Posted on 03/31/2005 4:39:28 PM PST by Lorianne
When I was at college in the ‘80s (and a feisty, liberal-arts women’s college it was), the notion of staying home with your kids was, shall we say, unpopular. Why spend four expensive years preparing for your supposedly brilliant career if you weren’t going to put the kids where God and feminism intended them: in daycare?
So it’s been fascinating to watch the pendulum swing the other way the last 15 years, as women of my generation and older faced the untold frustrations of trying to work full time and raise a family. Injuries to the number of women whose heads hit the glass ceiling soared.Credit card interest out of control?
In her 1997 landmark book “The Second Shift,” Arlie Hochschild reported that most women who worked full time still did most of the housework. Many others found they were working to pay for child care, so they could keep working -- to pay for child care.
No wonder more and more of us began to reconsider the stay-at-home option, or variations thereof (flextime, working from home, extended maternity leave, etc.). As Mary Snyder, co-author of “You Can Afford to Stay Home With Your Kids,” told me, “It’s a total priority shift. Women don’t want the Supermom Syndrome. It looked great from the outside, but once you were in it, you were miserable and you couldn’t excel at anything.”
I’ve ridden the waves of maternal angst with the rest of my peers, and the stay-at-home option has always appealed. Plus, I’m a writer (I said to myself), so I could always work while the little tyke naps. I wouldn’t even have to lose much professional ground. You know: “Writer Wins Pulitzer During Naptime.” Mmhmm.
(Excerpt) Read more at moneycentral.msn.com ...
No one went to college to put their kids in day care. We did it as defense against divorce. College, not daycare.
sahm ping
So you don't get to keep your benefits if you leave the workforce. That's working your whole life and dying before you collect social security.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Not buying the $1 million. Sure, there may be rare cases that can be made, but the article makes it sound like a slam-dunk "average".
"Cost of being a stay-at-home mom: $1 million "
And what is the "cost" to the children and their upbringing by not having one parent at home? Is it WORTH $1 million?
Families would have more money, work less, and be able to have one parent stay at home if we didn't have such a progressive tax system....
I went to college so I could support myself. There was no guarantee that I was going to get married. I now stay home with my kids. I figure the education I have will also be a benefit to them.
The most important job is motherhood. No children, no future.
We have had an excellent demonstration in our company of why the so-called glass ceiling exists --women who rose to positions of corporate responsibility, got themselves pregnant, then left the company to raise their children.
In one year, we lost a president, an HR manager, a production manager and a couple of writers and graphic designers.
Once bitten, twice shy...
Price of being there for the children? Price of having a happy, strong family? Priceless!!
I can believe it. Say a woman is out of the workforce for 15 years, foregoing a $30,000 salary, then returns to work for 20 years but her salary is $10,000 less than it would otherwise have due to her lesser experience. That's $650,000 already, and assuming a halfway decent interest rate you can easily get to $1 million. