends are involved. It's reasonable (desirable, in fact) to expect your children to help you around the house. And you'll really be doing your kids a favor if you help them understand that their success in life does not depend on the prestige of their college.
50
what about preschool / child care? while I don't know what it was like in the 70s or 80s, from my wife and my experience in the Bay Area, it's a process is a complete disaster - too expensive, waiting lists, unqualified staff, logistical issues, etc. our country can do much much better....
5
@Scott
My grandchildren have had terrific preschool experiences with caring, well trained teachers. Four of the five are now in elementary school and were extremely well prepared. And they are happy, well adjusted kids who play very well with others because they've been doing that since infancy.
@Gloria
I’m your daughters’ age with two young sons living in Manhattan. I agree with Scott that simply navigating things like preschool admissions in this town is a part time job in an of itself. I suppose (relatively speaking)I do put presssure on myself to ensure my kids are taking advantage of opportunities here (and avoiding dysfunction) but to be clear, it is nothing remotely like the experience my own working mother had, raising me. Blaming mothers themselves (as you do) is a tired natrotive tbat the authors of the economics working paper are trying to move past. Good for your daughters, but their experience is by no means universal for this or recent cohorts of mothers. Hence the data reflecting flat workforce participation of mothers since the 90s.
Read Ann Marie Slaughter’s excellent Atlantic piece of you want to hear a first hand account of the challenge working moms face today.
3
Here is a survey question that would reveal “where the time goes” that mothers spend on childcare now:
Relative to an average or typical mother, is there any extra care that you provide your child or children?
For yeses, I predict responses binned as follows:
1) child has special needs (eg ADHD, autism, depression, etc.) or has a period of crisis (eating disorder, poor academic achievement, substance abuse, etc.)
2) child’s enrichments (eg sports, music, chess, commute to magnet school, etc)
3) compensate for spouse (lack of time, lack of skill, etc.)
4) some combo of 1-3
I suspect, based upon personal experience, that many educated women with high-earning spouses (esp ones who travel frequently) feel the pull of (2) and (3).
If you analyze women who select (1), you will see a *very strong* effect on opting out of the labor force or downshifting.
17
Note to authors: Working at home with family responsibilities is "work." Women do the vast majority of unpaid caretaking from cradle to grave. This leads to lower lifetime incomes and many female elders are impoverished.
39
@glorybe
This is absolutely correct. I had one child, at age 35. I expected to return to work and found it just impossible to get trusted childcare that we could afford. And I wanted to be with my child and not leave his care to others. It made more sense for me to stay home and support my husband's business success.
I homeschooled for many years when the schools were substandard in our town, then my son went on to a top prep school then to an Ivy. Would that have happened if I didn't devote years to his education and well-being? No. Without question.
But I am now in my mid-60's, divorced for 12 years and with no real social security or savings. When I tried to get back into a professional career, doors were shut. I ended up having to take a job in retail at barely above minimum wage.
Women are, without doubt, penalized for choosing motherhood and doing what works best for their children and their families.
It is a disgrace that in the United States this is happening. It is our dirty little secret.
10
@Marty
If a divorced person was married for at least ten
years he/she can receive SS income equal to 50% of the ex-spouse's SS income at retirement. Call a SS office.
2
@Isabelle Andrews as long as she hasn't remarried. I know because I divorced after 25 years and remarried eight years ago and I am ineligible for my ex's SS. I agree though that she should contact SS.
No I do not believe it is harder. It has always been hard.
8
@Ruby Tuesday
But do note the stats on the rising expense.
6
@Rachel
The expense is the “baby-Industrial complex” to paraphrase President Eisenhower. Why does a stroller need to be this large, cumbersome object so it can cost so much more than an umbrella stroller? Why has the ability to know the sex of the child before birth meant that children’s clothes are more gendered than ever, discouraging the economy of handing them down? Why has college become so expensive that it ups the ante for high achieving parents who add the college savings account to their pressures raising kids?
In these instances someone is making a profit off of motherhood and it isn’t the mother.
A big problem is the inflexibility of schedules. A six-hour workday for moms and aftercare could reduce stress. So would starting school at age 3.
I would suggest the authors compare the experience with those of college-educated high-achieving moms in a country where preschool is the norm, beginning at age 3 for everyone. When children are socialized early (a plus of daycare), their moms can return to work earlier, too. When society decides to bear the costs and responsibilities of educating children from age 2 or 3 to 21, rather than making preschool and college so costly for families, women with children can feel supported rather than lost in the baby-Industrial complex.
@Rachel "rising expense" when everything mentioned is exactly what women have had to do for the thousands of years before men were capable of inventing the tools to ease their burden. Childcare is objectively easier now than ever, at least for women in 1st world countries. Appliances that take all the hard work out of every chore, running water so you don't have to trek down to the river, grocery stores so you don't have to farm, general stores so you don't have to make everything by hand (clothes, toys, and such).
Stop with the negativity. Great to be a woman. I am married with 2 beautiful college graduated daughters. I detest articles that paint women as "underdog." I have always worked full time. Yes. I missed a sporting event or two. However, bills have to be paid and life moves on. Stop the whining. Having kids is work and will always be work. I have a great career and make 6 figures. We raised our kids. No daycare. No nannies. Can be done and done well. I am now enjoying the fruit of my labor. GO women!
21
@Rada
Just out of curiosity, if you always worked full-time and never used nannies or day care, who watched your kids before they started school (as babies), and then after the school day ended (assuming that was before 6 pm)? I'm guessing a spouse or other family member? If that was the case, you can count yourself as immediately more fortunate than most to have had this extra resource, which undoubtedly colored your entire motherhood experience.
7
Newsflash: don’t have kids
25
@Camille Moran
Just because something is hard work or entails sacrifice, does not mean you should not do it. On the contrary- the more one invests in any endeavor, the more one tends to reap.
4
I'm feeling that the general tenor of the comments is that the challenges have increased but women must keep working to protect themselves. But I feel this assumes that the careers women are leaving behind are profitable, fulfilling, and offer retirement benefits. I work at a non-profit arts org with low pay; opportunities for advancement are rare and extremely competitive (a friend with a new PhD is relocating for a $30k job!). It can be meaningful work, but also very frustrating, and I make what my mother made 30 years ago! I understand these arguments, but it's hard to imagine paying my salary or more to someone else to raise my children from age 3 months on. With the well documented stagnation of wages, and anecdotal evidence of my friends' careers in education/non-profits/govt, I don't think I'm alone.
30
@MollyM yes! This is what I was thinking while reading the article. The expense of childcare and stagnation of wages seem like the central issues. Women I know who stayed home after having kids did so because their salaries didn’t even cover what childcare costs. Financially, it didn’t make sense for them to keep working.
16
@MollyM
Childcare has always been expensive, especially if it is privately organized. I myself had to pay about a third of my salary for a childminder organized through a charity (higher ed teacher with a masters degree). A nanny or housekeeper would have been financially impossible. And without grandparents able to fill in for half a day or at least a couple of hours when kids were ill (often!)
It got easier when my kids were able to attend government subsidised daycare, even though we still always paid the maximum contributions with our two incomes.
2
As the article mentions enormous amounts of mothers’ time and sacrifices go into raising kids in the helicopter sphere. But this raises several important questions that may help the next crew:
1. What does helicoptering actually do for the kid? Better grades? Better colleges? Safer? Any effects at all?
2. Where are the dads with all this parenting?
And
3. Is it easier for urban rather than suburban women who must factor in commute times, distances to kids activities, from work to kids school to doctor appointments etc?
3
I'm a single parent with a Masters Degree from a top university and I don't have the luxury of not working. I had my child right after I finished graduate school and did not want to lose my momentum nor step out of a competitive job market. I was always baffled by women I met who had their MBAs or law degrees who stepped out of work as soon as they had children. I saw them putting all this high-end knowledge and energy into their children, managing them like they were a project. I think men and women unquestioningly fall into traditional roles when they are coupled and have children, then years later wonder how they got there. Also, there is a lot of competition and pressure (self-imposed?) to be "exceptional" parents. I was a great parent. Still am. Breast fed until my child was three. Pumped at work because I was committed to doing this for my child. Worked 32 hours a week for 4 years which allowed me to have an extra day with my child. Though there was not quantity of time with her there was lots and lots of quality. I didn't spend my time with her staring at my phone. Now she's in middle school and I'm involved with the PTA. She is well-adjusted, happy and is thriving.
11
Okay.... most women have to step back because it's either 40-60 hours/week or nothing. 32 hours a week is not the norm, that is part time work. Not even a possibility at my company.
29
@idnar It was considered 80% time. I took a pay cut but it was a way that I could compromise and not have to choose between leaving work or not spending my time with my child. I had to ASK for it. They were willing to let me do it. I took a pay cut but kept my benefits.
1
Why is it so baffling that some women, despite degrees or training, may choose to spend the fleeting time of their child’s early years (or longer) at home? It really isn’t a waste; it’s meaningful for many. I don’t understand highly educated women that don’t see the value in giving up monetary gain for time with their children. Why is it always so undervalued?
12
There is no puzzle here as to why the work family juggle is getting more difficult. Employers expect employees to be available for work 24/7 whether they are parents or not. That goes for employees who are single or childless and have other family obligations like caring for elderly parents. Women often work much harder than men for less money and less credit. Once women are no longer in their 20s and 30s they can find it harder to get or retain a job. (I'm nearly 60 and childless and a lesbian. I've often thought that one reason I have had a difficult time, aside from gender and age, is that I don't respond to men the same way a heterosexual female does.)
The real wonder is that so many women do continue to work despite having the obligation to care for children or elderly parents. While we are prepared for long careers, the workplace is not prepared to let us work past the age of 45 or 50. That goes for men and women no matter how well or poorly educated they are.
As a teen in the 70s I was not encouraged at all to follow my dreams. As a young woman in the workforce no one mentored me. In fact, most employers treated me and others like garbage to be tossed aside when we became too expensive. Today's employers have gone further and made it much harder for all employees to have lives outside of work. Considering that family is how we create a society it's possible that employers are contributing to the destruction of that same society.
39
@hen3ry ha! yes women who don't even work 40 hours on average and take much less strenuous and stressful jobs work harder than men who work 50+ hours, usually in dangerous conditions or extremely stressful ones (though the stress more comes from trying to raise a family on 1 paycheck in this economy). Granted I'm sure there are many women that work harder than a large number of men, but those are exceptions not the rule. And before you try to bring "unpaid labor" into this, cleaning your own house isn't labor, it's a necessity. The same goes for raising kids you've chosen to have. As far as taking care of elderly family, that burden actually falls on men more than women, but it's still not something one should be paid for.
1
@hen3ry
“Considering that family is how we create a society it's possible that employers are contributing to the destruction of that same society.”
You hit the nail on the head. In the larger scope, families could better raise children if those families included aunts and uncles without children or “courtesy” aunts and uncles who help create an extended family where one is lacking. If we accepted children as important whether or not we created them, such a society should also allow time for the “village” to raise them, and not subject everyone to brutal work hours as is true today. Instead, we segregate ourselves in categories by role and gender: mothers, single women, fathers, single working men, working women, women or men at home caring for children or elderly, and so on. So the burden falls on mothers, who lose working lifetime potential earnings as the cost of motherhood. That obscures pressures on other members of society who also provide (free) care for others—the canary in the coal mine of society’s disorganization.
68
@James - what's your source about men caring more for elderly family than women? And I beg to differ that we as a society have no responsibility to ensure the elderly can live out their lives in dignity - that's what "being paid for it" ultimately means, that Grandma has the financial means for family or caregiver support.
1
To be frank, some parents just don’t see it coming. It’s not that parenting has gotten harder, it’s that some new parents think that life can pretty much resume as before after this little ‘time off’.
But parenting changes you and I think it should. Your priorities should shift, your lifestyle must adjust and sacrifices should be made. If nothing changes in your life, other than you have to now pay someone to watch your kid when you’re working, then I don’t think you’re getting the full experience. And possibly, your child isn’t either.
28
I have a slew of college-educated nieces, by blood and affinity, and they all under-estimated the costs of being Mothers before they had children. So did their husbands, and so do all women with children. And yet absolutely none of them would do without their children, whom they love to the core of their lives. So do their husbands, every single one of whom has made economic sacrifices to be able to spend time with their kids and help supervise their growing up. Nobody gets everything, ever. Life is an opportunity-cost sort of thing and sacrifices of one kind or another go with it. In fact, I pity people who didn't realize the price they would pay to exclude children from their lives.
9
And if you stay at home your social security will be greatly reduced as we do not recognize child-care or housework as labor until of course someone outside the home is paid to do it.
I have been a feminist all my life. I worked for the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment in the 70's. Mostly the women I met in that effort were lawyers, or would-be lawyers whose ambitions were entirely self-serving. They could have cared less about the liberation of all women. Now we reap what their selfishness sowed. The media approved feminists, such as Gloria Steinem, were, and are, toothless pop stars dragged out on occasion for a
meaningless commentary on 'today's woman'.
We must take back this fight, at the heart of which is the Equal Rights Amendment. There are young women, and maybe a few not so young, reading this. Take it to heart, take it to social media. The playing ground there is a bit more level than the one I knew.
The ERA is not dead.
7
@Z you really think people should be paid to clean their own house? Or to raise their own children?
1
@Z: I think you misunderstand how Social Security works. A single-income couple receives the full available benefit of the working spouse's Social Security at retirement. If the working spouse dies first, the surviving spouse receives a very large percentage of the benefit. If they have planned well for this stage of life, her retirement will be secure. Now, if they have lived beyond their means and failed to plan well, she will suffer, which will also be the case for a two-income family. Furthermore, there are retirement savings vehicles available for non-working spouses. If a non-working spouse chooses not to take advantage of them, she has only herself to blame.
Here's the deal: Whether or not a woman is employed during marriage, she must think about what will happen if/when there's no longer a household paycheck coming in. That means saving & investing with an eye to the future, being entirely debt-free before retirement (if not long before), and maintaining the appropriate kind and amount of insurance for her life stage. These steps won't eradicate all risks, but they'll go a long way toward ensuring her future well-being.
2
@James
Absolutely.
I'm sorry but I don't understand how an educated woman or man for that matter could be caught off guard when it comes to hard costs of child rearing. Before you have a child wouldn't you research child care costs in your area? Wouldn't you research and estimate the additional cost of diapers, formula, medical costs, clothing etc.? If you wanted to take time off wouldn't you calculate how much take home pay you needed to save so that you could have that to draw upon during your maternity leave? Wouldn't you work out back up child care in case of emergency? A change of heart after having a child is something no one can anticipate, but the financial realities of having a child shouldn't be a surprise, and aren't to anyone having a modicum of financial sense.
20
Research and reality are not the same thing. Believe me. I’m a lawyer and did tons of “research.” I planned to take six months of because I was able to do that without any consequences to my career. Fast forward 3 years later and another child and I can assure you that the reality is much more difficult than the research.
3
The biggest mistake I ever made was deciding to keep working outside the home while having three children. I say “having” rather than “raising” because I did not raise them. I outsourced that responsibility to childcare providers ranging from very good to frighteningly incompetent. The result? Three adults struggling to live with the psychological problems resulting from their lousy upbringing.
Could we have survived on their father’s earnings? Yes. It would have been a challenge, but I believe the stability, love, and constructive guidance we could have provided would have made an enormous difference in these children’s lives.
What then, you may ask, about the woman (or man) without a partner to permit the parent to do the job of being a parent? Rather than provide subsidized daycare of questionable quality, our government should pay single parents to stay home to raise their own children.
24
@ReginaInCivitatem
Agreed. Until we formally put a $$ value on child-raising as a priority, this will continue to everyone’s eventual detriment.
3
@ReginaInCivitatem I’m sorry your children had that experience.....I have college age twins who are doing great and I started two businesses AND endured a move in their teen years for my spouses career.....I just forged onward and never had true down time till they hit college. I had plenty of caregivers also ranging from excellent to mediocre but I did all the heavy lifting with the twins.....something doesn’t sound right?
@ReginaInCivitatem
Sorry no.
~Maybe one, perhaps, but 'Three adults struggling to live with ... psychological problems'?
That sounds like a 'you' problem.
4
Frankly, this kind of article drives me crazy. Why is it always assumed that parenting is the job of the mother? Fathers never seem to compromise their careers by devoting time and resources to child care. And, to be fair, it seems to me that fathers should do more child care, not less, since the mother has already devoted almost a year of her life to manufacturing the child, to say nothing of assuming the pain and risks of labor and delivery. This kind of nonsense is not going to stop until mothers demand that fathers start actually being fathers.
29
I’m a married woman on the dark side of 35 who’s wised up to the fact that children are a trap. But it took several years to convince my husband of the same. He just couldn’t wrap his head around all the thankless work, time, money, and personal sacrifice that raising a child really takes. Once we polled our close friends with children who unanimously advised against procreation (knowing what they know now), he was finally convinced. We have an amazing life; a happy marriage, time to pursue our interests and careers, and we’re doing our part for the planet. For women in America today, unless you‘re born rich or marry rich, you can either conceive OR you can achieve. You can have children or you can have peace of mind. Whoever says otherwise is lying to you.
59
@Megan
I beg to differ: During the last few years, I "conceived" twice (gave birth to my two darling sons) and "achieved" a PhD and a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship. I will admit that my "peace of mind" is not quite at 100%, but it's nowhere near zero, either, and I have found the sacrifices to be well worth the rewards. (Of course I know that this is only my personal experience, depends on many extraneous factors, and others will differ widely. I'm just commenting here to provide some counterweight to the original post's absolutist stance.)
8
Yes. Had a kid, cheerfully got promoted, lived happily ever after. The absolutist position is absurd.
2
@Megan
P.S. I am by no means rich, by birth or marriage.
I found one enormous, glaring flaw in this article.
Women often WANT to stay home with their babies. It is excruciating to drop a baby off at day care.
It is painful to tell your one year old goodbye and be gone for nine hours.
It is worrying to drop your little child off at a day care when you're not sure anyone will REALLY notice your child.
It is terrible to think of a toddler being lonely or alone amidst a sea of kids or to worry about the quality of care they're getting.
Women miss their kids when they're at work. They want to hug them and hold them and make sure they are SAFE.
Why was this HUGE emotional component completely left out of the article?
How many women REALLY want to drop off a three month old, who can't even hold their head up, with a babysitter or nanny or day care?
Very few do. They rightly worry about the baby getting attention and hugs and care and enough food. And what about when the babies and kids are sick? Another nightmare.
I'm a feminist. I took two years off when I had three young kids under the age of three. I was able to, mostly, work from home from then on out. I had long nights of work, not a lot of sleep, but that's what worked out for me.
I had no desire to go to work and leave my kids with someone else.
Please, next time, talk about how wrenching it is for mothers to leave babies and toddlers and children in day cares.
Don't leave the heart out of motherhood.
It is truly very, very emotionally difficult.
56
@KatieThank you for pointing out the main problem with an analysis that treats people as “costs” or “producers.” Yes. The main reason for having kids is to love them. As I have said for decades, parenthood is life’s greatest adventure. And I now say, grandparenthood is life’s greatest reward.
And I’m putting my life into that pronouncement, moving to be family in town for my daughter and her two children. It still takes a village...
9
It's wrenching for about 2 minutes, then we all move on.
12
@Katie
Don’t speak for all mothers please. I didn’t experience drop-off as “excruciating “. I saw it as skill-building for my kids. We are deeply close and have a loving relationship, but we all have our separate identities and lives.
6
The demands of motherhood are also a huge economic strain on the community. So maybe people should stop having so many kids. Also, we have set up a soccer-mom system instead of just letting kids go outside to play. Kids had to learn how to navigate the world on their own, make friends, and entertain themselves. In a world of helicopter parents, when will kids ever grow up? It's also economically unsound. Here we have way too many mothers, way too many kids, and way too many SUVs and buses running all the time. The carbon footprint has gotten colossal. Children have become a monstrous burden on society and the environment. The carbon footprint is colossal.
28
One only needs to visit a facility that passes as a daycare to see why educated women are staying home to raise their kids. When I visited one that had the reputation of being the very best in our city, half the children were crying, and the caregivers seemed absolutely miserable. Of course this should be expected, since our society vastly undervalues childcare, to our detriment. No way would I entrust the care of my children to this place. I’m lucky that I even had the choice.
14
Thoughts from a dinosaur male. No I am not going to throw women under the bus. I have nothing but respect for the "better" half of humanity. However I did grow up in an era where my mother did stay home to raise the kids; and she is worshiped by her family as a result. My sister, brother, and I had the loving knowledge that no matter what problems might arise; mom would always be there. I can only imagine what it must be like not knowing that security in childhood days. This does NOT mean I am saying women should go back to the kitchen! I know that there was a price to be paid for all that; but my point is that there is a Price to be Paid no matter what decision is made. The whole ,"YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL," mantra of the feminist movement was to me total nonsense all along. NO ONE (male or female) can have it all. Period. One has to decide what their true priorities truly are. I have watched many women who started off thinking they were going to have a family and a career quickly realize that was impossible once entering motherhood for the first time. I did not blame or judge them (unlike some other women I know); but realized their true happiness lay with being a mother; Naturally. That does not make them weak or a failure. I have also known some remarkable brilliant women who have successfully maintained some very high profile professions who still raised a family successfully; and have made a real positive impact on society. It simply comes down to what is right for them.
20
@Greg Hodges Appreciate your viewpoint. Consider the typical (is there such a thing?) American dad. Goes to school, gets a job. Marries, starts a family. If his spouse stays home, he goes to work all day, comes home to wife and kid (maybe kids), maybe he's not handed a martini as he walks in the door anymore, but dinner is probably on its way. He is thought to be a great dad and can relax knowing his spouse will cover kids' sick days, Dr appts, all the extra details. No guilt trips about why he didn't stay home longer, how can he possibly be away from his own children, it's not natural, etc. Of course that is the idyllic version but the choices and judgments for men and women are not the same around work and parenting. Yes temperaments also make a difference, dads need to do way more, and moms need to back off the pressure to overschedule kids (and themselves).
1
"... their beliefs about gender roles change after their first baby."
Yup. My Master's Degree holding, reluctant (as was I) to have a child, wife turned into a Mother who didn't want to leave her child's side once our son was born.
Thankfully, she's a teacher, which provides us with perfect symmetry to our child's school schedule---- just as teaching has for generations of women.
And now my son wants to teach too. Why? So he can spend as much time as his mom (and dad) with his family.
3
How about a study that compares the increased rates of teen suicide with the increase in parents competing in the "rug rate race."
4
Yep - and men still don’t estimate the costs of motherhood much at all. No wonder so many people divorce when their kids hit school age.
12
@Julie Kaye yes the men who are working 50+hours a week don't calculate the cost. Surely that divorce rate has nothing to do with the fact that the woman can, and is usually even encourage by lawyers, take nearly everything that man has earned throughout his life and then continue to leech off him for the rest of his or her natural life. You think men work those hours because they enjoy it? No, it's because it's what we have to do and we accept it. Unlike women we don't have the luxury of anyone else taking care of us, we have to do that ourselves.
1
@James
James...I'd like you to know that there
are women like myself who worked hard and supported men who didn't and lost huge amounts of their incomes and retirement security as well....Women like us also didn't have the luxury of anyone else taking care of us, we had to do it ourselves as well.. That knife cuts both ways my friend..
2
What about college-educated men? Women need to be very careful who they marry choosing partners who are fully committed to their children, a happy family life and their wife's career too.
6
@Linda English, true but when one parent is going to stay home with the kids its typically the one with the lessor pay packet, which is traditionally the women, not always but usually.
1
Sorry, women, most of you are not going to be able to have it all unless you come from an affluent family. Maybe you should think twice about having kids in this crowded, polluted world. If you don't have them, I hope you choose another path to find fulfillment and make a difference. My female partner and I did not have high-paying careers but are entering retirement with no debt and excellent savings. Had we had kids, we would be struggling.
8
While it's unfortunate that our govt., and businesses as a whole, doesn't place enough importance, or provide enough help, with regards to families and their need for childcare
@Lisa, most of the companies i am involved in demand 80-100 hour weeks, on any location on the planet, at any time. But we pay great wages (starting at 150K plus bonuses and expenses), and great benefits. The problem is that once you have kids you obviously cannot have two parents keep up that schedule, its just reality, and when one parent has been taken out for 3-6 months of limited/non productivity, guess who is going to get the better bonus. I am not sure what kind of help could be given that make those hours workout, and hence why our average employee joins at 23 and quits at 28, once people start planning families and having all that experience its easier for them to get well compensated jobs, that don't require crazy travel and hours, but usually have a 20-50% pay cut.
1
"Seventy percent of mothers with children under 18 work."
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that 100% of them work, given that being completely responsible for the life of a completely dependent human being is, - perhaps, kind of? - "work"?
what you wanted to say, probably, is that women keep doing all the unpaid labour socienty implicitly relies on so that "dads", who are surprisingly less influenced, can go off and get appreciation for paid jobs.
14
This is just about 100 percent accurate description of my personal experience.
4
I read through the entire thread, and between “The government should pick up the cost of child care” and “being a full time working mom is SO hard”, I’ve seen no recognition of the childless people who involuntarily contribute to letting you do that. I’ve thought about this for many years, and I’ve concluded that one cannot, truly, “have it all”. You can be a SAHM; you can be a childless person or couple committed to your care; but to have kids AND have a high powered career is not only extremely hard, but it necessarily can only happen when supported by the childless. I would say if men took a more active role in child rearing, it might be more doable. Until then, the childless stay late so you can attend your kid’s soccer game; the childless pay higher taxes so you can pay less; and now you expect the childless to take another hit so that you can pay less for childcare. I don’t mind “contributing to society” but at some point I think I’ve contributed plenty. Please keep in mind who is subsidizing your life choices.
21
Um, no. The childless are not helping me whatsoever.
9
@idnar Half of my taxes are for schools . I pay because I believe in shared responsibility, but don’t think that the childless are not helping to pay for what your child needs.
1
@JanakiThey will pay your social security. They will make the things that you need in the retirement community. Your paying for your future support system.
1
“As women do more paid work, men have not increased their child care and housekeeping tasks to the same extent — another surprise for young women who, research has shown, expected more egalitarian partnerships.”
“Pretender men” (play good guys, act like Neanderthals) - and a government and culture hostile to women and families - is why we all lose when women are forced out of the workforce by needs of the family. Women are misled by long-term passive aggressive behavior - it plays out in a slow, very long arc.
I was married for seven years just out of college. I was at least as talented and ambitious as my Neanderthal husband, who despite pretenses of support, only really cared about his career. This was awhile ago but I am not revealing the years because nothing has changed. I loved him and it took me awhile to figure out I was in a losing situation.
I knew if I had our children, my work life would end. I did not like my choices but I chose divorce and pursued a career. I have no regrets and it was the right choice for me. But it is a terrible choice forced on women - educated or not - and an enormous loss and waste of talent and resources to our country.
Today if I were strategizing about marrying and working, I would consider moving somewhere the equation is more favorable to men and women creating egalitarian partnerships. Sadly these options are limited too.
We still have a long way to go to get patriarchy off our backs.
13
It seems like the rise of Attachment Parenting—with its attendant philosophy that mothers meet a child’s every need and prevent their bad moods—may be contributing to keeping its sleep-deprived believers out of the work force.
8
I am repeatedly astounded on reading female accounts of 'oppression'. Imagine, the female harboring feelings of being coerced into breast feeding. In turn, feeling distinctly female rifling papers in an insurance company. Simply perverse.
One reads repeatedly the difficulty of raising children. (I had 3. My wife was furious with the 3rd. Insisted on an abortion. Today it is the beloved.) Of course difficult...particularly as society becomes more 'modern'. with its multiple distractions. So the cop-out is more rewarding (edifying?) rifling papers in an office and getting the attention (instruction) from a 'boss'.
Would not reason have one wonder. Rearing children is difficult and would benefit from enlightened parenthood. However, we neglect difficult parenthood education and the female prefer studies to join the male on the easier, and more enjoyable, job as supervisor for a travel agency...with all the photos of the planet's wonders.
Having worked tirelessly in an 'office', not just a 'kitchen', or in the bedroom minding a sick child, one now has a sense of
entitled fulfillment. Figure that out.
3
Why aren't women demanding that husbands do more? I am a college educated woman. I can tell you if I ever had a child, I will expect 50/50 from my husband.
Men cannot expect their wives to have kids if they aren't willing to put in the work. This isn't 1918 but 2018.
I know so many women making well over six figures who still pack lunches, nurse sick kids and everything else required to make a household run. Why aren't men doing more? And saying I have a demanding job, is a lame excuse.
7
@LiberalAdvocate
But are men really expecting their wives to have children more than women are expecting their husbands?
Probably less.
If the decision to have children is a shared one, then there may be a kind of negotiation going on. Perhaps some men only reluctantly agree to go along with the child-rearing plan. So, in order to gain his consent, she must accept his lower level of enthusiasm, which gets expressed in less work.
The many critiques of men's failure to do certain housework are all framed as an incomprehensible "failure" to do the obvious. But maybe it is rooted in the nature of the agreement to have children in the first place.
Maybe men are simply less likely to "want it all," as they say.
2
@K, every situation is different, of course, but here's what happened to me. My husband begged me for years to have children. I didn't think it was something I could handle (we talked about this before we married), but I gave in after being married for 10 years and many, many assurances he would do his share. The baby came. I was terrified and alone, but determined to do well by my son. He didn't ask to be born, after all. Two years later, I divorced his father. Not only did he not help in the home, he lost his job and pursued several lawsuits that swallowed our money. This is what I know. Terrified as I was, the love I experienced for my son was like none other. I have never felt a stronger, fiercer love. Anyway, my duty was to him. My husband chose his pride over us, and I left so my son and I wouldn't go down with his sinking ship. I work full time and commute 3 hours per day. My son has always gone to daycare. It's incredibly expensive, but I have no choice. I do without salon hair and mani\pedis. No new clothes for me. No vacations. I make too much to qualify for any help, but not enough to live a life of comfort. And I'm still paying back my school loans. But it's all
worth it because there is no better feeling than my son's hugs . My point is I was responsible and planned; I thought about what I was doing and what I could handle. But life happened differently than I thought it would. I'm making the best of it, just like so many women. Life is hard.
2
Oh @LiberalAdvocate. I love your fierce optimism! Let us know how it goes if you do have kids. I think many if not most of us thought the same - my man is egalitarian, he will do his share - but somehow one way or another it's not the case for many women, even highly educated ones. Once a baby is here, the options are to nag (maybe without effect), do more than your share, or let things go undone. Depends how important those potentially undone "things" are.
2
Why are there words like “mystery” and “surprise” in this article? It’s no mystery at all that working, commuting, saving (or trying to), affording kids and raising them is hard work — especially on moms who want both to be good at their jobs and excellent moms. It’s too much. Something has to give...
5
I think you forgot sexism as one of the causes. The bulk of the parenting still falls on women. The expectation that roles are shared and the lack of sharing of this duties equally by men not stepping up is why educated women’s views change. We won’t allow our children to be under cared for by those who don’t adequately step up to the responsibility of it.
7
Why are you listing breastfeeding as a "cost" of motherhood? Breastfeeding is free! Other than a pump if you're working, you don't need any special equipment or clothes, other than maybe a few nursing bras (and some women don't even need those). It's far more convenient much of the time too, because you don't have to buy or sterilize equipment, measure anything, etc. I get kind of tired of breastfeeding being presented as this insanely inconvenient thing, when for most women it just isn't at all. It IS bad when workplaces provide no private space for women to pump or give them the time they need to do it, or public places that treat breastfeeding women like they're dirty. In these cases, the women are not creating the hassle -- the culture is.
7
@Lassie
Breastfeeding is only "free" if you do not value a woman's time and energy.
3
@Lassie Breastfeeding is only free if women's time is worth nothing. That is not to say breastfeeding is bad, but that we need to be real with naming the enormous commitment that it is.
3
Here's another thing that happens. You, college-educated with rewarding career, and spouse, with same, have loads of discussions about how you will be equal parents, sharing all roles except breastfeeding. Baby comes and ancient male roles emerge. You bicker, you're disappointed. Eventually you scale back your work because someone has to.
15
A small sniff of reality. Feminism as practiced in America has slowly led to male-female relations moving from complementary to a competition for dominance and the peculiarly American view that the way to dominate for the female is to become male rather than use femininity as a tool of advancement via thinking differently.
I had a partner in Paris who was fortyish, overweight, and not pretty, but her tools were charm and smiles and using the sensibilities of womanness. Everyone loved her and she built a major company in a tough field. Here she would have worn pants, physically and mentally; she would have been tough, and the corners of her mouth would turn down like many of the male CEOs and successful politician's mouths do.
Who pays the price? The children who believe that's just the way mom's are. Slowly it has led to hate-men, #Me Too, and the tilt to the right promoted by the Hillarys and the NYTs of our world. Trump, opoids & other dopes, violence, divorce, shrinks, cults, and division is the payback, even though none of the liberated have the perspective to see that - which is tragic. It's called a descendant spiral.
It has left men nowhere to go beyond fighting back. Don't knee-jerk react; it merits really thinking about.
3
"The lack of family-friendly policies in the United States — such as paid family leave and subsidized child care — most likely plays a role, too. Although policies have improved somewhat since the early 1990s, women’s labor force participation in countries that have more generous [policies] has continued to increase, unlike in the United States."
While the statistical analysis is interesting, to me the above paragraph is the only really significant one in the entire article.
2
While this may be anecdotal,almost all men I know have no wish to raise children. Yes,they do wish to procreate(the physical act itself), it's by and large women who feel the biological urge to HAVE children. Why do these women feel entitled to have both a fulfilling career and young kids at the same time. It doesn't seem like they work together because both are demanding of time. Maybe just choose 1 option and stick with it. And please don't comment on how society will perish without you having a child. The world population is at at 7.5 BILLION and rising. Humanity will survive you not adding to it.
7
I wish I had something more of substance to add to the article and discussion, but I think it's all been said. In any case, I feel emotionally depleted having read all of the comments. It's so darn hard to be a woman today.
13
Perhaps we can learn from France ...
"France’s family welfare system goes a long way in explaining the trend. When studying long-term trends associated with high fertility, he said two important factors had been identified: welfare programmes that include the availability of long-term care for children under 3 years old and regular cash transfers to families with children."
http://www.france24.com/en/20130611-why-french-women-make-more-babies-fe...
5
I was prepared for the actual responsibilities of having a child. I was not prepared for the craziness that is foisted upon us for all the "enriching activities" and nonstop supervision. The constant requirement to volunteer for everything. I know that the first thing a lot of commenters will do is say...then don't do it. I have attempted to resist. But, the person who pays for it is my child. If you do not participate, the child is left out. If you attempt to allow your child some independence, you're a neglectful parent. It's vicious.
17
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this important, enlightening, and edifying article.
And thank you for the attention the NYT is now, in recent weeks and months, finally (!) giving to a broad array of experiences and perspectives of women, and not just for and about “career” women or just articles geared toward homemaking. Many readers, subscribers and would-be subscribers hope this coverage continues and is not just a #MeToo-moment fad.
I don't know how you could raise a child and spend 2 hours a day in rush hour traffic.
5
The demand on mothers has been at the highest. You have to be an intelligent women at work without breaking a sweat. Compete with your fellow women and men. Lean in and ask for the project and that raise. You have to take care of your family. That means bringing in home the bacon but also taking care of your children and elderly parents. All the while buying organic meats and vegetables and cooking home cooked meals. You need help? There is Amazon. What's so hard? Don't you dare losing your standard of beauty and grace. Keep up with your appearance and fashion sense. You have any spare time? Volunteer at your local school and community. And run for office. Did we say we need women candidates?
HOW IS THAT FAIR? Where men is expected just to bring home the bacon. And maybe put out the trash if we ask.
These unrealistic expectations continue to pile on. No wonder we women are just exhausted!
19
So what’s the solution? I agree with everything: inflexible demanding jobs, high cost of child care, father MIA due to his own demanding job, grandparents not willing to raise kids etc. So what should a college educated woman do in the face of all these odds? What if her job doesn’t pay enough to get all the required help - babysitting plus housekeeping plus kids tutoring? How are the 80%+ women who stay in the LF after giving birth accomplishing it?
3
The standards are so high to be a perfect mother today, one may as well join a monastery instead.
11
I agree that much of this has been brought upon us by the cult of over parenting. If an 8 year-old is caught alone in his home (eating a snack, sitting next to the phone, doing his homework with the doors locked), DSS shows up. We have put ourselves in a position the forces us into costly lifestyles and fearful kids - for what? Back in the day, having more than one child was a suitable childcare arrangement. Safety in numbers!!!
My advice: Have your KIDS- not KID. The childcare costs are about the same (I am a single mom of 3). Have them close in age so that you are not out of the workplace for decades if you chose to stay at home. Work part-time as soon as you can even if it is a break even as far as expenses. Your sanity with thank you and so will your skill set.
I did that. My paycheck went directly to the au pair. But when I ready to go back to work full time, I didn't have the dreaded big gap in my resume. I got my current position (been here 7 years) from one of the folks I worked for part-time 11 years ago.
And stop all this constant chatter about the college expenses, healthcare, parenting your parents expenses. You have no idea if your 9 month old is going to college, if he will need a heart transplant or if your parents even want your help.
You might win the lottery and not have to work again.
More than likely, you will find a way to make it work if you REALLY want to be a parent. If you don't want to be a parent, then don't be one and stop complaining.
6
This is a middle-class, college educated, white female problem. Black women have always had to work and then come home to take care of their own family. All the women in my family...for as far back as I can trace had full-time jobs. Often they were "The Help" in a white woman's house. They did the cooking, cleaning and child-care. They got paid a pittance....and the white "Mistress of the House" got the credit. Now, those black and brown women have a chance to do better for themselves and are doing so...as a result...childcare cost more. Today's young white women were unrealistic about motherhood and child-rearing and our now discovering what older women have alway known....being a good mom is hard work. As far as inflexible work schedules are concerned....that has not changed...what has changed is that in the past white females had jobs that allowed them greater opportunity to manage their own time...but as they moved into more male dominated fields, women lost that time flexibility...which coupled with the increased cost of child care leads to increased stress. Finally young white females are too hard on themselves...they expect perfection....the right clothes, toys, book....you name it....but this is unrealistic. You can raise a happy, healthy child...a model citizen without all the accoutrements demanded by modern corporate culture. Black and brown women have been doing this for years. Welcome to the club.
37
Too much helicoptering going on, makes raising children that much more exhausting
4
Just thinking~ Back in the 1980's if you had a child, chances are your mom was a homemaker. She would provide daycare, sick care, etc. for your child. If you have a child today, chances are your mom is part of the work force, and not able to provide the care needed. This may be why women nowadays underestimate the effort required to raise kids. The help provided by grandparents has diminished in the last 2-3 decades.
14
I think this is true. My mom worked while I was growing up in the 90s (and was always stressed and miserable.... but i guess that’s a different story), but both my grandmothers lived within ten minutes of our house and were available to watch us anytime.
1
Women who quit the workforce after having children put themselves at grave risk of poverty in their later years.
19
Well, surprise. The highly educated lifestyle is also a very costly lifestyle. Sure, you make a lot of money but how much of that extra cash do you spend grooming your offspring to take their place in the never-ending rat race? Keeping up with the Joneses is expensive.
8
@ Deborah Brown - But the stay-at-home parent also gives up pension contribution which come back to haunt you at retirement.
2
@MJM: Pensions? What pensions? Even for those of us in mid-life, pensions are rare. Now if you're talking about Social Security, know that in the U.S., most married women will continue to have access to a large percentage of a husband's benefit even after his death. And in retirement, a retired couple who have lived on one income throughout their married life will draw the complete benefit of the employed spouse. If they have planned well, they will have enough, just as a dual-income couple who has planned well will.
4
The "study" was taken on "parents", and yet, consistently, through the article only "women" are spoken of.
Why do you do this all the time, New York Times?
It's as if there are no men in your universe if the subject has anything to do with families.
Unless the article is specifically about "single mothers", stop trying to make "parenthood" a thing about women only.
13
Oh, DUH! Says this PhD mom.
5
Well, it will only get worse with Republicans in charge. Might want to vote--and have your babies vote too.
1
Hey, here's a scary notion for republicans to chew on: being a mother today's is HARD, very, very hard ---- expensive, soul-sucking (much as you love your child/children), exhausting (with precious little help from your partner or the government), and basically demoralizing. This could be why the birth rate in America has been dropping to less than "replacement" levels. And what will that mean ???? The need for immigrants to make up for those missing citizens! HA!! Gotcha, Repubs!! The irony will be delicious.
1
What it should mean is the population decreases. The planet simply cannot sustain the amount of people on earth right now - housing is already unaffordable, and there is no land left to develop in the major cities and suburban areas for more housing.
4
Being a U.S. female of the age-group studied, it seems researchers did not ask women why they participate in the workforce not why they did not continue to work after first child was born.
For many, the total cost of alternative childcare and other expenses which would enable the parent to work full-time neared or exceeded the after-tax earnings she would realize by working. Being of a latch-key generation, most GenXers I know wanted a different relationship with their children -- one of quality time. So, if the economic gain of working wasn't substantial enough to justify devoting time to it, it was alright to go without.
Contrary to this articles portrayal ... most the women I know who had children waited until after attaining degrees and mid-level career-track positions before starting families. Several out-earned their husbands, and when the time came to decide which career to decelerate those couples decided the woman would be the primary bread-winner and the man would be the primary daytime child-care taker and home-maker. Yet, it was intentionally not a 100% flip of 1950s gender roles.
1
I don't think it is easy nor perfect no matter what decisions are made: to stay at home or child care your way through parenting. There are life changes no matter which way you go.
My wife chose to stay at home and we do not regret it one bit. She left a nice paying job for a major corporation to raise our kids. I had a consulting company which was good and bad. It afforded us the ability to live on one income, while the bad was that I traveled a lot.
The real down side as I see it is that after the kids are adults, my wife cannot find any job that is remotely like those that she had before kids. Type of work and pay. So many women will pay a heavy price to be out the work environment for 20 years.
11
@Charleston Yank: As someone who is just about on the other side of that long-term decision to leave full-time professional employment to raise children, I explain the transition as similar to someone facing a normal retirement. It can be very difficult to end one stage of life and start another, and that's the case whether or not one's former role involved a paycheck.
For me, the answer was not trying to have and do everything at once. When my husband and I started our family at age 35, we were at the same career level in the same field. We both tried to reduce to 3/4 time but found that our individual benefits would be severely reduced or cut. I opted to resign and raise our children as my priority, with lots of home and child-care help from my husband, while he maximized his career. Over the next 25 years I was able to work part time in a variety of interesting jobs but because I took a year off with each infant and only worked 50% time, my career stalled. There were years that I was very resentful of the upward trajectory of my husband's career and salary, but once my two sons reached adulthood, I felt so proud of them and the wonderful young men they had grown up to be. If I had tried to work full time while raising a family I would have been exhausted and nasty to my husband and kids. I will never regret prioritizing my marriage, our family's happiness and my sons over my so-called career during those years. Then, surprisingly, when my husband retired early to help his sister care for their very elderly parents at home, I went back to work full time in my dream job until retirement.
10
While it's unfortunate that our govt., and businesses as a whole, don't place enough importance, or provide enough support, with regards to families and their need for childcare, what's also clear in this article is that, some of the stressors are self-imposed. If some parents want to be helicopter parents, or invest inordinate amounts of money and energy into ensuring their children are always 'at the top of their games', and at all stages of their lives, then that is the parents' choice, for which they will ultimately pay the price. I don't feel sorry for such parents, who use their children as pawns to achieve their own 'successes' as parents.
5
@Lisa: It's called hot house parenting, and people do it because it generally works, although it can cause a lot of stress for parents and children alike.
Too many, too few or none at all, too soon, too late, the world is full of regrets if you put it in certain terms. Or some think they have no choice at all.
Whether it is motherhood or parenthood, talking about cost may be matter of facts. But so are actuarial and healthcare, life is precious and priceless - until you put a number to it.
Sometimes one has to wonder if people have made an estimate at all about some of our life's moments, until they look back.
1
Retired single parent mom here - Some of us had no choice. I shudder to think what that would have been like with cell phone culture. Also, I am grateful that I lived my working life in different parts of Canada and had an enlightened employer. Even then it was a near thing. I suppose single parents today manage the same way I did - because you don't have any other choice.
3
It can be very hard to find balance today. I'm married to a traveling consultant, who is gone three weeks out of four. Although our kids are now nearly grown, I really don't know how a woman (or man) with younger children could manage to pull off primary responsibility for home and parenting on top of full-time employment. I know many do, but I personally don't know how they do it. I'm overwhelmed just imagining the exhaustion.
10
Mother of a 4 and 5 year old here, married to a traveling consultant and working full time. Very exhausted indeed!
1
Interesting article, and one that hits close to my own family. Of my grandchildren and their spouses, three are stay at home moms. All three had successful professional careers. The fourth has opted to go back to her career, after 12 weeks of maternity leave (and another 12 weeks for the father, my grandson). They were fortunate enough to find a new mother who is staying home and to supplement income will provide daycare for our latest great grandchild.
All four of the mothers delayed childbirth until after graduating college and establishing their careers. All four have had the good luck (and good sense) to marry husbands / fathers that share their values. Having said all that, it is also true that the costs of raising children in today's age is staggering compared to what it was thirty years ago in terms of real adjusted cost.
6
Marriage and babies with both parents working at a maximum level requires a heaping dose of job flexibility found mainly in the duality of self employment. Otherwise, the rules of the workplace are to rigid to get the time required for childcare and it’s expense and the maintenance of a solid job presence to the requirements of most employers.
9
Dad here. We have 2 young children in a very expensive state - NJ. full day childcare costs us around 18-20k per child. My wife and I share the chores equally. Even with childcare, the demands of raising children is extremely difficult. The flexibility that both of our companies offer (B4 accounting) is HUGE in helping us get through the day. If companies want to retain talented females, they should certainly set policies that offer flexibility for working parents.
10
How today's moms and dads navigate the ever increasing complexity and pace of our society, well, it's truly a wonder in itself. If one looks at parenthood in other species with whom we share the earth, the simplicity, the naturalness, of it...clearly they've got something we've lost.
5
@dc
I watched two coyotes raising 2 kits outside my LR window.
While female was nursing, male hunted and brought back food for her and himself, and soon they took turns feeding the kit bits of solid food.
Then both parents took turns hunting and feeding and staying back home.
Then all four were lined up below my deck, watching my cat, and it was indoor time for her!
3
Here's the truth: Americans work more hours per tear than almost every other country in the world.
30 years ago, the idealism of family and work could be proffered by the educated AND wealthy. But once those REALITY of life was imitated by the middle class, the idealism couldn't be matched by reality if the work force especially as practiced in America where employer's expect 7x24 coverage for everything if your professional or you have instantly changing work schedules for everyone else.
Face it: something has to give. The fantasy that it could be done while meeting ever higher ROI can't be done.
10
The lack of parental leave and affordable child care is the number 1 issue affecting the US economy. Sure singer payer sounds great, but parental leave and child care must be solved first. We would most likely have had this policy if the election was different in 2016. All candidates must espouse this policy to be taken seriously.
5
I am a mother of three young children. I have a BA from a Big10 university, and I was a high wage earner. I left the workforce for one reason: my fortune 300 employer was wholly unsupportive of working mothers. The cost and availability of childcare didn’t make it easier. At one point our childcare bill (which was reasonable, and not extravagant) was TWICE our mortgage (which was also reasonable and not extravagant). My salary and career stagnated (because maternity leave was viewed as a perk) while my husband was promoted after the birth of each child (because he is talented but also because a large family makes him look more responsible). It’s difficult as a young professional to ascertain how hostile this country is toward working mothers until you’re in the thick of it. I’d love to see a childcare index reported along with unemployment. How long is the waiting list? What percentage of your take home income can you expect to pay for care for your infant? How many open spots per capita? I swear to god it’s easier to get into college than to find a spot for a newborn and a preschooler that is 1) affordable and 2) within a reasonable distance to your home.
39
Grandfather here. My wife and I both worked at career jobs continuously from the day our daughters were born. Child raising was hard and expensive. We had a little family help but I did all the cooking laundry and most of the child fetching. My wife did finances and homework. But we both knew who our children were despite the hard work and the needed child care programs. Our daughters are now a government scientist and and a government lawyer. Both are married, homeowners and parents. Both fine sons in law are real partners and share duties the same way we did. IMHO the killer increase is in child care costs and housing. Even professional salaries have not kept up with the increased costs.
29
Somebody has to make the home. As a childless working woman, I find plenty to do. Work is more demanding: commute times, competition for work, hassles of marketing seem to mount up.
How much more so if you care about your child.
6
Nothing has changed with parenting. It is very demanding to raise children. It always has been. The cost of having someone else raise kids for you has gone up and is difficult to obtain. Grandparents like to be with their grandkids, but not raise them. That’s the job of parents. People are on an economic treadmill these days. Huge mortgages, pool guys, landscapers. It all costs money! Used to be called keeping up with the joneses.
8
The most stessed mothers I know - and the ones most inclined to stop working - are the ones who live in the suburbs.
There are two reasons that suburban life kills careers. The first is the commute. That steals an extra hour out of the day. The second is that suburban schools assume that there is a stay at home parent and have more restrictive hours and programs.
City living has worked really well for my family and for other families I know. Taxes are lower too, and diversity is a huge plus.
17
@Cousy
Interesting observation but too smug & simple of an explanation. The underlying reasons are much more varied & complex.
2
@Cousy, this is primarily a coastal phenomena. Do some research and you will find commutes are much shorter in the rest of the country. The real killer is the corporate rat race.
2
@Cousy
The problem with city living for me, though I love it and am trying to hold on to it as long as I can, is that a two bedroom apartment in my building costs $1.5 million (average). I'm currently in a studio apartment with my husband and two toddlers, but the suburbs appear to be the only affordable option in our future. (We don't qualify for low-income housing in the city, and rents are similarly ridiculous, at approximately $3,500-4,000 for a decent 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom.)
1
There are so many factors involved in the decision to stay home, despite cultural or economic pressure not to, that I won't go into them here -- many others have done so in other comments. But I want to add that something I did not see mentioned in my (admittedly cursory) skimming of the comments is what you feel when you first lay eyes on your newborn: that this is the most important, compelling thing in your life right now, and that you would be heartbroken not to be the one who raises your child. This only grows over the weeks and months at home during parental leave, and makes it harder to go back to work. That love is not born out of privilege -- it is a natural feeling that can trump other conflicts. Obviously, whether or not one can stay home depends on individual circumstances or long-range plans, but it is an oversight not to at least include the attachment between parent and child in any discussion of why women (or men) stay home with children.
19
I left my part time job in 2005 to take care of my adopted newborn son. While I had initially planned to return to work once he reached school age, those plans were postponed when we moved abroad from 2007-13. When we returned, my son was 8, and I was ready to return to work. Despite having a college degree, I found myself unemployable. The reason? Applications were most often online, and initial screenings were done via computer algorithm, and didn’t offer a way to explain extended absences from the work force because of (for instance) motherhood. Five years later, I still struggle with finding a suitable job that allows me to work primarily when my now middle school aged son is at school, an issue since we don’t have any family here to help.
There are two things plaguing mothers who wish to return to work. One is the hours we are expected to be available. Weekend and evening hours make family life impossible to sustain, especially for single parents. Second is that many “entry level” jobs require (recent) experience. Check any job hunting website like Indeed or Glassdoor, and see how company requirements are too often hostile towards mothers who wish to return to work once their kids are ready. And we wonder why they aren’t employed? It’s not rocket science.
47
@Colleen Dunn
Also true for people who take time to care for a parent.
Being female, older, "overqualified" as well is a true kiss of death.
Am I "overqualified" to be homeless, too?
Need to find out in a couple of months.
1
The rise in special needs children is a key factor. Probably at least half of the 30% who are not working can account for that being the reason (in my town 17% of students have a disability). A mother can't work full-time and help such a child reach their maximum potential. There are so many therapists, tutors, special diets, etc. that it's a full-time job to raise such a child until at least age 18, even if the child is fairly able and college-bound. We become their medical consultant, educational advocate, social coordinator, tutor, dietician, and more while bearing the undistinguished, unpaid and under-respected title of stay-at-home mom.
30
@SpecialMom Are you serious, 17 percent of students have a disability where you live? That is absolutely amazing. What counts as a disability?
5
My immediate reaction to this which is only vaguely alluded to in the article is the terrific degree of over-parenting that is a phenomenon in its own right. It seems to me that our culture - especially among high-wage earning and educated households - would benefit mightily from taking the foot of the accelerator of feeling always the need to do more. The neurosis of our time is especially stunning.
28
Could it be as simple as the reality that most jobs are no fun, and it makes somewhat more sense for the mother to quit working (e.g. breastfeeding) than the father?
8
A few other thoughts: Mothers raised by working mothers saw first hand how difficult it is to do both really well. The compromises are endless and frustrating. And things have gotten worse. Working at a salaried job now requires being tethered to your smart phone on a 24/7 basis. Parenting gets squeezed even further. At the same time those same women that were driven to get a college degree are driven to be the superstar moms with helicopter tendencies. Almost impossible to do both really well.
16
There’s no question this is the most family-unfriendly country in the developed world. There’s no reason life has to be such a continual struggle for families with children. This is just one single example of what happens when we as a society decide that the solution to all problems is to give more money to the private sector and wait for it to happen.
58
There are many references to the loss of Social Security participation if a parent stays home. This is so easily remedied by simply legally hiring someone else to take care of your children and vice versa, and paying into the system. You don't lose quarters, and it helps to bump up your lifetime earnings. Perhaps it doesn't matter to high earners, but for many women, having at least the minimum SS entered onto your record will be a help later.
5
I think you have overlooked the fact that most working women cannot afford to hire a full time nanny. I have spoken many college educated women who have pointed out that paying for a nanny or outsourced child care was simply vastly more expensive than staying at home. The income that they would retain working was outweighed by the cost of care.
25
@Deborah Brown I am now 62. I stayed home for 15 years while my children were young. 1990-2005. I had a good paying salaried job when my husband and I made the decision that I would stay at home. We factored childcare costs, car payments, insurance and maintenance, and wardrobe costs, among other things. Those costs ate up quite a bit of my salary. We became a one car household and didn't have to eat out very much. I volunteered at my kids schools and got to be a part of their life. I won't lie. It was hard for us financially. I went back to work when my youngest started high school. I have never regretted the decision.
2
@VHZ I was an elementary school teacher. The cost of full time daycare or a private nanny pretty much equaled my monthly take home pay so I quit & stayed home with the kids.
11
I'm not sure who this is about, or what the conclusions are. It's a cursory article. But I do know that when I was growing up, in the seventies, you could maintain an middle class life style, as my parents did, on one reasonable but not huge income. My mother stayed home. Now that's impossible, at least in New York City!
One thought that isn't much discussed int the 'equal house work and childcare' conversation, is that most women I know, college educated, high performing in their chosen careers, who have raised children, have not been especially eager to give up the control of the domestic sphere--of their children's schedules, care, schooling, or any other facets of household management--therefore making more work for themselves. That's a choice.
13
The most interesting thing here is the information about how the demands of motherhood INCREASED during the 1990s. That implies a cultural shift.why don’t we shift it again to a place where we stop criticizing parents who dont practice the extreme forms of attachment parenting that are the norm these days.
38
Elite privilege often means that from a cost/benefit perspective, unless mom is super ambitious and in a high paying field, the nanny costs trump her wages so it is better to be a one income family and have the kids raised by mom. But there is a downside: forget trying to renter the workforce doing meaningful work for a fair wage. And it also puts stress on the husband to provide in an increasingly uncertain and competitive job market where many men get “aged out” and replaced by younger, cheaper and more malleable workers. Any wonder why America scores low on quality of life versus Scandinavian and other European countries?
45
@Nils Why the emphasis on a "nanny?" Full time child care at a decent care center costs much less than a full time nanny, and has the added advantages of your child learning to socialize at an early age. Granted you have to be careful, as there are many not so great child care centers, but the good ones still cost less than a nanny.
4
@Retired now Full time child care at a daycare center is extremely expensive. If there are two or more children, a nanny may cost less than daycare.
1
This absolutely defines our family’s struggle. On top of this, right when I’m trying to return to the workforce, hubby and I are divorcing. So, now there’s the added pressure of trying to get a job as a single parent. Good luck when most jobs require experience and/or “flexibility” (read, weekend/evening availability). More than ever, we need family friendly policies that make this process of survival with kids just a little easier.
1
It is currently a punitive process just to be a woman of childbearing age but to have one and bow out the workforce includes in addition to loss of income, loss of Social Security and retirement benefits, insurance, social support, and respect being the ultimate punishment for having a child. The effect is cumulative; the more you have the worse it gets. I know. I stayed home with children eight years without income, Social Security and retirement contributions before reentering the workforce when my children were young. Was I working? You bet I was. Did my work have value to society? I know so. Now retired, I look at the blank spots on my Social Security profile and the inflated 401K savings on my husband's printouts and advise my daughter accordingly. If America is not going to accept immigrants, if America needs children who will become the next generation of workers, if America wants to remain a world class economy, if America wants to maintain national security, then maybe we should pay women when they have children and take better care of them when they do. We need only look to Japan and Europe to see how it goes when the birthrate drops below replacement. As one wise soul said regarding low birth rates in those places, 'It's easy to stop the baby machine, but much harder to start it back up.'
49
Here's an alternative perspective:
I'm a man who took time off to mind our children. We both have good careers, but for logistical reasons it was easier for me to stop working for a year after her maternity leave ended.
To be clear, I have absolutely been the beneficiary of this, no amount of career-growth could be worth the quality and quantity of time I've been able to spend with my pre-school children. I would recommend it to any parent.
However, when you wonder why it's often the woman who stays home, before blaming the man you should think about the type of bias and discrimination that faces a man who chooses to reduce his work commitments because of children. Even if company policies allowed it, there were some disapproving looks if I said I had to leave exactly at 5.00, or if I worked from home because of a sick child. And I know that I worked at a particularly enlightened company.
Now that I am starting to look for work again, I get sincere advice to never say that I took time off to be with my children - because this would raise questions about my commitment, more than it would for a woman apparently.
Reality: Any parent IS less committed to work - but not in the sense that they will be any less effective. Rather, they have a clearer view of their priorities and where work fits - but also they have had the equivalent of altitude training at multi-tasking, efficiency and handling difficult people under duress.
Any company should be thrilled to hire a parent!
42
@Denis I, too, worked for a somewhat enlightened company, but still felt disapproval when I had to leave on time, or stay home with a sick child (my husband and I did share this responsibility). I felt, however, that I really did learn to work smarter, not longer, and was just as valuable to the company.
5
@Denis
Working women are also secretive about child care responsibilities, which might reflect on their commitment. In my experience as a young lawyer a number of years ago, easier for a man to say I am taking a day off to golf than for a woman to say I am taking a day off to take my sick child to the pediatrician. Guess the potential of client contact was greater on the golf course, thus making it more acceptable than caring for a child.
While America glorifies its children in theory, it doesn't do so in practice.
3
The title of this article is all wrong “The Costs of Motherhood Are Rising, and Catching Women Off Guard
College-educated women in particular underestimate the demands of parenthood and the difficulties of combining working and parenting, new research shows.”
It puts the burden of care on the woman, if we want to change society we have to start here. It takes 2 to make a child and 2 to raise it. If we want parents to be fully engaged in both the workforce and at home we need to have in place, as a society, childcare that works. That may mean raising taxes and building institutions that support this and having more flexibility in work hours and workplace.
It isn’t that difficult to figure this out. We just need to demand it, and have our government get its head out of the 1950s
20
@rebecca
I appreciate the vision of a past free-range childhood, but there are some differences now vs. in 1950.
First, there used to be large numbers of mothers and grandmothers home to watch over neighborhoods.
Second, in North Carolina, we have almost no sidewalks (these require expensive buried storm management pipes), no way for children to bike or walk safely to each others houses, schools, playgrounds, parks, or community centers.
Third, with far-flung year-round public, private and charter schools, even the children in the neighborhood aren't on the same school calendar (Year-round schools have four calendar tracks, so kids never even meet 3/4 of the kids in their own grade in the same school. each track has a separate break/vacation schedule, so children have "summer" with only kids on their calendar track.)
Add to this children who attend various after school programs while parents work, or participate in sports and camps, and there is almost no one around for children to get to without a car.
Free-range children are largely alone, with phones and video games for company.
24
@Laura Stop sending your kids to programs. My parents didn't sign us up for all kinds of afterschool activities and we did fine entertaining ourselves and learning on our own. When did it become such an unquestionable tradition to have adult-organized activities for kids?
Missing from this discussion is the elephant in the room. Everything about parenting, Motherhood (and Fatherhood), is compared against this idea of a job and work. For some reason we seem to denigrate it, implicitly or otherwise, seeing more value in the person if they hold a j.o.b..
Here's a fact; parenting is a full-time job in its own right. As a society we should acknowledge its worth. If work is paid commensurate to the impact it has on the future then the job of parent should be paid in amounts at least comparable to what we pay our popular athletes and entertainers.
After all, to be Mother, and Father, is to have the profoundest of impacts on that future, and we should support them in full recognition of this.
John~
American Net'Zen
19
@John
Parenting as a full-time job... I agree with you wholeheartedly. I always used to get annoyed whenever we had our Parents-teachers Days at school, and a mother came to ask me about her teen's progress and said, "I am only a housewife." My reaction was always the same, "You know, Mrs X, I really dislike that phrase, and will set you a task: please write down all of the various tasks you do in connection with child care, household and the lot, then arrange these duties under the jobs that would require this work."
The phrase alone shows how mothers are seen and how they see themselves, and that even in Germany, which offers childcare for under 3s and up. BUT the cost of this care eats up the woman's earnings. Sure, we have child allowance, tax relief (generous, roughly $ 1000 per year), but high-echelon jobs are mainly for men or career women, so, while it is financially easier over here to reconcile family and profession, we don't have an ideal system either.
10
@John Um okay. Who should pay someone to be a father or a mother? It was after all a personal private decision.
Athletes and entertainers are paid big $$$ because there are very few people who can do what they do AND there is high demand from the market. Anyone can become a parent. All it takes is the consent of one other human being. There is not huge societal demand for any particular individual to become a parent.
So how in the world do you think that society should pay parents what employers pay Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie? By society do you mean taxpayers?
1
Missing here is a discussion of the costs and benefits for the father whose wife who cuts back or drops out of the workforce to care for the children. There is an implication that the working father is taking it easy: the wife does more housework, loses her place in her career, etc, while Dad gets to charge straight ahead. In truth Dad finds himself in the terrifying position of being the primary breadwinner for his young family. The economic well being of his children fall directly on his shoulders and he must throw himself into his work, leaving far less time and energy for his children. When the time comes for Mom to return to work the economic calculus has changed, he now makes more and she less, ergo they are both trapped in traditional gender roles.
I say this as the wife, and now as the mother, of men who found themselves unwittingly thrust into long grueling hours at work so that their children had the benefit of SAHMs. They paid the cost in terms of stress, missed weekends with their children and an uni-dimensional life that is no where reflected in our conversations about the difficulty of parenting.
My father, in the 50s and 60s, could support a family on 40 hours of work per week. That number is now 80-100, a young couple must either both work, or condemn one partner to 15 hour work days. This is not mothers vs fathers, this is parents vs an economic system that has failed the working and middle class.
126
ML, this is so true. My husband talks about how terrifying it is to be sole support for a family. In today’s disposable economy, where lifetime employment is a thing of the past, he must always remain aware of what is going on politically and financially with his company. Three tech companies he worked for over the years have basically disappeared (he got out before the ships sank). Another time he was laid off, through no fault of his own.
It’s very hard to support a family. Many men work absolutely miserable jobs to support their families — whether it’s working on oil rigs far from home, working in harsh conditions, or simply, like my husband, working long stressful hours. Men don’t get enough credit.
*
Lastly, although I live in Canada and got one year of maternity leave with each child and have secure healthcare, motherhood is still hard. I do prefer the Canadian way (with mat leave, health care, etc) but taxes here are much higher. Housing costs in Toronto, where I live, are on par with NYC now.
Social programs are not a panacea for the competitiveness of work or the problems of crowded urban conditions. Undoubtedly it is easier to be poor in Canada. But keep in mind that overall we earn less and everything costs more.
19
@ML Although we both struggled with the problems of both parents of two children working full time, my husband was quite good at sharing the child care and home responsibilities. Even though it meant additional work at home for him, at one point my husband said he was relieved to not have the pressure of being the sole financial support for the family.
2
@ML This describes our family’s situation exactly. On paper we were quite well off, but in practice we were hanging by a thread. Our entire family’s health care depended on a single employer, with things like dentistry depending on who we could find within our plan. It’s not a fun way to live.
4
I underestimated the work of motherhood because it was so different for my own parents’ experience.
My mother didn’t breastfeed (and that was normal); local teenagers were eager to babysit for a few dollars; I walked to school from 1st grade. I failed a grade in school but my mother was not concerned and was not expected to tutor or assist me. My father was considered a workaholic and yet was still home for dinner at six, whereupon he was happy to eat meals of fish sticks.
Everything has changed now. My husband is a normal worker for his career path and yet for years would get home at eight. I breastfed my children (of course) and walked my children to school until age nine (traffic is the worry, not without cause — two children were killed by cars within a mile of my home during my kids grade school years). Teenagers are too busy with school and activities to regularly babysit (my teen daughter has a babysitting gig and the parents are so eager to keep her that they pay her $25 an hour).
Also, my mom had help from her homemaker mom. My mom was working when my kids were little. First generation entrants into the working mom labour market have a huge advantage. Lastly I have many elderly relatives to look after, something my mom didn’t have to the same extent and shared with many siblings when she did.
These are the changes of a generation. Each on its own seems small but they add up. Life is more competitive and crowded; more isolated, too. It’s harder.
152
The cost and effort required to raise children is never fully understood by parents-to-be. My wife and I chose to accept a lower standard of living than we could have had if both of us had worked full time while our daughter was growing up. We decided that one parent would stay at home. We wanted to do this anyway, because why have children and then let strangers raise them? We split the first five years, each working about half of that time while the other stayed home. We both worked after our daughter started school, but arranged our schedules so that at least one of us was home when school ended. The time spent with our child was much more important to us than maximizing our earning power.
The simple fact is that you can't have it all. If you want to achieve maximum economic success, don't have kids. If you want to be really involved in your children's lives, then buy a smaller house, or make do with one car, take less expensive vacations, etc.
26
@Jon Harrison, this is all true but is only practical advice away from major cities where there is even an alternative available. I knew what was coming early in my life and made the decision to leave the coastal cities and have never looked back.
1
@Larry L: When we made this decision we lived 25 miles from Boston, in an expensive housing market. It's perfectly possible to do it anywhere if you are prepared to live on a smaller/more frugal scale. A crazy place like present-day San Francisco might be an exception, but we could do it all over again in the same place today.
Mothers are working regardless of whether it is in a job or career outside the home or a stay at home mother. Being a stay at home mother is extremely intense and there is seldom any relief. There are no days off. There is no vacation. The scenery never changes unless it is to move into a different abode. A person who works outside the home at least leaves their workspace and arrives at home. So let's stop calling the parent who stays at home as 'aren’t working'. They are working and it is unrelenting work that is not rewarded in any monetary way.
The US culture is set up so that women are depreciated overall but much more so once children are involved. The culture doesn't support parenthood. Having children is expected, or at least has been expected of females but not of males. That's pretty much true of what I have seen where ever I have been. Women are asked about their child bearing status and plans to become a mother even when they are single. I've never seen nor heard of a man being asked when he is going to have a child and how he plans to take care of it, unless it directly from his parents.
Childcare in the USA is basically undependable and very expensive. The child, in most cases, is simply monitored at a time in their lives where the opportunity for their learning is at its peak. It is terribly difficult for a single parent, regardless their gender, but it has always been difficult for single parents.
24
REL: @Susannah Allanic
"A person who works outside the home at least leaves their work space and arrives at home. So let's stop calling the parent who stays at home as 'aren’t working'. They are working and it is unrelenting work that is not rewarded in any monetary way."
Susannah- what is your logic that a mother who works outside of home "at least leaves the work space and arrives at home" as having a "break" that at-home mothers don't have? I commuted in rush hour traffic, worked grueling shifts as a nurse, and worked a second shift as a mother when I arrived home, when raising my children. I still work as a nurse, so no empty nest relaxation for me as you may have one day. There was no "break," from either my job or parenting. As far as you not being rewarded, as an at-home mother, in a monetary way, unless you're on social services, your spouse or partner must be financing the household.
13
@NMV
Perhaps you are a bit over defensive?
I began working at age 12 babysitting at nights for a neighbor whose husband had died and the only job she could find was in the bowling alley bar of our small town. From there, at age 15 I worked at my father's ambulance company for long transfers as an attendant and after school as a file clerk for a local doctor. I became an EMT later. Got married and stayed home with my 3 children for a bit over 4 years, so I know something about that. Then I was divorced, single mom, going back to school, working graveyards in the busy ER in a larger city so that I could sleep during the mornings and attend more schooling when possible and still take care of the house, 3 kids plus their friends, laundry, shopping, and homework. As I advanced my degrees, I moved up to Trauma 1 care centers and finally became a Patient Care Coordinator. Please tell me again exactly how lazy I am.
Many aspects of this article resonate with me. But even if I wasn’t quite aware of it — I never really felt that my country supported me to have a child. Policy in the US re: maternity leave and healthcare access, it is almost punitive, not FOR (supportive of) me. There are other reasons why I am childfree but in retrospect, not having children was the best decision of my life. I could sum it up as basic economics and the pervasive, destructive every (wo)man for herself culture, one that’s become coarser and more greedy over my lifetime.
13
So it's harder now to raise kids than it was 30 or 40 years ago? I don't think so - I think the authors of this study and column are just very young. It's always been hard to raise kids, whether or not a mother is employed outside the home. The only mothers who ever had it "easy" were those who didn't actually mother their kids and those who had an extreme amount of money to hire others to do so.
I had a career and raised two kids with a supportive husband and boss, and it was still brutally hard at times, rife with guilt most of the time, and required constant juggling and worrying and cutting corners one place or another. That's just what people do when they want to raise children. It didn't hurt my kids - it taught them that no one can "have it all," that life is series of decisions (not "choices") and sacrifices and that there's nothing wrong with that.
I recall my grandma asking me about daycare, and how that worked. She told me that would have been nice when her boys were little in the 1920's and 30's, because she just had leave them in the yard with the gate shut when she took the wagon down with lunch she had cooked for the farm workers -- the 5 year old was responsible for his little brothers. I can't really imagine how life now is harder than that.
28
For starters, you can't just leave your small children unsupervised anymore.
4
I notice this article reverts back to the old language in which a mother at home with children was not referred to as "working". Perhaps this contributes to women's pre-parenthood belief that having dependent children and a career at the same time will not be so difficult. It's a leap to claim that it's gotten more difficult to raise kids. It was never easy, and it never will be. That's why some people decide to opt out of one or the other.
24
I think to be the "father" is to miss the joys of "motherhood", and that regardless of what you choose, you'll miss the kids or the satisfaction of a career. The sad reality is that even with our massive leaps forward in technological prowess, we're farther away than ever from a sense of ownership of our lives. Our society forces us to choose, and no matter what you choose, you've lost. Is it any different than it was a century ago?
11
This article could have been written about me. I have a masters degree and had my kids at age 34 and 36, A year and half after my second was born, I quit work for 6 years. Unfortunately my now ex-husband had an affair with his secretary. This prompted me to return to the work force, and now 11 years later I still am not making as much as I was before quitting. Women usually get the short end of the stick when children are introduced.
96
@Lauren Women bear all of the biological costs, too. But they are intensely socialized to want children.
2
As my 30 something daughter said, “This article hit the nail on the head for me” and I am sure many other mothers. Thank you for such an accurate and much needed article.
11
Everyone is responsible for their personal choices. We research the costs of things before we buy them - like cars or houses or a college education. Why not take the cost into consideration when deciding when and whether to have children? Take some time to do a basic cost/benefit analysis? The world human population is rapidly approaching 8 billion. It's okay to opt out of procreation. In fact it's the single most environmentally friendly choice one can make in their entire life with a far greater impact than any amount of recycling or electric car driving could ever have. And as this article correctly points out, this is not just about financial cost but the cost in time and emotional labor like keeping track of the kids' needs and planning activities. Also, I wish this article would talk about the many women who are not being caught off guard - they are putting off or foregoing childbearing altogether. The costs are a big part of the reason the US birthrate has been dropping in recent years.
23
I understand what you’re trying to say but suggesting a “cost benefit analysis” when it comes to deciding to have kids, as though it’s equivalent to purchasing a car or a house is pretty tone deaf and misses the point. You don’t choose to have kids to enjoy the benefits. Of course there are many but they’re not comparable to those other things. Its a decision that’s heavily influenced by biology and emotions. And of course it’s fine not to have kids but to lead with an argument abt the environment, which is of course valid, doesn’t really convey much empathy in discussing such a sensitive, personal topic. I guess what I’m saying is you’re right but I don’t think that particular argument is going to convince anyone who doesn’t already have their mind made up.
11
@Leeba W
Here are those articles-
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/reader-center/no-kids-no-regrets.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/style/no-kids-happy.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/climate/climate-change-children.html
1
@David Savino having kids is a much more major and life changing choice than having children so it follows that more careful consideration should be involved - not less. There is no biological urge to reproduce - only to have sex. And now that we have effective contraception people can have sex without procreating. A lot of what people ascribe to biology is actually social conditioning. Of course people have children to enjoy the benefits. The social benefits of fitting in, the cute baby moments, having someone to care for them when they're old, proof of virility, having someone to pass on their legacy, the illusion of immortality. Ask someone why they had kids and they'll start with "I wanted". It's about them - of course it is. I realize that for people who want kids none of that will matter because it's just something they want regardless of logic. But many women are not caught off guard, and for those who are, that is no one else's fault except the guy who got them pregnant. It's like buying a high end car and not being able to pay for maintenance, but a thousand times worse because it's a human being.
1
My 2 children were born just after I completed my PhD, and I had moved to the US with my American husband. They were in daycare from about 3 months old at a center that was close to my husband’s office and he would take them to the park during his lunch break. My salary mostly went into daycare fees but I chose to do this as I wanted my son and daughter to grow up with 2 working parents as their model, especially a working mother. They later attended a (public) school that had an after schooI program. Most of their friends’ parents were also both working full time so my kids grew up understanding this to be normal. I was able to progress my career and was fortunate to be in a profession where I had more flexibility in my work and could participate in my kids’ school activities in elementary and high school, and I don’t think this would have been the case if I had stopped working when they were born and then would have had to find a different kind of job. Working in a demanding job with babies and young children was not easy, it could be exhausting and there were times when it seemed like it could not possibly continue, but it did. I learned to trust my instincts and not listen to the huge amount of opinion, even at that time available in magazines and media, on how to ‘correctly’ raise children - now I tell new mothers to do what feels right. My kids spontaneously thanked me for raising them to regard having a professional working mother as normal, and they seem to be happy
38
Professor Krugman was writing about Denmark this week. Here's an example from those lovely people:
Length of parental leave in Denmark
In total, parents in Denmark get 52 weeks of paid parental leave. The general rule is that the mother has the right to four weeks of leave directly before the planned birth and then to a further 14 weeks of leave after birth.
The baby's father is entitled to take two weeks of leave during the first fourteen weeks after the birth of the child. Then 32 weeks follow where the mother and father can freely share leave between them. They can choose to be on parental leave at the same time or in periods one after the other.
https://www.oresunddirekt.se/in-english/in-english/family-parenting-in-d...
The U.S. has a 'winner-takes-all' mindset, which benefits no one but the billionaire class. What happened to John Kennedy's "tide that lifts all boats"?
62
@Arthur Denmark has a non-diverse population of about 6 million people, stricter limits on immigration, and more enforced assimilation than the US.
The US has over 300 million people from every region on the planet.
It's much easier to have generous social committments when the number of people impacted is small and they are all the same. People are much less willing to pay for the "other", which is why we're starting to see some people in Nordic countries question the generosity of their welfare state once African, Central Asian, or Middle Eastern immigrants arrive and start making claims.
1
Many of the expectations of mothers nowadays are just silly. One of my friends, a family-practice physician, thought I should hold my baby constantly and was appalled when I put him in his own nursery to sleep alone. My lactation consultant wanted him to sleep on my chest. Another friend busily made all her own baby food for her twins, including roasting meat just for them and grinding it up (with her husband pleading, “I like roast!”). My next-door neighbor still won’t let her kids walk to the bus stop alone even though the older child is eleven. Someone invented the Baby Bjorn so we could continue carrying them all over the place after the nine months’ gestation was up. I didn’t do any of that. I worked full time when they were small and had a nanny and just refuse to feel guilty about any of it. They know we love them and they live in the same house with the same parents and if that’s not enough stability then too jolly bad.
49
The rest of your points may be debatable.....but what's wrong with cooking for your kids ???
@SueK - There's nothing wrong with cooking for your kids. I think the point the original poster was trying to make is that the holier-than-thou push to make your kids' baby food yourself, to the point where you're making a roast for kids who don't yet have teeth, is a bit extreme. (And the fact that none of said roast was apparently shared with the husband was rather obnoxious, in my opinion.) This hyper-focus on the kids, to the exclusion and detriment of one's spouse, any semblance of an adult life, and general sanity is the problem. Cooking for your children should be just that: cooking for your children. People have been doing it for thousands of years. It's part of daily life and should be treated as such. It's not an Olympic sport.
1
Often overlooked in these articles from the NYTimes is the fact that many women genuinely enjoy taking the time off from work to spend time with their young kids. It's not always some chore or bother. Sure, it possibly means some forfeited economic opportunities but the saying that "money isn't everything" takes on a new truth when you have kids.
Any time you approach motherhood from a purely economic perspective as these articles do so often (probably because economic losses are easier to calculate than emotional well-being), of course it's going to mean less money and fewer opportunities.
But that's only one side of a deep, lifelong decision.
35
Is it inconceivable to the nytimes that some parents just prefer being home with their children? I am college educated, have two masters degrees, and worked before becoming a mother, but now I love being home with my daughter and wouldn’t trade it for anything. No, I’m not a helicopter mom, and I didn’t quit work so I can take my daughter to activities and hover over her every minute. I just enjoy watching her grow, and I don’t want to let someone else have the pleasure of raising her while I sit in an office all day. The article hypothesizes that some women are surprised by “the demands” of motherhood, but maybe lots of women are also surprised by how much they enjoy taking care of their children full time.
61
@Laura C That’s a topic for a differently study
@Laura C
seriously!! it really is that simple (and I'm a working mom).
I think the reasons are very complex. Personally, I found that motherhood more fulfilling than holding down an intensely boring 9-5 job all day, five days a week. I felt that, as the mother, I was the right person to raise my own children. I still believe that mothering was a noble calling because we teach our children how to become civilized human beings. Seriously, would there be as much uncivilized behavior in the world today if we had not been forced by economic necessity to go to work, and had been allowed to stay home and teach our children some manners?
I was also keenly aware that my (now ex)husband thoroughly resented supporting his family and he flatly refused to do it. He made it crystal-clear that he thought that women who stayed home, took care of the house, took care of the kids, and took care of their husbands were "lazy, good-for-nothing, cold-hearted gold-digging b-words." (He was also not about to do any housework.) This, and the fact that my paycheck was needed to support the family, had a lot to do with my not being able to stay home with the kids. Otherwise, you bet your bottom dollar that I would have stayed home.
41
If only mothers and fathers in this country could have equal pay, paid parental leave, quality affordable child care, flexible and shared jobs, companies that valued working families, universal pre-K and better funded schools to provide activities for all kids, mothers and fathers could still be productive in the workforce and have healthy well-rounded kids!!! We here in the USA make it so difficult to have healthy families!!!
26
My brother in law (now 66) has always done his fair share of child care, house cleaning, and grocery shopping. He still shares in the household tasks even though he works and my sister doesn't. My sister hit the husband jack pot when she married him. Maybe his attitude was shaped by being the oldest in a family with a large number of children. I recall when I had my first child, he showed me how to fold a cloth diaper for a boy and also for a girl (it's different).
20
I am amazed to read of women who underestimated the costs and difficulties of combining work and child raising. Really? Even if the pregnancy was unplanned, you have a couple of months to plan things out. Even marriage - going from living alone to sharing space with another human being can be a radical change. Why wouldn't having a child be? This is not rocket science, while we can't plan and anticipate everything that will happen, surely being "caught off guard" is a head shaker.
23
Parenthood can be surprising for many. What if your child becomes ill. Or you end up being divorced. Death happens, unemployment. Life happens. Yes it is a surprise for most. It’s not a cookie cutter event in ones life, for a man or a woman.
2
@Mahalo. I agree with you. Sounds like a lot of make work to me. Besides a woman can go back to work after their early childhood and are off to school. Babyhood and early childhood occur in the blink of an eye. THere will always be another job.
@Redorgreen
There WILL NOT always be "another job".
That is a cruel myth foisted on caregivers.
2
Quitting work is almost always a bad decision.
1. It sends a terrible message to children that women are supposed to be child and home focused and not have a public life.
2. Women who quit because of 2 or 3 years of childcare costs are not factoring in a lifetime of reduced earnings.
3. Ask any woman in her 50’s: many marriages end in divorce, and leave the SAHM’s with diminished circumstances.
Don’t do it.
89
Agree
Yep, and who supports Mom? The kids. Not a win-win.
1
@idnar The kids can't even be counted on to support Mom, even if those grown kids have middle class jobs. There's a reason why the term "granny-dumping" exists. The fastest growing demographic among the homeless and destitute population is older women (age 50+), and it's fair to say that all of them weren't childless.
1
The language of this study and article needs to be corrected to reflect motherhood and childcare as work rather than motherhood versus work. In general this gross misinformation needs readressing both socially (society) and academically.
18
May I just say on behalf of the women who are serious about their careers that the lack of commitment to profession among mothers, especially from women with advanced degrees, is seriously embarrassing for the gender and a major disappointment. Based on this study, mothers have failed to live up to the expectations of the female pioneers who worked so hard to advance our rights and our position in the workforce. I was raised in the 90s when big-shouldered business women were breaking glass ceilings and now I hear nothing but whining from mother colleagues about how they want to be home in the kitchen. Please GO then and stop making the rest of us look bad.
46
I agree. I even think women who plan to opt out of the workforce—assuming their partners make enough money—-should not attend grad school. When I meet women with MBAs or law degrees who have become permanent stay-at-homes it makes me cringe.
5
@Childfree Woman
Well said. I'm in a very competitive technology environment. It's not a secret that the field is challenging, and that is made clear in the very first interview . When the new moms show up back to work - that is, IF they show up - and start making demands ( and I use that word deliberately) for special treatment ( also use that phrase deliberately) based on being new moms, it makes my head explode! And yes, it is embarrassing, not to mention putting a burden on the entire organization. And it's not as simple as hiring temporary workers, as has been suggested on other articles on this topic. These women are working on detailed projects, requiring specific skills, and on tight deadlines. They are almost always in their 30s, and seem genuinely surprised when their long list of accommodations isn't met with immediate acceptance. You knew what the circumstances of the job were when you took it ; nothing has changed; the world does not revolve around you.
3
@NineMuses WOW total deviation from the essence of this piece. " When I meet WOMEN with MBAs or law degrees who have become permanent stay-at-homes it makes me cringe" Children absorb their environment . If a mother or father choose to opt out of a paid position possibly they are doing volunteer work with their education. Thus showing the children education and motherhood or fatherhood alongside childcare are enriching. You get one go around on raising children . Kudos to anyone brave enough to have children. We are sadly the only first world country who stigmatizes childcare. Why?
4
Women are so busy doing it all, we forgot to be politically astute by demanding social and governmental supports that work elsewhere. Family leave, childcare, single payer healthcare per Paul Krugman’s Denmark example. A good start in life for US families never approaches the Washington priorities of defense, wars, guns and now, space force.
40
Also not mentioned in this article are that many grandparents are now MIA when it comes helping with their grandchildren. Instead of doing something meaningful like assisting their children and grandchildren, American grandparents are loafing it up in Florida, taking endless vacations, and endlessly watching Fox News when they could easily step up and help out with childcare like grandparents do other cultures like in India and China.
18
Many grandparents of lesser means than the ones who are "taking endless vacations" are still working themselves for one reason or another. And regardless, why are the grandparents automatically responsible for their grandchild? Unless there is real need that they can alleviate, the grandparents should not feel obligated to become a built-in babysitter because the parents don't want to stay home with their own children.
24
Amen, Truth Teller! My only living parent is estranged from all 3 adult children; thus, not welcomed to be around the grandchildren (many safety concerns prior to the estrangement). But, grandparent retired early and sits on a pile of money (albeit alone), is able-bodied, travels a ton, etc.
If my children ever have children of their own, I will happily help if/when I'm able. I don't see it as "babysitting," I see it as enriching my own life, as well as (hopefully) the lives of my kids and any potential grandchildren. Viewing this set-up as "babysitting" is problematic on a couple of different levels, IMO.
11
@Truth Teller - Grandparents are not automatic babysitters. Some are sick and can't help out and some live far away. Many other grandparents are still working - my own grandmother worked out of necessity while I was growing up and when she finally retired, at 73, I was in high school. Although she was on the list of adults whom my school could call to pick me up if I was sick and they couldn't get a hold of my parents, she would not have been able to drop everything at a regular basis to take care of me during the week while my parents worked, and when I was little and she was in her late 50s/early 60s, she simply would not have been able to afford to do so. My grandfather was dead and she would not have been able to survive financially on Social Security and the small pension she received from his second job (his primary employer, for whom he had worked for decades, provided nothing when he died). Yet she was anything but "MIA" in my life: she lived 20 minutes away, we saw her regularly and spent most holidays with her. Some of my most enriching childhood experiences were spent at her home, watching her cook, listening to her talk about her parents and childhood, having her teach me about art, and just enjoying the company of a warmhearted adult who was one of many who loved me. That woman never "loaf[ed] it up" in her life, and she was way too smart for Fox News.
3
The costs for men as primary custodial parents is also underestimated. It is more difficult to find “friends” to share childcare, have kids’ friends over, make excuses at work for taking out time for childcare responsibilities. It is also very difficult to enter the dating pool.
While motherhood has its costs, so does takng on a full share of family activities for men, as well as women.
8
Our government just announced a program to invest billions of dollars into our military program. But what we need is Federally underwritten, nationally available daycare for all, and heath care for all citizens.
Not providing safe, reliable day care for young children amounts ensures that mothers (and women) will never have a fair playing field in their careers. I do not have children, but have always believed this is a form of control, cruelty and discrimination.
Until our elected officials are at least 50% women, this will not change.
Vote.
136
@Concerned in NYC Hear, hear! And sadly here, here!
Nobody but the parents are responsible for their What is this idea that somebody owes us something? It is so pervasive, and so dumb. @Concerned in NYC
1
Great article. The language we use for caregiving matters and outdated terms like “stay at home mom” v. “working mom” show how little value we place on caregiving. Even though parenting and caregiving for elderly parents is unpaid, it is definitely work and contributes to the wellbeing of our society. It is telling that daycare workers and nursing home aides are paid low wages and work long hours with little respect from society. Ann Marie Slaughter has done excellent research on this topic in her book “Unfinished Business.” She advocates valuing caregiving, even if unpaid, by using better and more inclusive terms to describe it like “lead parent” (which includes husbands too who may be the primary caregivers in a family if their partner or spouse is the primary wage earner).
26
If I’m not mistaken, the country with the most comprehensive system of family planning is Iran.
The United States, conversely, has the highest rate of maternal and neonatal mortality of any Western nation. The ‘average’ monetary cost of a child from pregnancy to the age eighteen for middle class families (when I took Sociology, at least) was around a million dollars, give or take a car and/or college education.
Albert Einstein notoriously said that, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
The blind are leading the blind.
8
Honestly this topic and discussion is so myopic and old.
Women have always worked!
In whatever era and or life style or nation they worked equally for the survival of their offspring and communities. They were gatherers, they were healers, midwives, housemaids, wet nurses, governesses, teachers, caregivers, they were farmers and worked the fields, tended the animals, harvested, sewed, weaved and knitting clothing, ran small family shops, cooked, nursed & doctored sick family members and elders all while raising children, etc etc etc.
Stop thinking that women only entered “the work force” in the 1960s. This work force is a relatively new concept. Humanity and civilization has been around longer than the industrial revolution or the world of 9-5 office work.
Women have always worked and will always work. It’s the work the type of work that has changed and will continue to change.
We women can and will adapt to it, as we always do.
64
If you did this study in Denmark/Norway/Sweden, I expect the results would be far different. They'd be different in France, as well.
Those family-friendlier nations invest in the care of children by providing federal stipends and grants, and a huge hunk of childcare for babies and toddlers, before kindergarten.
Those nations make sense.
24
They like breastfeeding over there, too.@Pdianek
We had our son when I was 37. I had a masters degree and secure job as a public school teacher. My contract allowed me to take maternity leave and return the following school year. I was fortunate and knew it.
However, the points in this article all ring true in terms of the pressures and challenges I felt as a working mother. My husband also worked full time and certainly contributed to child care and house work. However, on occasion I felt overwhelmed. Breastfeeding was a magical experience - no regrets - but it's a commitment. The early mornings of getting our son to daycare/preschool/elementary school in those early years once I went back to work were daunting. When he got sick, I spent up to two hours preparing a sub plan so that I could stay home.
The bottom line is that it's hard work being a good parent and continuing a career outside the home. I was not fully prepared for the challenges but figured it out as I stumbled (?) along. I had the privilege of working with a number of women who were juggling the same pressures as professionals and parents. It certainly helped that I was with others who were in the same boat.
To women who are struggling with the pressures of parenting and a career, I empathize. Some of you will push through and find your balance; others might want to become stay-at-home parents. People have to follow their own paths.
It's not easy. The stresses on working mothers detailed in this article are very real.
32
Few of us are able to “have it all.” My wife and I, lawyers in our early sixties, chose not to have children. Though we both came from large families, we didn’t want parenting responsibilities curtailing our personal flexibility—including to each work as much as we wanted. When you are available to work 14 hours a day, through the weekend, and can take out-of-town assignments, you get more experience, more quickly. Fair or not, when you kill at the office the older workaholics invest their time mentoring you. And if they pull up stakes and take the best clients they only take the hardest working with them.
I had associates who went in-house so they wouldn’t have to work the long hours and be responsible for developing new business and keeping existing business. I respected that choice. They looked at the paths, and chose.
When I was a kid, in the late 50s and 60s, childcare was provided by older neighborhood ladies; women who had been full-time mothers and homemakers whose kids had grown up. They did it because they were good at it, wanted to stay busy, and make a little money. These women were like our second mothers. This type of childcare is hard to find now.
In the old days, while parents wanted their kids to do well, they didn’t fret about us not getting into Yale. Public college was just fine. And our parents weren’t on top of us all the time. We roamed outside in small bands, but were quietly watched all the time. I don’t think kids today have that freedom.
50
I wish you'd had children. You and society would have been blessed.
Yes, true, correct. But it is important to remember that opting out is not always the best choice for women, short or long term. The pressure to parent is part of the patriarchal scheme to keep women from competing for good jobs.
16
Part of the problem is that more and more parents are becoming more overprotective. American society today sees children unable to make decisions on their own or to be able to navigate their own neighborhoods. Kids just don't go out and play by themselves anymore and parents don't trust them to do so lest they get accused of neglect and get arrested due to calls from other other protective parents. The last of the neighborhood kids I've seen playing by themselves in my neighborhood was around 2009, and I assume these are the late 90s babies. Kids are smart and if taught can actually do a lot of things, even alone, and no, it's not neglect. It's just that parents these days don't teach their children or ever give them the opportunity to learn by themselves how to be independent for even just a few hours. Don't @ me on this because it's true, you've probably been through it.
The cost of birth and childcare in America is also just way too expensive, which is why I will never raise my kids here if I have any.
15
@k.
We had three kids in in the Bronx, NYC; both worked full time but we watched our kids like hawks; many poor people don't have a choice if they want good outcomes.
All is well that ends well.
My children will never have children because they saw both sides while I worked, as well as while I stayed at home with them. When I returned to work after a divorce, I had negative income---the 28 mile commute in an old gas-guzzler, child care, and extra charges for picking up the kids late (after 6:00 PM) cost more than my monthly salary for a job I had dreamed of for years and loved while I was able to do it. Seeing my savings diminish to offset the cost of working scared the daylights out of me. Child support paid the mortgage, but little else.
I was better off quitting a low-paid executive position (administrator of a private school), and my children were better off having a Mom at home at the end of their school day. I opened my own business: Playground Child Development Center, and tutored and taught piano every afternoon-- at home. No more 5:00 AM mornings with kids in daycare by 6:30 AM. No more $20 fines for every 15 minutes I was late to daycare in the evenings. Freedom! I was at home all day!
29
As a new mom to a wonderfully fun and tiring baby boy, I feel lucky to be able to stay home with him and make him (and house care) my full time job while my husband, his father, toils hard for all of us. I’ll go back to work when babydom ends, and with gusto. In the meantime, I’m enjoying these fleeting moments and continuing to stay current on my career path (medical interpretation). To pay for childcare so I could continue working was nonsensical as Dad earns significantly more than me. I love being a stay at home mom! Am I crazy or just super in love with my baby?
To moms who want to work, I support your decision! I get it. Women/mothers should be supported in all capacities. Likewise I have friends where the dad stays at home with the kids and mom works as a full time professor. Everything is possible. Let’s support each other.
41
@Marybeth don’t underestimate how hard things will be when babydom is over. Who will make sure your kid(s) get to dance/scouts/sports, etc? Who will oversee homework, deal with peer pressure, mean girls, broken hearts, college applications? The article alluded to some of these issues. In some ways, parenting is harder when they’re babies, but it’s not easy when they’re older. Big kids=big problems sometimes. My kids are adults now, but when they were growing up I worked full time, part time, and was a stay at home mom at different times. Looking back , I’m glad some of the stay at home time included high school
35
@Marybeth Yes let's all support each other. But beware. My wife had a PhD, an Ivy League postdoc, and great teaching experience. But then she spent 10 years at home to care for our kids. When she tried to return to her career as a wise 40-something, no one would give her a look. There is a very strong bias among managers and hiring committees against older women returning to work after child rearing. Not everyone is supportive.
196
@Mike There is a strong bias among managers and hiring committees for people who have worked and earned opportunities throughout their lives.
1
There is nothing wrong with choosing to stay home with your child, but I’m appalled by the contempt some are showing for childcare workers in their attempts to justify their decisions to do so. If you want and can afford to stay home and raise your child, then do so. No need to cast aspersions on those who, in my experience, are extremely dedicated and caring individuals.
48
Has anyone considered the cost of childcare and the availability of good childcare? For middle class women,
those who are just clinging to the middle class, spending
$12 -15 thousand dollars per year for childcare is not an option. And how about two children?
21
I am 61 and have always worked. Raised two children - day care -- the whole shebang. I have wondered about why women 25 +years younger are so willing to exit the work force and rely on their husband. For me, it was probably guilt- women's opportunities were so new when I was young - title 9 was passed in June when I was a rising senior in high school. Some of the best colleges only went co-ed a few years before. I have a great career, but there is an element of feeling it was my obligation to those who fought for so much to stay with it. These younger women - they never knew a door closed in their face. I call it a lack of vigilance. I do so hope they won't be in their 50's with no work history , stuck when their marriages crumble.
56
Speaking for myself, a woman with 2 masters degrees, I had to rely on my husband when the children were small. The cost of childcare is extremely high, so high that I couldn’t afford full time care for 2 children, we just didn’t make enough. And I don’t think that I’m alone. It has nothing to do with me taking the struggles of my predecessors for granted. That’s a very privileged assumption. You say that we’ve never known a door closed in our faces, but I can assure you we have. Many of us want to work full time and raise a family, but that’s prohibitively expensive. That’s a door closed in our face.
59
To state, "they feel more pressured to breastfeed" is a statement that perpetuates the misunderstanding of the normal experience of nourishing and nurturing a baby. Humans are designed to breastfeed and formula manufacturers have financially benefited by misrepresenting that formula is safe for newborns. Mothers should have the time and support to breastfeed their children and the laws and policies that regulate family leave and breastfeeding support in the workplace should be examined when looking at why women quit working. If all mothers got the time and support to breastfeed their newborns there would be millions of dollars saved in unnecessary artificial feeds, preventable medical costs, and the environmental impact should not be overlooked. Research has shown that women that return to work who receive time and space to pump or breastfeed stay at their jobs, are better employees in that they call in sick to work less because their babies are healthier and they are happier with their jobs because they are supported in doing what is best for their babies.
40
Should is so easy to say and so hard to overcome.
8
I’m sorry, I call nonsense on this comment. Show me the studies that show that breastfed babies mean mothers call in sick less often. Breastfeeding is wonderful for as long as you can do it, but the only pressure to pump once back at work is wrong. It’s exhausting, it’s isolating and the benefits are minimal. Being a working mother is exhausting enough, without setting aside an hour a day at work to pump.
15
@Mass. Ave witness
The studies that show mothers call in sick less often come from the CDC. They have put together a "business case for breastfeeding" to educate employers about the benefits of providing support for mothers coming back to work. If mothers had adequate support and were encouraged by their coworkers to pump, they would not feel "pressured" to pump.
I grew up in the 50's and my mother worked. When I was a baby, I was watched by the next door neighbor whom I called Nana. Later my great aunt who was near 80 came to live with us and watch us during the day. In our working class neighborhood, we had modest homes which were owned by families where only the father worked. It was exceptional for a mother to also work; most women who worked were "spinsters". Because my mother worked, I was able to have music lessons and attend college, and because of that my life was greatly enriched. My mother was never able to attend parent-teacher conferences which were held only during the day and never seemed to include fathers. She worked on house chores the entire weekend and cooked for company on many Saturday nights and for the entire family on Sundays. She got up early every morning to prepare my father's coffee and his lunchpail (he was a carpenter). This type of working class life is impossible in the US in the 21st century. When I was 10, I took over all after-school responsibilities for my two younger brothers. It was very enriching and rewarding; neighbors kept a watch out on us and we did not have to set up play dates. My brothers could walk to ball fields for Little League practice and games. I walked to elementary school, church and Girl Scouts. So many moms and kids are missing out on a lot of fun and interesting life experiences due to living in our fractured world with its askew priorities.
45
One of my daughters has the most devotes, most duty sharing husband you could find. He is great with his kids.
And yet: When my daughter is on night duty, and my grand children wake up, and he does his best to console him hear heart rendering cries "We want mommy"
It breaks my heart.
12
I'm a 58-year old female. I knew from an early age, in my teen years, that I never wanted children, and it's been the single best decision of my entire life. No matter how family-friendly the policies; no matter how involved the father is; there is no way that the mother is not going to contribute a disproportionate amount of time to parenting. This was so patently obvious to me, even as a child and seemed( and still seems) suffocating. Not sure why there is such surprise and confusion about this.
There was a segment on the TX show 20/20, at least 30 years ago. Parents responded anonymously to a survey asking if they would have children again, knowing what they now knew. 40% said no.
56
Research has found that very young children benefit from a couple hours (only) of childcare a day and preschool education. No research finds that babies benefit from being handed from stranger to stranger. Quite the opposite.
Research has also found that children cared for by serial carers, either nannies, or disinterested child care workers, from an early age, are exposed to less conversation, less nurturing.
Many of my friends with post-grad degrees decided, as I did, that we did not want our children to be raised by disinterested parties or subject to the trauma of being passed from carer to carer. We also wanted to be in charge of our kids educations.
This was because being ambitious we extended our ambition to our children. We did not want our kids traumatised by serial carers like the poor and trust fund kids alike. And being the best possible mother, and the happiest spouse, required being there for our children at least until they entered kindergarten.
Its high standards for childrens lives, not just our careers, that created this statistic. Glad to see it reported. And glad that other people realise there is more to life than your resume.
54
@scientella
The questions that arise for me: when one invests this time and has such high standard for these children, is one anticipating and/or hoping these children will go on to have careers outside the home? Or is one hoping to raise a child who similarly stays home and devotes his/her time to childrearing? And does one hope equally for their male and female children to have careers or stay at home? And must it be the woman who stays home to ensure this investment occurs?
And I would add that it is quite possible being "the best possible mother for our children" means working so one has the money for that child to have a safe home, a good education, excellent health care, a college fund, and "enriching activities." Where does that money come from if the mother doesn't work?
57
@Kat. Maybe it’s possible to have both. I stayed home 8 years to give my kids the very best. I returned part-time and now have a flourishing career to date. And I am proud to say my kids attended great colleges. Today we have a doctor and two lawyers in the family!
3
@scientella well isn’t that lovely that you were able to “decide” to stay home so that your children weren’t “traumatized” by caregivers. My husband and I are both educated, but because of the cost of living in our area, only one of us working was not an option. Many women already feel horrible having to bring their kids elsewhere so they can work, how about you don’t make them feel worse.
17
Phrasing it as greater pressure to breastfeed comes across as negative. What about greater commitment to breastfeeding? Greater acknowledgment of the importance of breastfeeding? It’s awfully hard (and awful!) to pressure a woman to dedicate her body round the clock to breastfeeding if she is not interested in it and not committed to it.
Too bad we’ve had to rely on women’s dedication and willpower to make it work and not on supportive family leave policies that would allow more women to meet their breastfeeding goals and maintain their professional lives.
27
This article hits the nail on the head. After a decade of part time work and part time pay, I'm going back to work full time. Arranged child care in the morning to cover until the 8:50 start time. And a pick up and drive home after school at 4. Yesterday my kids school hit me with the 'early release.'. This happens twice a month for the school year. The transportation I've arranged can't be there, 2 hours earlier. Why are our schools still acting like everyone has a stay at home mom?
201
@M But, schools are not babysitters. Teachers need on-going professional development and team plan time so educators can provide the best education. Our school had to discontinue latch-key care due to lack of funding. If we want schools to provide wrap-around services (and I think we should) tax-payers need to be willing to dig deeper!
41
The objectives of educational institutions are to educate. Teachers already spend more time during the weekday with other people’s childrens. Schools are complex organizations that must promote the greater good for the greatest numbers. Children have grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, church members, and so forth.
Plan ahead, think ahead your child’s future depends on you.
10
M - I have lived through that frustration! For the earlier school pickup - look for another parent who you can share school pickup on those days. Like maybe you do one day and they do the other and you each either drop the other’s kids at a friend’s house for the extra 2 hours or trade collecting and child care. At least then you only have to leave work early one day a month. Or maybe another parent needs help getting to school in morning, or home at regular dismissal one day a week - and it’s easy for them to collect your kids on the early dismissal days. UGH. I know. But there is probably a parent you know and trust in a similar bind and you can help each other.
2
A friend had a baby while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in an African country. She was able to continue her full-time teaching job because even on their minuscule Peace Corps salaries she and her husband could afford an 8-hour-a-day caregiver/housekeeper.
However, when her daughter was about a year old my friend came home one day and was reduced to tears when she realized her child preferred to be held by the caregiver and responded more to words spoken in the local language than to English.
This was a fairly common experience among expats, and I believe it says a lot about the need for close and extensive parental contact early in a child's life.
This is not rocket science: parental leave and support systems help not only the parents but the child.
23
Oh for heavens sake. Having an attachment to a caregiver does not cancel out the parent-child bond. People need to stop over reacting.
39
I had a strong attachment to the women who cared for me while my mother worked. I spent more time with her than my mother. This didn’t negatively affect my relationship with my mother. Be thankful for a good childcare worker!
4
I remember that in the 1970s, feminists tended to look down on "homemakers" who didn't enter the job market. I wonder whether they were underestimating the effort needed for tending children. And educated women who read their work picked up the idea that raising children was easy.
20
@Charlesbalpha - For God's sake! Only a fool would underestimate how much effort goes into raising children. Housewives didn't have some secret knowledge that educated women failed to pick up on after being led askance by feminists' work, for goodness' sake.
My grandmother worked full-time in the 1950s, an era when most women not only didn't work, but were expected to fill their days cleaning their houses, cooking, and going to bridge clubs. My grandmother worked because she had to, and at the end of her long days she came home to her husband, four children, her frail elderly father, and her unhinged in-laws, the latter three of whom all lived with the family. After working all day long, she had an entire house full of people to care for, four of whom were her kids. No one needed to tell that woman that caring for a home and children was no walk in the park, and had it been suggested to her that, as a working mother, she had somehow underestimated the effort involved in raising kids or caring for her family, she would have replied that the only one underestimating anyone was you, in your profound disregard of what she and others like her could and did do in a day's work.
It's no wonder that among childless adults, more childless men now wish to have children then childless women. Women are finally starting to realize the intense cost of having children, and that they are not obligated to have children if they truly do not want them. Many men still see having and caring for children as primarily the mother's work, and often do not fully understand all of the daily tasks and personal sacrifices associated with it, so it is not a difficult choice for them to commit to. Many men do make a sincere effort to help, but still may not put in a full 50%.
I suspect that this trend will continue until household and child related tasks are shared more evenly, at which point men will want to have children at the slightly lower rate that women now want to.
24
Humans have evolved technologically much faster than we have regarding all the other aspects of our lives. For most of our history children are raised by the family, not a single at-home mother and work is always someplace other than where the home is. Add to that mix that businesses have evolved as sociopathic entities that have nothing but profit at any cost as the driving factor.
As has been said multiple times: "It takes a village" or perhaps it takes a large extended family. Either way the focus on maintaining the nuclear family model alongside the sociopathic corporation isn't going to work.
There is no simple solution, despite our desire/demand to come up with one that doesn't change the overall nature of the society.
FWIW: This is easy for me to observe because my wife and I decided to be child-free before we married. Yet we still observe our child bearing friends and see their dilemma.
22
It’s interesting to see the value judgements revealed in this article. It’s clear when the author chooses to enclose the term homemaker in quotation marks, as if homemaking is doesn’t actually exist much less have great value, that she’s weighing in from a particular worldview. What is a working woman? Why don’t women who work outside the corporate world or inside the home deserve the title of “working women”? Feminism hasn’t achieved anything constructive if we still assume that college educated women are sold short if they choose mothering as a vocation. It’s reflective of the materialistic nature of our culture that we often believe that the size of one’s income is the best measure of human success. None of us knows how life’s paths might diverge from the plans we dream up in our teens and twenties, but good higher education prepares us for all our endeavors, and applying that education to the nurturance and support of those we love seems a worthy calling. Rather than measure the success of feminism by how many college educated women can pay for others to raise their children, perhaps we could measure it by how possible it is for both men and women to raise their own children, and how respected that is as a life choice.
155
@Kim Too often this conversation is set up as either/or: You stay home and are a "good mother" or you work because you have a "materialistic nature" or have some silly superficial attachment to the "size of your income." Exactly how is it materialistic to work to earn the money to feed, shelter, educate, and enrich your child? How is it materialistic to work so that your child has health insurance and lives in a place with clean air, good water, and little violence? Short of a trust fund, who out there can "raise their own children" without an income? Someone is paying for your child to eat, sleep, go to school, get healthcare, get around, and go to activities--is that person materialistic or less of a parent or less "nurturing and supportive"than the one staying home with the child?
6
I respectfully disagree. If you made a voluntary choice to be a SAHM, good for you. I think this study is trying to address the causes that befall those who hadn’t really planned to leave or cut back in their careers. Systemic and cultural barriers abound and need more recognition so that working moms don’t need to make wrenching either/ or choices.
@Kim -- fabulous and well-said.
Back in the day the only women who worked were poor---they HAD to work, married or not. Nowadays, women attend college, are career oriented and WANT to work as the intellectual and financial benefits make it rewarding. However, the age old dilemma of who will care for the children remains.
I personally resented being home having left a career but I didn't make enough to justify it financially. Yet, I also could never justify leaving my kids to day care where they would be cared for by strangers (employees) who came and went. Children need consistency. Even in a large family where the youngest never receives the full attention from mom like that of the eldest, surrogate siblings do not come and go. They are family.
Betty Friedan sparked a revolution that was necessary for women, but it also shortchanged them as she later realized in her sequel to "The Feminine Mystique." Women can do anything a man can but will never be men. I, for one, have a wonderful career and am also grateful for being able to having attended every soccer game. At 64, I have no plans to retire, unlike my counterparts, who did it both and are now burned out. It remains to be seen as my daughters become mothers.....
24
How is parenting more "demanding" when you pay someone else to do it? It is more EXPENSIVE. Ask any SAHM how demanding parenting has always been. It may be emotionally wrenching to drop your child off at daycare but it is not "harder" in absolute terms.
The needs of three year olds are the needs of three year olds. If anything is harder, it's harder to parent a three year old who has been waiting all day for your individual attention when everyone is tired at 6 o'clock.
Who has it a lot harder? The Kids. We have turned babies into tiny commuters. This is NOTHING like babyhood used to be.
28
I think you missed a major point of the article. The expectations of what we are supposed to do to be considered a good parent has escalated dramatically for BOTH SAH parents AND working parents! My parents were not expected to have their eyeballs on me 24/7 and micromanage my every move like a pawn in a chess game. I worked full time and I can tell you I spent more hands on time with my kids as they were growing up in the years 2000 through today than my SAHM mom did my entire life. She had no clue what we were up to most of time; I managed my own school work, signed myself up for after school park district activities, got myself to/from school, and she would show up for an occasional sporting event to spectate! I learned to back off with my second child but still invested far more into parenting than my parents did for me and my siblings. BTW - my working did not turn my children into tiny commuters and they are both healthy, well adjusted young adults today. There are many paths to raising productive happy kids!
64
I agree with most comments: work hours, cost of childcare, unequal domestic work divisions--all ridiculous.
I would add that the way we parent has also become more onerous. No one just tells their kids "go outside and play"--the mantra of moms in my neighborhood in the early 70s. No, in fact we are reading of mothers reported to police for neglecting their children by letting them play in the park alone, walk to school alone, etc.
My sense is that it is now a parents duty to engage with their child from school's out to bedtime--homework, sports games, etc. And this is all reinforced by the schools, other parents, and the larger culture.
Finally, as professional I had to move far away from extended family to succeed. My so-called "support network" is other two-working professionals like me. We are all swimming too hard to keep our own heads above water to respond to others drowning.
How could it not have become harder, given all of that? It is not simply work vs. home hours.
49
I am an highly educated executive in the financial service industry and a mother of two. I was able to have a successful career and be a mother for three main reasons.
First, my husband and I shared domestic duties such as cooking, laundry, etc.
Second, having an employer that can provide some flexibility. Working from home from time to time. Leaving a bit earlier and then do some work from home in the evening. I do acknowledge, however, that this is very job dependent.
Third, public policy in support of mothers (and families). In Quebec, I had access to $5 a day daycare from qualified and licensed facilities. In addition, we have one year maternity leave, which helps with breastfeeding and bounding with the little ones before getting back to work. Fathers may also take up to five weeks of parental leave.
202
@Anne Bouci In the USA government spending on programs to help families is frowned upon. Our government is often looking for ways to cut funding. Meals on Wheels cutbacks are being considered because it doesn’t work—whatever that means. So be nice to your children because they’ll be taking care of you later in your life.
@Anne Bouci
Ah, the joys of living in Quebec...assuming you speak French and were born there or made it past the immigration requirements.
The US still acts like it was still the 1950 and 1960's.
1
@Anne Bouci $5/day!?? I pay $2200/month for my two kids on a teacher salaries and we're heading towards a tipping point.
1
What about looking @ the pay discrepancy between men and women in the early part of their careers? I’m a mom of 2 in a dual income family and happy to say my husband and I are pretty much 50/50 when it comes to child/household management. But if we ever felt we had to go to 1 income, we’d logically choose the spouse with the better income/medical insurance/retirement plan (to be the one who keeps working). I haven’t seen anyone suggest yet that educated, well paid couples might make different decisions if the gender pay gap was fixed.
23
@BC
Utopia. Not all professions or jobs pay the same. Period. Social workers are never going to get paid the same as doctors. And companies will always reward and promote those who commit more in hours and time.
11
@BC Amen. Lots missing in this article about the reality of employment: full-time jobs are most likely to pay better and have benefits including paid leave and medical care but they are less flexible than hourly work. Mid-career women are often passed over for promotions, whether we have children or not; it's that much harder after returning from extended leaves.
The bottom line is much less about women's expectations than financial realities that don't support families, and men assuming women will bear the lion's share of responsibility for child care.
7
When considering to have children, I saw very well that the mothers I knew were stressed, tired, and overstretched. Social scientists have shown over and over that parents in the U.S. are significantly less happy than nonparents. And of course they are. The enormous financial strain, the never-ending expectation that they abandon their adult time and interests so that they can be constantly available to their children, the mismatch between work hours and daycare hours. More and more couples are asking "Is it worth it?" and birthrates are falling.
When I do see women leave the workforce to take care of their children full-time, I wonder if they will come to regret the decision to depend so fully on a partner who—who knows—may or may not be in the picture in 10 or 20 years. It seems to me that these women are giving up quite a lot of financial independence (and, therefore, agency) while their husbands are not.
117
I am not sure why this is news, or should be considered surprising.
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when my wife and I and most of our friends were in or recently out of graduate school, we were all forced to deal with the kinds of issues raised in this article.
Then, as now, the domestic burdens tended to fall on the wives, but even then I and most of the men I knew shared childcare, housekeeping and other domestic tasks, and encouraged our spouses to pursue their own educational and career paths. (No, we didn't belong to a commune or cult; we didn't use this terminology then, but were what today would be called "woke".)
Combining parenthood and work is challenging for both mothers and fathers; I am not sure why the ethos today continues to place a disproportionate amount of the burden and expectation on mothers.
I still do my own washing and ironing, do half the cooking and shopping, etc., but I gather I am still something of an anomaly. I am not sure what is missing in American culture in 2018 that was present, at least briefly, in the late 60s/early 70s. The women's liberation movement was getting a lot of ink and air time then, but I don't think that explains the prevalence of similar issues now, almost 50 years later.
22
What's missing in the discussion is the lifelong financial deficit of being a stay-at-home mom (or parent). Years at home means a parent is not advancing in his or her career, and if and when the parent returns to the workforce, they do so at a lesser rate of pay. The stay at home has not accrued retirement funds and are stuck with what their partner can provide. The lifelong financial gap can be large.
The stay-at-home is also betting heavily on an idealized future:
Working parent loves you and lives as long as you do with no premature death or skipping off with a new love.
The description is also class-heavy with little mention of single parents or poor parents who must work to make ends meet.
As a society, we provide very little support to families.
302
Totally agree with you. Please give up the “ Mommy Wars”- I loved those in the 80’s and 90’s with my kids- working vs. non- working Moms.
The economy is good today but when the next recession comes it is good to have a 2 income family. The social safety net is getting thinner and smaller. Life is expensive and the US has no family friendly policies. No wonder the native birth rate is sinking like a stone.
6
@snowy owl Plus the hiatus in working and the lower pay results in less Social Security for the senior woman.
2
When my mother stayed home in the 1960s to raise four children (she went back to work in 1971 when I was eleven) the amount of time she spent on us instead of herself was pretty much the inverse of what is expected of working women today. And my father -- who was so unenlightened that he could not do a load of laundry or run the dishwasher, spent more time with us then most fathers do today and also cooked. I really don't thin that anyone should claim paternity who does not change at least one third as many diapers as his partner . . .
15
Excellent article. Thank you. I am an attorney and I negotiated a flexible work arrangement, (80% schedule with flexible hours and the ability to work from home, plus 3 months maternity leave) after the birth of my first child and I STILL experienced the feelings you describe in your article and lament that the US doesn’t have better maternity leave policies. I also have experienced embarrassment about sharing my frustration as so many moms have a tougher situation - and awkwardness vis-à-vis my work colleagues after going part time.
23
I had to go part time after having a child with disabilities. There was no way I could take care of her properly with all the doctors appointments and therapies she needed if I had a full time job. The state of Florida is one of the worst places to have a kid with disabilities, hunting down the right services and support for them in and of itself, is a full time job here. Good childcare for 9 hours a day for a kid with disabilities was nonexistent or cost prohibitive. I think we are light years behind most other western industrialized countries in regards to supporting mothers and families, countries like Sweden and Denmark seem like a utopian dream to someone like me, who would have gladly pursued the career I was educated for had I had any external support system.
53
Seems to me it is no accident that greater social inequality fewer children per family = greater wealthy family investment in each child. It is a form of economic competition. That’s depressing.
Even more depressing is that educated women have fallen for this hogwash of helicopter parenting, stranger-danger, and expensive over-structuring of our children’s after school hours and vacation time. It is not helping the children become independent-minded or creative thinkers. And it is certainly overburdening mothers and hampering our earning power and life satisfaction. As women become more free, there just seem to be more ways our society finds to sell us chains. Let’s unfetter ourselves of our delusions. And let’s mandate much better options for childcare for the very young and more independence for older children.
101
@voltairesmistress
It's not that women "have fallen for this hogwash of helicopter parenting, etc...." None of us want it! But the fact of modern America is that people will call the police if your kid walks alone to school, you (and your kid) will be ostracised by teachers if you don't sign up for all 10,000 things the school wants you to do, etc., etc. Society isn't "selling us chains" (as if it's our problem...we shouldn't "buy" the chains); actually, the chains are imposed. And it's not just the issue of letting kids be more "independent" (tho this is one issue); we need to demand that schools, teams, etc. not create so many requirements on parents.
"Let's unfetter ourselves of our delusions"? Uh, I think men and schools, teams, pediatricians, etc. all play a role here. I don't think it's just that women are fettering and deluding themselves.
2
My husband & I lived and worked in Stockholm, Sweden when we raised our son. Now we are back in the US. In Sweden taxes are higher but quality of life was much better....Universal health care, 1 year of parental leave when you have a baby, free daycare for all kids over 1 years old, free college tuition, 4 weeks vacation, legal right to work 75% until your child starts school.... with all these incentives to work, there’s a high % of women working. Both parents share with daycare dropping off & picking up duties, so workplaces are very family friendly.
544
Which also makes society more family friendly. I find many in America who choose not to have children have what feels like contempt, or a superiority complex to those that do. It’s a shame. We are all in this together.
3
Surprise! Parenthood takes time and energy, and combining work outside the home with this is hard! Who knew!
I cannot imagine turning over the rearing of my children to someone who has little education and in many instances, speaks little English. I felt I had a lot more to give my children than any childcare worker and I did. My daughter believed the same and stayed home until her youngest was 4 and then only worked until he came home from an extended day nursery school. It worked very well for her and for her children.
All these articles act as if caring for children is mind-numbing and that the given-up career was incredibly exciting and fulfilling. Was it really or was it just an excuse to get dressed up and go to work and not have to care for children, cook, do laundry or clean? I know many women who consider the latter an appalling "burden" and will do anything to avoid it. Very few jobs are all that wonderful - most have their mind-numbing moments, as well.
A child needs a home in which to grow. A child needs regular meals, a clean house, clean clothes and a parent who loves them deeply. Sure, it's possible to hire people to do all those household chores if one is making a very large 6-figure salary, but very few people - men or women - do that. Most must try to do all that AND a job. That's not easy to do.
As to the rather negative comments about women trying to breastfeed their baby; how is this not a good thing for the baby?
39
I agree that outsourcing is not really the solution. However, why does only the mother have to stay at home? I think this is the main point here: That men still don't participate equally in the upbringing of children and the daily household chores.
43
I have a year-old baby. I cook, clean, do laundry and make fresh, organic meals for her. And I send her to daycare so I can work. Yes, I love her deeply. But I also find that staying home all day with her bores the bejeezus out of both of us. She gets to meet other babies, play with new toys, and learn more than at home. And I get to pursue the career I love and have worked so hard for. Why is that such a bad thing ?
99
@India Breastfeeding is far from negative, but let's not put on rose colored glasses about it either. It takes A LOT of time and effort and means that Mom is the baby's sole source of nutrition. It keeps dad from participating as much in early childcare. I'm 33 weeks pregnant now and plan to breastfeed. I look forward to it, as it will allow me to bond with my child, but when I talk to other mothers, the word on the street is that it is harder than your hospital and all those books make it seem. Let's not glamorize breastfeeding- it is form of intense labor, done for the benefit of the child. It is worth it to many, but easy and natura are not the same thing.....
16
When I read that America's lack of programs to support parents 'likely' plays a role in this, my first reaction was to thinking 'Likely? Obviously!' but these same trends are happening here in Canada, where there is far more support.
I have long suspected the newer pressures put on women today constituted a systemic, cultural push back against women in the workplace.
I was a single parent for a decade and a half, beginning in the 90s. I was not expected to be my children's friend. We're very close to this day and still enjoy spending time together, but I was always a parent, not a friend. I was not responsible for their social life and was only expected to intervene if there was a problem. That was the norm everywhere until now. I mean cross culturally, throughout history. Now you're a bad parent, especially a bad mother, if you're not 100% invested 100% of the time. And when parents do step back, police and child welfare are called. But it is time to step back. Parenting doesn't have to be as hard as we're making it.
79
Children cost time, money, and energy. It is impossible to "have it all" all the time especially when "have it all" keeps growing -- breastfeeding, helicoptering, keeping a girlish figure after five children, having fun dating, keeping up with constantly changing fashion for mom and baby, and so on and so forth. Here is an idea, more children are born to those without a college degree, and perhaps ask how they cope with less money and flexibility.
19
We have witnessed likely more than a 50 trillion dollar transfer of wealth from child care to the economy in the US over the last five decades. We have invested almost none of that into child care in the absence of all the mothers who have entered the workforce. Only 21% of kids in the US have a stay-at-home parent now (mostly women). There are very few affordable child care options. We can do better.
43
Regarding men's roles in domestic activities: apparently, my wife's friends are amazed that I can and do cook, clean, shop for groceries, etc. If that truly reflects the competency of young bachelors my age...
14
@John R. - First off, I say a hearty "good for you". I'm sure your wife is happy that you are cooking, cleaning, and helping out in what is not just her home but yours, too. Thank you for being a grownup.
Regarding those other guys who don't do what you do: they're behaving this way not because they can't do chores or because they're incompetent, they're behaving this way because they're lazy, and the women in their lives are letting them get away with it. It's the 21st century, and we're no longer in an era when household chores and cooking are simply "women's work". I think a certain sort of guy has had mom doing for him all his life - picking up after him, doing mountains of laundry, etc. - and when a guy like that gets married, he may expect his wife to be a sort of extension of that. But that's not what adult and married life is all about, and you shouldn't have to force someone who ostensibly loves you to help contribute to the upkeep of your shared home. We need more guys like you, John R. - that is to say, we need some adults in the room.
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When my kids were small their dad was sick and could barely work. I was a self-employed musician. So...we didn't have much extra money. I did a lot of "free"things: library visits, parks, had a garden. I well remember picking up chestnuts from the lawn of the park to take home to cook and a friend brought us damaged veggies from a local store so that we had food. We lived on garage sales and had next-to-nothing extra. We didn't have a computer until my daughter was in high school, and then it was a necessity for homework. She graduated from Harvard and, even without any special extracurricular activities, both of my kids have done well academically. We had our dreams, with my college degree as an anchor into the middle class, and I was able to teach music lessons with my kids on my lap when necessary. Looking back, it is amazing that we did it. No childcare, no extras, no family in town to help. You learn to cook zucchini 100 ways, cut your kids' hair yourself,etc. Parenting takes courage and is a condition that lasts for years! I'm now in my 60's and will always be frugal. ...but my children are my jewels!
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Beautiful!
@Nova
Real chestnut trees (Castanea) are rare in this country due to blight. If the "chestnuts" you picked up in a park were horse chestnuts (Hippocastanea), you were at great risk of food poisoning and you were lucky!
@Julie Carter
Hi, yes I found this out. They were horribly bitter and I was quite disappointed. I took the uncooked chestnuts and made a game out of them for my kids. You are quite perceptive and I learned my lesson...but I was so hungry!
1
Do most moms want to be FT working moms and should we care if they don't? A lot of these articles seem to not take into account that some woman have a choice and sometimes they prefer not to work, or at least prefer not to work for periods of time.
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@kazolar I think they also don't take into account women who do very much want to work and yet don't or can't because it would mean a severe financial penalty for them. I would be a miserable SAHM, and I thank goodness that's not a choice I've been forced into.
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(Comment 1 of 2)
Sadly, this article is absolutely cringeworthy in many respects. It sounds as if it is written with the principles of a bygone era: that a wife's work is secondary to her husband's, that BOTH parents don't share an equal responsibility for caregiving of their OWN children, that somehow moms should automatically be the person in a parenthood to sacrifice their time in the workplace.
I have children born in 1999 and 2001. Here's the way we made a two-parent, college-grads-in-the-workplace work for our two daughters; and I've recommended it over and over to parents trying to maintain some semblance of having both parents work while raising their children: back when my kids were toddlers, I heard a story on NPR that suggested that two parents in the workplace would work out nicely for the kids if the total amount of time spent in the workplace for both parents equaled about 120%. This meant that no matter how the two parents’ time was divided, working 120% would allow two parents to take their kids to extra-curricular activities, participate in school functions, and keep themselves in the workforce.
What this meant for my family was a husband who was self-employed that maintained a home office who was able to share in child-care duties. Like many mothers to babies and toddlers, my husband had to commit to spending time working pre-dawn hours and post-dinner hours to get his job done.
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(Comment 2 of 2)
This allowed him to spend time with our kids when they needed him: mornings before school and dinner-time/evening hours. I worked 80% out of the home (Mondays-Thursdays) and was able to help with getting the kids to school, dinners and some after-school activities. We DID depend on other parents to shuttle our kids to after-school activities while we were at work. The trade-off? I'd cook and deliver meals to the families that helped shuttle my kids back and forth. And, I'd help those families get their kids to weekend activities and with playdates so they could have time on weekends for their errands and for quality time without their kids.
My point is this—it takes a village! In this day and age, we need to find people in our parenting communities that can help out wherever possible, to the benefit of all families involved. Yes, we were lucky to have flexibility, but that flexibility came from making certain career sacrifices while our kids were young. Both parents sacrificed, but both parents were able to work. And yes, we had tight budgets and kept our expenses to the bare minimum. What mattered most to us was creating enough time to be there for our kids, much in the same way the couples with a stay-at-home parent were able to spend time with their kids. This is only a suggestion as to how working fewer hours for both a mom and a dad can make parenting a little easier for all parties involved. : )
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@Anna McColl I wish we had more flexibility in our house. My husband works in retail and works 10-12 hour days. Also, he works mixed shifts between morning, evening, and sometimes over night, and his days off vary week to week. His schedule makes it almost impossible for me to find a job, not to mention he is constantly tired and stressed. I finally found a part-time job as a college tutor, but most of that income will be offset by childcare. My goal was to find full-time work with an 8-5 schedule that paid at least $12.00 so I could pay for childcare and have some left over for bills, but that was a fruitless effort. For some couples it's not possible to even work opposite schedules.
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@Anna McColl Parents today have no job security. We can be fired at any time so working 60% doesn't work any more. I wish it did!
Ah, college-educated chauffeurs: perhaps one of the most amusing results of the backfiring of suburbia.
I have three jobs and carry half the weight of childcare for our six year old daughter along with more than half the cooking and chores. I once asked my wife (after reading a similar article) what percentage of the non-paid work she did. She said 80%. She's very smart and very hard working but on this was demonstrably wrong. I'm sure why her version is so different from mine. We're both pretty exhausted. But I suspect she's not alone. I think of that response every time I read one of these stories.
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@Sick In Chicago I dont know your situation but women often take on the mental load and the unseen work. The planning, the appointments, the scheduling, the volunteering in the classroom, the party planning, the purchasing of clothing, the emotional support... My husband does take on half the child supervision and chaperoning. He even took on half the meal prep. He would say (like many men) that he does half the parenting. But he has no clue about how much else goes on behind the scenes and would have a fit if I suggested he didn't do an equal share.
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@Sick In Chicago
Everyone overestimates their own contribution to a group effort. If you feel you are doing exactly half, you almost certainly are doing a fair bit less than half. I've heard it said that when both halves of a couple are contributing equally to household duties, each partner will feel they are doing about 60 %. If you think you're at 50% and your wife thinks she's at 80%, you're probably split about 35/65.
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@Sick In Chicago When they do time studies using journals, researchers tend to find men are the ones over estimating how much time they spend on household tasks.... Not to say you are wrong about your situation, just thst the best data we can collect on this shows men do less than they think.
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Maybe you can have it all--but not all at once. All mothers are working mothers; mothers who work outside the home work doubly hard. It's not such a great deal.
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@Comp What the “have it all” movement fails to mention is that balancing so much often comes at the cost of being exhausted, unhappy, broke, and/or never havig personal space and time to yourself. I chose not to have kids because a career in medicine would make me happier, and the last thing I want after a long work shift is to come home to more work. I noticed that after my friends had kids, the women did like 80% of childcare and housework even if both had full time jobs. I also know several women who quit working jobs they loved because of pregnancy related medical complications and exorbitant daycare costs, but zero stay at home dads.
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Early the article references researchers' take that "women got it wrong." The later observation is more accurate, but still not correctly framed: '"As women do more paid work, men have not increased their child care and housekeeping tasks to the same extent — another surprise for young women who... expected more egalitarian partnerships." Why are both framed as the women being wrong or having wrong expectations rather than about men not following through on what are often explicit and openly discussed commitments to being an equal partner? I know countless couples in which the woman is the primary breadwinner but the man won't run the ball at home, and is at best still being task managed and pushing back on task lists, while getting heaps of praise for taking the kids to the park while mom can tackle a night shift in front of the laptop before doing the laundry. Is that her wrong expectation or his? When she is exhausted, and judged, and not seeing her income grow with her experience, and her options are: walk and have even more work and less resources, fight it out, or muscle through it, does she also need to be blamed for having the audacity to have expected things to be more equal and respectful?
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Very important insight into the writer's (and the culture's) bias
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I wish I could recommend this comment anout 1000x's. This is spot on.
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@Yvonne
Why are the SAHFs being task managed and task listed by their wives? Maybe the men would “run the ball” at home if the wives stopped helicoptering and demanding absolute compliance with their standards.
1
Well I work at a place with highly educated mothers and I can tell you for sure there is a precipitous decline in showing up and productivity post children, as well as endless exploitation of so-called family friendly policies. Based on my experience, I think mothers in the workplace are not working out for the workplace or for all the fellow co-workers left to pick up the slack.
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@Childfree Woman
And your solution is? A return to the 1950s? Breadwinner dad, mom at home with the kids? Most families can't afford that, and as another commenter has noted, the parent who cuts back on paid work to care for young children (usually mom, of course) often takes a permanent financial hit. It can follow them into retirement. What about instead recognizing that society needs these new generations of little people, and we need them raised and supported properly. So it's on all of us, especially employers, to help make this possible.
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@Childfree Woman Most mothers I know experience an uptick in efficiency at work once the kids arrive. They may not be chit-chatting around the water cooler as much, surfing the web and watching videos, or hanging out at the after-work happy hours. But that's because they're getting their work done with little fanfare and going home at a reasonable hour. Not staying late and working extra hours is called good time management and good work-life boundaries. If you can't get your work done on time, it means a lack of efficiency or it means that you are legitimately overworked and understaffed. But Megacorp doesn't want you to believe that, since solving the problem would mean more overhead for them.
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How great it would be if companies had a daycare in their buildings if they are smaller companies and in their offices if they are larger companies.
When the tv show "Family Ties" was in session on the Paramount lot the Producer had a place for all the employees and actors could have their under school age children on near the set. I'm sure the school age could be brought there as well when school was out.
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In addition to the demands of parenting, many women provide care for elderly and ailing parents as well, and like me, many care for both generations at the same time. It is physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting. The demands cut into work time and lessen opportunities for professional growth and advancement. Dependable, appropriate outside help is costly and can be difficult to secure. As a nation, we need to do better for women, children and elders!
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@Sydney
And yet we want and need to create a meaningful life. After doing eldercare and childcare at the same time for so many years, I’m just exhausted. I don’t know if this is meaningful. Maybe for others.
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Thank you for this excellent comment. In most of the comments that I have read, as well as in the column, the analysis of the burden of caring for children almost exclusively focuses on physical care and logistical issues...both of which are daunting...but there is little focus on the emotional care burden of raising children.
I have two teens and one now drives, but I still spend many hours each week listening, counseling and guiding. In my experience, this role too is overwhelmingly fulfilled by mothers.
2
I think the social media also contribute to a lot of the pressure and stress. You are trying to 'keep up with the Jones' in every way raising a kid, breast feeding, sending them to the best private kindergarten, after school program, educational camps, travel aboard vacations, interest birthday parties and much more. You are constantly feeling guilty of not providing the best for your kids.
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@Rebecca: That's why social media is a bad thing, and most smart people I know stay as far away from it as possible. It does nothing but make you feel bad about yourself, no matter how well you are ACTUALLY doing.
With or without social media, "keeping up with the Joneses" has always been a fool's game. Don't play that game; don't buy into that mindset. I wish more parents would remember the saying "the best thing you can spend on children is TIME."
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@Rebecca
Well staying off social media helps alleviate that problem--who's got time for it anyway?!
There is no mention in this article of the cost of childcare combined with the cost of student loans for college educated moms, particularly those with advanced degrees. In homes where both parents owe student loans, the additional cost of childcare may be cost prohibitive. In that case, since the mother is likely to have a lower salary, she is likely to stay home and probably defer loans for a period of time.
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A large part of this is the cost of child care, which should be subsidized by the government. Without that help, the cost of having multiple children in daycare is daunting. I can understand how it might be more cost effective to have one parent provide the child care than work a full-time job and have the majority (or all) of your salary go straight to child care costs
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@Jessica Why should I, a childless middle-aged woman, pay (in taxes) for you to have children? If the world were short on people, yeah, maybe. But with 7 billion and counting it's like hauling coals to Newcastle.
4
@Mrs Western Actually, we are already paying for their children. The childless (me included) do not get tax breaks and tax credits for having children. And the amount I pay in school taxes because I'm a homeowner in Texas is my largest monthly expense.
I understand how children are the future, and I'm perfectly good with helping pay for them. But let's not begin to think that people who don't have kids should be asked to pony up even more than those that do.
1
@Dan You are right, Dan, about the tax credits and school taxes. And, I've heard from more than one source about property taxes in Texas.
It is so tricky being a woman with kids these days. I am a college educated woman who simultaneously wants to have a role in the larger world and raise my kids in the best way I know how (that's education for you). If our society provided the things kids needed--nurturing environments, physical activity, nourishing food, intellectual stimulation, community connection--then I wouldn't feel like it was all on me. Until we all take responsibility for raising the next generation, and our partners take on equal responsibility, then women will be in this pickle. I have figured out how to compromise on both work and child care--work a job with flexibility but low pay, and ignore the extremes of middle class parenting--but it ain't easy. And I am lucky that my kids are not sick or struggling and that i can make enough money to look after them with enough of what they need.
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When men, and employers, start taking their share of responsibility for the care of children, who are after all our replacements, and who will be workers and taxpayers, one day, the decision to have children will be an easy one. Currently, Americans are not replacing themselves, primarily because of child care, the lack of it, the expense of it, the low quality of it. How will our country take care of its elderly, or fill all the new jobs that will be created, or do the consuming that keeps our economy going? All of this rests on the availability and affordability of good child care.
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@ChesBay
Many men are taking responsibility. Both parents decide a course of action and more and more men are the sty at home parent. Society gives them a hard time, but the men I have talked with are thrilled to be the stay at home parent. Too bad our society doesn't value children enough to make them a societal priority.
3
@ChesBay Europeans aren't replacing themselves either, despite much more generous child care and family leave policies.
The cultures that seem to be most interested in reproducing are the cultures where there is little governmental support for mothers and even less of modern feminism--much of the the Third World.
1
As a working mom in the demographic studied, I can say this article is right on the money. I would have loved to see an accompanying chart with the skyrocketing rate of housing, childcare and college costs layered vs. mothers’ incomes and tracked over the past four decades. To the point of many of these comments, many families have no choice but to stick with two incomes. One factor the study did not track was the impact of FT work on a mother’s mental health. Today’s workplaces are very confrontation, often hostile environments requiring that a worker be accessible via electronic devices 24/7. It’s no wonder no one is getting enough sleep.
All of this being said, I am very glad I fought to keep my career alive. At different stages over the past 13 years I have worked FT, PT freelanced and been a SAHM for two years. There are pros and cons to each depending on the age of the kids. To young moms, I would definitely reiterate the importance of keeping a foot in the door. No one truly knows where life will take them, and women are much less vulnerable in a myriad of ways if they leave their options open. There are lots of ways to be a great mom.
Society at large gives working parents, especially moms, undue criticism so folks have to decide what is best and most realistic for their family. To paraphrse Gretchen Rubin, the days are long, but the years are short!
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Another chance for me to plug my concept of free range children. I was born in 1949 and grew up during the 50s and 60s. It's true our mother didn't work, but we were encouraged to roam freely, walked or rode our bikes to school, were expected to entertain ourselves, etc. As far as enrichment went, our parents shared our interest in reading, went to every band concert we played in, talked to us about politics and ideas every night at dinner, taught us hundreds of jokes, and let us be free to work out our own disputes and grow up with autonomy and no fear of failure. Bring back the old days of kids and parents having plenty of separate time!
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"Though the study did not analyze fathers’ role in depth, ..."
What a shocker. Childcare is hard, and yet researchers are not even interested in exploring the extent to which fathers participate in parenthood. No wonder so many young women are choosing to forego bearing children in a country where they are expected to carry the majority of the responsibility.
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@Andrea
Thank you, thank you thank you.
I am pretty tired of these articles extolling everything that is absolutely, without-a-doubt the greatest gender and position (motherhood) and everything that is base and wrong about our society (fatherhood). Guess what, they (the mothers) then mete out horrible excesses on their own gender. Their own contribution to the misery of their own gender is not very well researched. I'll take that before I take a reasonable representation of fathers in the media and society at large and in the vernacular.
We seem to have a very low bar to understanding and furthering gender issues in this country.
4
@Andrea you could also look at it through the lens of "fathers aren't capable of making an impact regardless of what they do". Or it could also be that this is the easiest way to leave out the fact that men on average work 50+ hours a week, whereas women work less than 40 (only accounting for full time workers in both cases).
Congrats Ms Miller. The Times has written a gender, family story without bashing men (at least till the very end).
There is hope.
Two issues that are usually not discussed why it is harder financially now then in the 1950s to raise a family are global competition and debt both public and private in America.
In the 1950s, America ruled the world financially. The communist world was very inefficient and Europe and Japan were all but destroyed. Although we were advanced we had very little need to be very productive and/or efficient. Then the world recovered and became competitors to us.
In order to stay in the game in the 1980s, the wife went to work and from 1970 on, both private and public debt skyrocketed to maintain our lifestyle.
Now the chicken has come home to roost. We are not longer the number one economic power in the world on a per capita basis.
Many countries outrank us.
14
@Paul
People have grand lives and higher expectations now. A family of four would object to living in a 900 square foot home, driving a ten year old car, vacationing at a nearby lake, wearing hand me downs, getting haircuts at home, etc. The current norms are 3,000 square foot McMansions, multiple cars that are replaced every 3 to 5 years, annual overseas vacations, designer clothing and sneakers, etc. The lifestyle choices that people make are also part of the reason why it is harder financially to live now compared to the 1950s.
4
@Lynn in DC it's really not all that simple. Wages have lagged behind inflation. Health care, food, and education costs have all outpaced wage growth for the past 40 years.
Fathers need to be fathers before the birth. At the risk of blowback from the left, I believe the best reproductive reform would be to require parental consent for abortion. A man has the same right to procreate and the same responsibility for raising children. Getting the father's commitment clear before the baby is born, and even before the baby is made, could make life a lot better for the whole family. Job and household adjustments will be smoother with good planning from the start. Some women may want a man who would consent to an abortion or leave the matter entirely to the woman. It's good to know what kind of man you are with right from the start.
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@Eugene Patrick Devany
You've missed the main purpose of this article . This is not about teenage pregnancy and abortion. This is about grown educated men and woman having to decide how best to raise their children in a very demanding society.
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@Eugene Patrick Devany--good luck, you have about as much hope for this happening from the extreme left as pigs flying.
A fair compromise is to let the woman only decide on an abortion but if the man is gonna get shut out and wants the woman to have an abortion, give him the right to disown the fetus, children when it is born.
The left wants the woman to have all the rights but only have the responsibilities.
2
@Eugene Patrick Devany
If a man doesn’t want to have a child with a woman, there is something very easy he can do-do not have sex with her. Then he can be absolutely assured He will not be exposed to a possible child he doesn’t want but wants to force a woman to have.
4
If mothers could also have wives, then I think that would go a long way to reducing their parental stress level to that of the child's father.
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@Wendy In the late 1990's and early 2000's when I was working and had a baby/toddler/preschooler, at every annual review at work when I was asked what I needed to better perform my job, I always replied, "A wife."
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@Wendy A great comment. It could also have been put "If mothers could also have servants...."
I used to live and work in a third-world country where servants were very inexpensive, so most expats could afford at least a housekeeper and sometimes even a cook/shopper. (Cooking in a third-world country isn't the hard part; it is difficult and time-consuming to hunt and gather foodstuffs from open markets or several different specialty shops where there are no supermarkets.) By the way, this was not exploitation; there was fierce competition among the locals to be hired as servants because domestic workers were paid a multiple of a day-laborer's wages and got at least one free meal a day that probably doubled their daily caloric intake.
Today only the well-off in the US can afford even part-time domestic help, so if the wife has a lower salary than the husband there are often economic pressures for her to be the one who stays home and fulfills the various domestic roles.
We have friends who choose to work in or retire to Mexico or other countries just for the much lower cost of living and the availability of cheap domestic help; they come back to the US only for major medical treatment or to visit their families. One of the unheralded benefits of expat work or retirement that it allows women to ditch domestic chores and pursue their own interests or careers.
7
Ha ha! My divorced mother always said that what she really needed was a wife!
1
If both parents are working you are not raising your young child in its most formative years. Someone else, day care or baby sitter is performing that job. I am not editorializing. just stating a fact. I certainly do understand the economic necessity of both parents working in today's economic world.
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@Bruce Northwood Oh please. The kids know who their parents are. There is absolutely zero evidence that kids who go to day care have worse outcomes than those who have a stay-at-home parent.
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@Bruce Northwood
I worked full-time when my children were young with lots of help from wonderful daycare providers. When they hit adolescence, however, was when I knew they needed me and no one else, and so quit my beloved job and worked out of a home office. Now they're grown, all happy, stable, and productive adults, and I'm back at a full-time job (and trying to catch up with my younger colleagues having paid the motherhood penalty for my career). My point is: You are editorializing without evidence. I raised my children every inch of the way, and adjusted my career as needed to meet their needs when they needed me most. There is no one rule for all families. The one rule that women and their families need to both work and raise healthy, whole human beings is flexibility from the rest of the world.
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@NH. So true. I raised my kids because I enjoyed it. Not everyone likes the process but they do love their kids. I see no difference between my children and the children of my friends who preferred to work.
And where are the men? I think it's disgusting that men take so much for granted (though why didn't their mothers wack their ear when necessary).
While pondering over a speech to my parents I stumbled on the thought that my Mother had spent altogether over 18 000 hours (that is 10 working years, folks!) cooking for my Father through almost 65 years. And yes, she was working.
Yes, we men mow the lawn etc., etc., blablabla. But we fall sadly short. It's way time to value women's time seriously and help out more. Life is short, so start thinking seriously about what YOU can do to help. A fatter paycheque is not happiness, just a higher grade of financial security. But not happiness.
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This is a major reason why birthrates are falling all over the more developed countries in the world.
From a planetary environmental perspective this is good news: we have an unsustainably large number of humans on the earth whose lifestyles are consuming unsustainable amounts of resources.
From a societal perspective, this is less good as the recently noted epidemics of loneliness from so many societies shows.
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@S If only we could curb the birthrates in other parts of the world.
1
To me, it feels like mom's put pressure on themselves over stupid things. It's like an arm's race to see who can be most "extra" with cutesy lunch boxes and insta-perfect lives. Plus they hover. When I was a kid, my mom spent a lot of time doing something else. Dropping me off, then coming back later. Or expecting us kids to entertain ourselves at home. "GO OUTSIDE" was a common plea.
And the reality is that one income in the US can no longer support 2 adults and a child. I make above the US median income and have a job with great benefits (they pay 90% on my health insurance which looks more like a plan from 2004 with low deductibles and co-pays). I live in a relatively affordable place. I have no debt. I live comfortably with two dogs. I can't in any way see being able to afford to add 2 more people to my life.
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@MC Yes my Mom "put us outside" and told us to either, come home for lunch, or packed us a lunch, in the summer!
We had to come home when the street lights came on.
Woods, fields, pool, playgrounds all in walking or biking distance. Played baseball and football in our yards, all organized by kids.
We walked to school, Scouts were just after, and we walked home. Walked to softball practice too, and many games. Walked to horse riding lessons and sledding.
Where was this Magical Land?
Northern Virginia, almost always in sight of the Washington Monument.
And if they did not have babies would their lives be objectively incomplete? The child has to struggle to acquire the skills to survive, born with none unlike other animals. That struggle is always ignored in the rejoice on parenthood. Fast forward fifteen years later after divorce and the novelty has worn off. The economy gets more consumers, the military more soldiers and restaurants more workers. The winner? The primitive genes that are passed along. We allow ourselves to be gene transport machines.
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@Carry On The big mystery is why if everyone seems to be so miserable (25% of this country is on anti-anxiety or anti-depressants and even more in therapy), they insist on passing the miserable existence to children who never asked for it.
19
A big "Thank You!" to my mom, who let me walk to school and go out to play on my own.
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@Joe Ryan
Used to be non-question, my Mom just put us outside!
We never thought to ask for permission, it would have been ridiculous.
Parents have no idea how they are crippling their children with this unnecessary hovering and constant supervision.
It is obvious in children physically, mentally, and just in terms of coping.
And does not help the parents either.
3
@Joe Ryan A big thank you to the other parents and the policy and social services workers in your town, as well, for not interfering with your mother's excellent choices.
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@Joe Ryan That's illegal in my home state. But yeah, lets blame the moms.
10
Sadly, this phenomenon seems to occur because the world of work and gender Norma around family responsibility never shifted as women entered the workforce. Women then began ripping one another apart instead of fighting together to change the system.
Some good men stepped up. A male relative was just denied partnership because he provides the bulk of the childcare and could not put in the 80 hours a week informally expected.
But on the whole, women have had to deal with the same expectations at work, while still taking on the bulk of child and homecare. The article makes the point that this was a doable balance 30 years ago because the parenting stay at home mom's did back then was pretty lax. Any kid who grew up in the 70's was kicked out of the house to "go play" all day, mostly unsupervised.
Then the mommy wars started. Women guilting women about the quantity and quality of childcare in relentless ways. Yet those harsh expectations to be perfect caretakers were not placed on employers, policymakers, or men.
I am not a parent, but I am saddened when I see the threads on Facebook from women friends posting about how terrible you are as a mom if you don't breastfeed. The expectations that (mostly female) PTA's place specifically on Mom's is also ridiculous. From stupidly specific lists of school products to buy for each class to all the expectations to perform "class mommy" duties, it seems like a nightmare of Martha Stewart -like dictators attacking fellow women. Stop it!!
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All true - and I'm your demographic. But you've overlooked a rather large elephant. We're also the generation that grew up with sky rocketing divorce rates. When the impossible strain of managing a full time career and parenting reveals itself (and it always does), you've got to make a choice. For those of us who've grown up with divorce, it's a pretty straightforward decision, family unity trumps a second paycheck.
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@LOST IN THOUGHT To each his own. Family unity would be destroyed in my house if one of us announced we want to quit work.
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@LOST IN THOUGHT Everyone handles parenting and managing a full time career differently. Not all see it as an "impossible strain" demanding one sacrifice either a career/2nd income or marriage/family unity. It is not an either or choice, there are other alternatives that can reduce stress while allowing both parents, if they so chose or must, to keep working and maintain unity.
5
I think if you look back before the 1920’s-life was very hard for most people. Moms did not necessary work outside the home but within the home had to create everything the family needed before electricity. My point is that Mom did not have much extra time to spend in leisure activities with children.
5
Not mentioned as a factor but very important is the lack of flexibility in so many workplaces, and hostility from coworkers who think it’s unfair ifnparents have to leave for an appointment.
Also, in my experience, doctors’ and dentists’ offices may only have hours during the workday, so if you have an infant who goes to frequent appointments, there’s the issue right there. Full stop.
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@Lisa Romano
Yes, Lisa, I was saddened recently to read the comment in a Times article where so many people castigated parents for sometimes needing to leave work for a sick child or some other her family related problem. The selfishness and resentment were appalling. Would be hard to work with people like that.
7
As a person without children I am glad if I can help a coworker who has children when they need a little flexibility. I may stay later so a parent can leave when necessary or finish my co-worker's assignment. I am not especially nice, I just believe that as a society we should invest in our children.
8
The work/family juggle is harder because of the lack of school options. A middle class educated parent must either move to a wealthy suburb to obtain appropriate coursework for the offspring, or afterschool to make up for the lack of coursework given to the NCLB 3s and 4s. Both choices mean less money and time available...the former because the cost of housing ballooned, the latter because cost of education ballooned.
14
Better to be stressed and tired at times, than to give up your personal autonomy and become a dependent on someone else's income.
I am 35 and many of my female friends have had babies in the last few years. No one has given up working or would consider it. Only one woman I know went part-time.
No one has a stay-at-home husband either.
Working is not pleasant. Doing so while also having to raise young kids is hard. But forcing one parent to take the pressure of earning all the income, while the other becomes dependent on them is simply unacceptable to most educated people these days.
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@NH
I'm also mid-30s, educated with an educated partner and I disagree with the notion that giving up work for early childcare is considered ‘simply unacceptable'. I also don't see a lack of personal autonomy or dependence. My partner and I treat our merged income and savings as one and make all financial decisions together. Maybe this is untenable for some. Yes, having one income reduced or eliminated does have repercussions for the future (including retirement savings) but this is one factor in the decision. Once you have ‘enough’, chasing excess just isn’t as important for us as being home with our child for early development. We also cut down aggressively on spending, and got creative by starting a side business that can be worked while at home/weekends. For those lucky enough to be well-educated, there are many more opportunities to make income with non-traditional work.
Raising a child in the early years is hard enough when you’re doing nothing else. Not everyone can afford to do this, but I recognize what a luxury it is. At the end of the day, mental health and happiness of mom and dad is what’s the most important thing for raising a healthy child. For some families that may mean two working parents is best. For others, the extra stress may be detrimental.
21
@J I think a lot of this is cost of living. For the price of my little old shack in the Boston area, I could buy a mansion in Austin. Day care here costs $20K/year + for an infant. Its not about luxuries.
In the end though, no matter how much you consider your income to be joint, it does change the power dynamic in a relationship to have one be the earner and the other the dependent.
7
@NH
You all in this thread refer to the stay at home parent as the " dependent", as if the full time parent is a child as well and not contributing to the family. You are so wrong. That full time parent does more than their fair share. Not only is raising a child a full time job, but that role contributes just as much as the " earner".
2
Women do not need to work when their children are small. Their time is best spent on the care and social interaction with their children who will be the inventors and engine of the next generation. This work is too important to leave to untrained childcare workers. This is where family values and wisdom are communicated to our children.
I took off four years to raise my son, and then I spent nearly as long being an officer and leader at the co-operative nursery school and going to graduate school in chemical engineering in support of my degrees in chemistry.... it could have been for an Accounting Degree, MBA or CPA.
When I entered the workforce, my employers were impressed by my maturity and depth and breadth of knowledge and abilities and gave me the best projects. With good pay, I was able to point my importance to the family and encourage my son to learn to take public transportation and do things for himself -- this served him well went he went off to college.
7
@Dottie
I applaud both your choice to stay home with your son and your subsequent decisions. However, I take issue with your flat declaration that women do not need to work when children are small. Some women do need to work, even when their children are small, to provide basic necessities (shelter, food, health care) for their children. Two adults working full-time at minimum wage jobs struggle to pay rent in most U.S. cities, even when they are lucky enough to have relatives who provide childcare.
I agree with what I believe is your premise--that children are best off with one stay-at-home parent during the first 5 years of their lives at least. I think it is important to note, though, that this ideal is not always economically possible.
33
@Dottie Mothers do need to work while their children are small. The need may be financial or mental. It does not preclude either parent from transmitting family values and wisdom. Both parents can still be actively involved in the physical care and social development of their children, in addition to their jobs.
For this very important work, childcare workers are actually trained, and educated, in the care of nurturing and caring for children. Many states even demand degrees to certify these very important abilities.
My employers were also blown away by maturity, skills, work experience & education background even before I had children. Imagine their delight in retaining such an employee after I became a parent and mine in not paying a career penalty for "downshifting" after my children were born.
My children are still small but are "advanced" for their ages and I believe will be capable of taking public transportation and getting around on their own when they go to college,even though both parents worked while they were small.
12
@Dottie I unexpectedly ended up staying home for the first six months due to my son being a preemie and needing care that is beyond what full term, healthy babies need. And here's what I can tell you: I was tired and bored out of my mind. I could not wait to get back to work. My son was better off for my being a working Mom. He got to grow up seeing his Mom as a successful professional who was happy and, ultimately, that is what makes a great household.
32
None of this is surprising. It sounds very much like my story. My biggest regret was getting out of the workforce (although I went back a couple times).
I found most very success women who transition to full-time parenting bring their competitive and overly driven style to raising their children - to everyone's detriment.
I advise younger women to NEVER fully give up their career unless there is a crisis which requires it.
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@BMD Ditto on that advice. I worked in a very family unfriendly industry and left the workforce to take care of my two small children. I bought all the hype that you could go back and have a career again and found it was all hype. My husband got used to me being at home and doing all the housework. It has been a tremendous struggle to get back to a career and also not still spend all my spare time doing housework while my husband comes home to relax and wait for dinner. I tell all young women to keep working even if just part time.
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@BMD
I note that most people, men and women but especially women, do not necessarily have a Career. I think it is a false assumption that women are leaving careers. Adults have jobs unless they are home taking care of dependents. I note that women are usually the choice to stay home because they are the lower of two incomes. Home versus Career is a choice for a select (relative) few. Adults work.
3
I dropped out of the labor force when I had my second child. Making it easy for my husband to pursue a c-suite career meant a significantly higher income for our family, despite the fact I had an MBA and career in finance. Now my youngest is heading to college and I have no idea of how to restart a career.
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Professional associations like the Society of Women Engineers and major companies like IBM and Medtronic have re-entry programs and “returnship” intern programs. I’d encourage you to get connected to the professional associations in your field and talk to recruiters at major businesses. Attending one major conference and career fair can go a long way for boosting knowledge, confidence, and connections!
1
Yet the article places this phenomenon in negative terms: high costs of motherhood rather than "value of motherhood considered nonnegotiable." Breastfeeding, particularly by the educated, is a sign that deep nurturing is happening. This should result in deepened family values in the next generation. In a time when fewer couples choose marriage at all, the fact that they are choosing full-time motherhood is interesting. I chose full-time motherhood times four. Best AND hardest thing I've ever done. If I sacrificed for my children, I reaped the reward of watching them grow. Irreplaceable. Non-negotiable. Chris Stapleton's song Millionaire would apply, altho that's focused on romantic love between a man and a woman. The romantic love between a parent and child, if you will, is no less evocative and impactful in life.
19
I agree. It has always amazed me that parenting is not considered work. I never planned to be a full-time mom and I did return to work after the birth of my first child way back in 1983. I quit my job when he was 15 months old. After deducting work and childcare expenses, we realized I was working for under $2,000 a year . My husband and I looked at each other and simultaneously said "It's not worth it." Being a full-time mom allowed me to care for my kids and my Grandmother, Mom and Dad as they aged. But that's not "real" work. Not like my old office job. @EmCee
35
@Connie Martin And you would be royally screwed if something happened to your husband, to his job or if he changed his mind about staying married to you.
16
@EmCee Didn't we just go through this cycle in the NYT? I remember Lisa Belkin's 2003 Opt-Out Revolution - highly educated professional women forsaking high-powered careers for SAHM, followed up a decade later by the Opt-Out Revolution Wants Back In, tracking the professional difficulties of many of the now-divorced and widowed women struggling to regain footing in a workforce hostile to a childrearing hiatus.
I remember during the Financial Crisis whole layers of highly-paid banking and legal professionals losing jobs; the situation got ugly for those families without spouses in the paid workforce. This is America without a safety net.
8
The key here is that life and parenting has changed for women, but not for men. Balancing work and family is harder for women, and women find it harder to raise kids than they expected, because society and individual women have not been asking men to do more or do things differently. Despite our moves forward for women, we still see women as the primary caregivers and home carers. Until men realize that these small people are their children too, women won't get much relief.
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@kathy this is right on the money. a lot of women in the comments who said that this happened to them also mentioned that it was really hard to go back to work because their husbands got used to them being at home. men, pitch in more please!
5
Great article. I wrote a book about not having kids (Complete without kids, guide to childfree living) and in it I express my belief that women simply CANNOT have it ALL: We can't expect to have a rich and successful career and also do a great job of mothering, partnering, self-care, friendships, etc. I see so many women in my psychology practice and also my personal life who are sleep deprived or otherwise cutting themselves short. Women needs to really evaluate how badly they want to be mothers before moving forward with this huge life choice. It's also time that we stop glorifying and necessitating being a mother as a means of having life fulfillment.
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@ellen portman
Interested: do you feel this same way about fathers? Are they able to be parents, partners, friends and care for self?
Are you also asking men to evaluate how badly they want to be fathers before moving forward with this huge life choice?
If not, why not?
35
Yes and women who aren’t mothers need to own that they truly know only one side of the story.
I became an oops mom in my 40s
- had a happily childless life pre-kid and a more complicated, challenging and richly human one now. Old moms know both sides like no others
6
We seem to be collectively unable to impact the costs and benefits of important life decisions over 20-30 years. None of the items described here are new. Any couple thinking of becoming parents could have found similar info in numerous sources over the last 20 years. The new story is that even highly intelligent women and men in 2018 do not pay attention or think they will be different. Couples in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s also faced significant social and economic changes, but also seemed to have a more realistic understanding of the demands and better idea of how they would work together to meet those demands.
18
Couples in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were not smarter or more prudent or more disciplined in any way than people today. Couples in the 50s, 60s, and 70s could live middle class on a single income with a high-school degree. That’s the difference. If anything, they were lazier.
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@IJN
Agreed and there was less pressure then on constant surveillance of children. This article should have referenced the recent articles on criminalizing letting children play at parks without supervision, leaving them in the car for a few minutes, etc.
7
@IJN
Agreed. I loved my work (college professor), and I split my take-home pay with a child caregiver (paid social security but not health insurance). It has never been, and will never be, easy to raise children. I think that being a teacher/researcher made me a better parent and that being a parent made me a better teacher. Both combined to make me a stronger community participant.
2
We should note that the luxury of relying on one salary is largely enjoyed by the highest earners in society. More modestly paid workers are rarely able to manage this, and I've seen couples who work opposite shifts for decades (nurse, cop, teacher, etc.) to reduce or eliminate child care costs. Teachers, of course, have a couple of months off in the summer. My daughter's summer camp is almost entirely staffed by teachers, where the perc of free tuition for their kids is seen as an incredibly valuable economic and child-care advantage.
For hourly lower-income workers this arrangement would be nearly impossible.
Keep in mind that withdrawing from work reduces forever your retirement savings - no employer match or tax deferred 401k. Lower Social Security contributions can reduce retirement benefits. In significant ways women are also giving up on their economic future, even if they return to work after the kids are older. They rarely can recover economic momentum.
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@Marnie, under the current SS retirement system, if you stay married for at least 10 years and, if they divorce, not re-marry, their social security is usually based on their spouse's earnings, not their own. You get 50% of your spouse or ex-spouse's benefit while he (or she) is alive, and their full benefit if you outlive them.
I oversimplify, but for most married or once-married women, their contributions to SS do not matter if their spouse, by retirement age, earned more. And this is nearly always the case. In these days of two-career marriages, many women think they are getting their own retirement benefit, and, if still married, believe that with two spouses receiving full benefits, all will be well.
But they will not. Even if they earned just a little bit less than their husbands, they just get 50% of his, not 100% of their own. Social Security is back in the dark ages when married women did not work, and if they did, their lifetime earnings, and therefore benefit, would never approach that of a male spouse.
I understand your points generally, but unless you divorce a very low paid man too early, your contributions to SS at least, do not matter. Your Social Security retirement benefit is not about you.
4
@Maureen Basedow
You are incorrect. You take either 100% of your own benefit or 50% of spousal benefit whichever is higher after 10 years of marriage. Over 20-30 years of retirement a significant amount of money is involved. Medicare parts A, B, C, D are taken out of your social security payment. Women who did not work for quite some time due to staying home with children can be very surprised at age 66 or so as to how they have disadvantaged themselves going forward. I stayed home with my babies. It was what I wanted , all 3 have turned out beautifully and I enjoyed it. ( despite my Master's degree and high I.Q. it was highly satisfying even intellectually and certainly spiritually )And I am working now-not opposed to working but I also had very ill parents and 2 siblings who died early and needed a lot of time and flexibility. But I am disadvantaged financially due to an unwanted mid 50's age divorce. Young women need to factor this in and try to stay in the SSI system with at least part time work. Love your babies. Protect your own future.
@Marnie As a stay at home mom, my social security is tiny. However, I can claim my husbands, which is substantial.
I'm in my fifties and my mother worked as did many, but not all of my friends' mothers. Some kids (like me) had older siblings as after school caregivers, or grandparents who lived nearby - grandmothers hardly ever worked outside the home then. Or a friend's mom stayed home during the day and could be counted on for emergency child care. When my kids were growing up families were smaller so fewer sibling caretakers, and grandma herself probably worked full time (or with average grandparental age rising was much older and not in good enough health to be a caregiver). I was fortunate that my husband had a full time job with health insurance, so I could work school hours and then be available to drive my kids to religious school, doctors appointments or sports. When my kids were sick or had a snow day I took "vacation days" from work. I did not ask the few SAHMs I knew to take my kids on a day off from school (choosing to stay home for your own kids isn't volunteering to babysit for the entire neighborhood) but I was incredibly grateful when they offered. Although I adore my children, financially raising them was very difficult. I think my children will have an even harder time raising a family since with the cost of housing and education skyrocketing, both parents will have to work demanding hours to support even one child, with no family or neighbors for an emergency caretaker safety net.
68
Yes. I'm currently a stay at home mom, one with an advanced degree in economics. When our youngest turned three we began looking at the cost of a return to the workplace. Before and after school care for the older children, daycare, transport and the replacement labor for work done in the home (laundry, cleaning, cooking) was about my expected salary. My husband, we met during undergrad and had the same caresr path, leaves at 6am and is not back until 7pm. It just didn't make sense to pay every cent earned to maintaining life with children I don't get to see. For us, a single earner household works best, but I bristle at the speed that we decided I would be the one to forgo the career.
614
@Jess As someone with an advanced degree in economics, you should know that the comparison of your salary v. immediate childcare costs is not the right comparison. You also have to factor into account lost retirement savings and lost future earnings due to that gap in your resume, if you ever decide to go back to work.
63
@NH You didn't address this in the comment by Jess: "... children I don't get to see." I was one who decided not to think about lost retirement savings and future earnings, etc. because I had decided I wanted a child, and could not see the point of having a child I spent almost no time with - I loved being with her and was always aware of how fleeting that amazing time is. Now long retired and with MUCH less money, I not only have no regrets, I have nothing but gratitude that i was lucky enough to have that time, as so many people, especially now, do not have that precious, unique time in their children's lives.
8
@Jess
I'm an American woman who now has two grown daughters. I had a successful career in NYC even before I came to live here. I had kids when I was 38 and 40. The difference and many of the problems women face when they decide to create a family is that unlike America, Austria has wide protections for women who have kids. Because of my age I was a "risk" pregnacy and was paid in full both times for 9 months. Then you can stay home for two years with each child. Health care is covered from birth to death. University expenses, you name it, and we're covered. I knew I wasn't going to return to work after my first child. Really, it was such a joy and I have never regretted being a full time mom. I had many creative interests that I devoted myself to. Now they are both at university and I am receiving a small pension plus health coverage in my own name.
I don't think I would feel this way if I hadn't had such great success in my career before having kids but since I've had both sides I would say that no MONEY in the world, nor success, could replace what I was given during those years with them. Why have kids when you need to give them to daycare? Yes, I do sense your frustration that you were the one to forgo your career and the speed of the decision. I don't think you will regret doing what you are doing, though. We have less material things but the pure luxuary has been the love of our children. The best time in our lives, for sure. I wish you all the best!
4
It’s becoming much more common for people, especially college educated people, to move far from extended family who used to be there to help.
The day care or nanny or babysitter is taking the place not of Mom, but of Grandma or Aunt Susie or the pack of teen cousins that women used to be able to rely on.
145
I think the root is the work culture. The expectation is that you will be at your desk for a bare minimum of 9.5 hours: an 8 hour day, the hour of lunch you don’t actually take, plus 15 minutes early and 15 minutes of not leaving right at the bell like someone who lacks commitment to the job. And that’s the “getting by” work schedule, not the “star performer”
schedule. The guy working 9.5 hour days is going to be the first one dropped when revenues come in under expectations. Now add in a few big projects every quarter that need late nights and weekends, stir in longer and longer commutes...
Then realize that school drop off and dismissal both overlap those hours, and that daycare pickup and afterschool care let-out both happen while you are still supposed to be at your desk, over an hour away. Even if you can afford daycare (lucky you), you can’t get there on time.
In 6th grade, studying the Progressive Era, we read the daily schedule of a turn-of-the-century factory worker. We were meant to be amazed by her schedule, which required her to work ten hours a day, six days a week, with scarcely a pause. While I appreciate that I won’t be chewed up in a machine or break my back by forty, I still remember my teacher exalting over America’s great achievement - the 40 hour work week and the weekend. We would all enjoy those fruits of progress, she said. But she was born in the 1930s and retired in the 1990s. She didn’t know any better.
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@IJN I completely agree with you about the culture at most companies but there are still some companies out there that tend to respect work-life balance. A lot of it is about setting boundaries too.
I work 40 hours and if work load creeps up I tell those demanding work to set their priorities. My boss supports me in this. Our entire team tends to work 40 hours.
I have been through multiple rounds of lay-offs and outsourcing and am still here.
Workers need to learn to say no - the more of us say no together, the easier it will be.
17
@NH You are so right about saying "no" collectively, that is why unions are essential for everyone.
2
@IJN
I want to copy your comment and enlarge it and put it in a billboard. I’m so exhausted. You have explained quite clearly why I feel like my life as a working parent of a toddler is driving me to burn out syndrome. I feel like there has to be a better way.
3
I knew all this in the 1980’s. That and the knowledge that Reagan intended to destroy the social safety net made the decision to forgo motherhood a no brainer. In a country where survival of the fittest is fast becoming the law, I concentrated on having a good job with a pension and health insurance as well as saving a lot of money. I was also lucky enough to have relatively good heath and suffered no catastrophic accidents. Now I am retired and so glad I made the decisions I made. We live in the most family unfriendly country in the first world. We have to either vote for a robust safety net or live like there isn’t one. Because the way we are voting what little safety net we have will be gone in a few decades. Then life will get very ugly for everyone but the 1 or 2 percent.
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@Pat Well -- I'm sorry you made that decision -- and I'm not really sure what RR did to change your mind or destroy the safety net ( in your mind) .. it was Clinton who was finally able to make changes to entitlements.
We did fine being our own children's "safety net"
@Pat or you could just create your own safety rather than forcing others to take care of you at gun-point. Heck, as a woman you certainly have a much better safety net anyhow. No fault divorce, child support, and alimony already provide you with all the "security" you need so long as you marry someone before getting pregnant, then your husband doesn't even have to be the father and you can still force him to provide for the kid.
1
The authors fail to note the high cost of day care, before and after care and summer care. I couldn't make enough to offset these costs in addition to the family stress of of inflexible work hours. When we analyzed what it would cost for me to reenter the work force, the salary required was likely unattainable.
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@Karen F.
After I put my daughter in day care, it hit me like a ton of bricks that with two in day care, the cost analysis didn’t work and I should stay home. And I’m a government lawyer. Without family to watch kids, how do people do it?
16
I remember when H. Clinton was proposing that we lower the age at which free education/care begins to help families.
Deeply puzzling? Not really. A human infant needs one-on-one care for a long time. A human toddler is endlessly curious and ravenously demanding. Kindergartners and elementary school kids needs a lot of reassurance, hugs and help with homework. Middle-schoolers and high-schoolers must navigate grotesquely complicated terrain, just to comb their hair the 'right way'. Yes, it gets easier as independence is achieved, but lots of women have weighed the costs-financially as well as (literally) physically, and decided, The heck with it, I'll take a few years to make sure the babies get my energy, reemerge when there's a bus to get them to school, and save my sanity. The family will gather it's riches in a few years, not right now. We'll prosper in other ways. We can sometimes do a lot and strike a pretty fair balance in the meanwhile. A person's happiness index and private calculations about what makes sense isn't always about the money.
149
Where are the fathers? Why aren’t they choosing to prioritize spending time with their kids? Please don’t participate in the glib assumption that caring for kids is a women’s matter.
1
@Rabble
You live on a resort island where theoretically life is more relaxed and there is much less need for expensive clothes, fancy cars, etc. One reason many people move to tropical islands!
1
My wife left her excellent, career paced job 18 years ago at the request of our then 6 year old daughter who was having some issues. We determined we could make it on my salary alone and took the plunge, no looking back, raised two great kids. She, of course, handled most of the child rearing (I was the working dad, after all) but i was lucky enough to be available to coach both girls in various sports, be at their games, events, shows, dinner every single night, etc, it all worked out and a few years ago my wife was thrilled to go back to work, although part time and locally. There are many, many factors that can go into this not the least of which is the well being of the children who simply miss their parent. If a parent is lucky enough to be able to stay home and raise a child, or two, or more, kudos to them, the payoff can be amazing.
Having a kid does, indeed, change everything in ways you can never imagine, guessing at the reasons one parent drops out of the workforce and looking for "solutions" is kind of silly. Universal child care might just help, I suppose.
32
Excellent article. However, "As women do more paid work, men have not increased their child care and housekeeping tasks to the same extent ".
I can only speak for my own last 20 years of child rearing as the male partner. I did essentially all the cooking, did all the shopping, made all the lunches, managed the investment strategy, and, coached both my daughters soccer team and my son's baseball team for years and attended all swim meets, helped with homework, and worked full time and taught college at night. My wife did the laundry and bill payment and pursued a very good career.
I definitely did ( more than) my fair share of the work as the Dad including changing thousands of diapers. Most definitely. I think a lot of guys do.
However, if you ask the wives themselves, you may not get a correct perspective since, for them, raising kids feels like a lot of work, and, women's own work is magnified in their own minds relative to their husbands contributions.
Women magnify, inside their own minds, their own contribution relative to reality. No joke. At least my wife does. And, when queried, they will not own up to the actual share of work their guys actually do. In women culture, it is not appropriate, at all, to say: My man does all the work and I have an easy life. No woman would say that no matter how many women it is true for.
33
@Michael I suspect you're a rarity. Among most of the couples with kids that I see, the women do a large majority of the household work and child care, regardless of whether they work outside the home. I think the lack of help with chores and picking up the kids is the reason many women default to staying home.
My husband is helpful with some particular chores, but he tends to expect tons of praise if he does something out of the ordinary, whereas I just do it.
239
@Michael, not sure it's fair to say that "Women magnify, inside their own minds, their own contribution relative to reality," which implies women are intrinsically delusional. Perhaps your wife is, but please save the put-down for her, not 50% of the human population. That said, it indeed sounds like you're a rarity. I'm 40, and most of my female friends with kids are happy if their husbands contribute meaningful help. Few complain, but of course I'm clued in that moms are doing most the work, especially when I'm buddies with both husband and wife and see with my own eyes who's always doing housework when I visit, and who's watching TV; or which one can't go out due to childcare. This is especially when one counts beyond the day-to-day: scheduling doctor's appointments, going to parent/teacher conferences, shopping for back-to-school; registering kids for camp and swim lessons, ensuring kids have what they need for said camp and lessons, as well as field trips and family vacations. That women are raised to be more emotionally nurturing also means we often feel we need to be there for kids to talk it out after a bad day, or to console after a tantrum; whereas men might be more apt to let kids work it out or deal with their feelings themselves. I'm not weighing in on what approach, if any, is best, but I'll say that one takes more time.
49
@Michael This comment is crazy.... patriarchy …. if women had it so much better than men why aren't more men begging for the lives the women have... everyone wants to work and procreate successfully.. men just get away still with saying 'we' made the decision or me to get mine at her expense.. it true progressive culture this only passes for what it is.. patriarchy and slavery... the left lacks the passion of a feminism that will say this.. and the right... lol
4
Are long as we, as a society, do not appreciate the incredible sacrifice parents make to perpetuate our species and produce future tax payers, of course this trend will continue. If we view children and their parenting as annoyances that need to be overlooked, or as vehicles for criticism, we diminish their hard work further. People who have babies are keeping us all going and we need to be grateful and treat them with more respect and care. How about a “thank you” to everyone you know who’s been through that particular trial by fire? It’s really hard, and they deserve a little appreciation!
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The article talks about the big increase in childcare that parents (mostly mother's) put in today compared to the past. Bit it's not clear that all this extra parenting is helping to create productive tax payers. The past few generations are more anxious and have delayed all the markers of adulthood.
I do research on the job market and the largest complaints by employers these days are about a lack of professionalism, ability to take on responsibility, and basic communication skills. I have had many employers tell me stories about parents calling to check in after their child's job interview.
I respect the fact that children need parenting, but a little less doting on the part of parents caught up in the mommy wars might be better for everyone.
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@Jenn I think their lack of professionalism and basic communication skills is the public schools' fault. My kids were all college oriented, but never had a single class that taught what was required on the job or even how to address an envelope. When my daughter started work I had to help her with her wardrobe and give her professional advice and she graduated from a top university with an economics degree! My youngest is still in college, but his major (engineering) requires all the students to attend twice yearly job fairs. They make sure they know how to dress and give them advice on their resumes. Much better!
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@The Lorax
The sociologist Nancy Folbre once commented that our society tends to regard children like pets--having them being a purely personal matter not calling for any support from the wider society. Hence employers often ignore the needs of families, schools set hours at odds with standard work schedules, high quality child care is prohibitively costly and often scarce, and so on. We could enact more supportive policies instead of regarding these issues as merely personal problems for families to struggle with (as so many comments here seem to). My hunch is that when we finally achieve a sizable bloc of women in public office, 30% or more, we'll see much more attention given to policies that relieve some of the enormous, and counterproductive, stresses on families. Lorax is right: We all depend on parents to raise the healthy, productive next generation. It's shortsighted not to make the investments that help parents do this well and without crushing levels of stress.
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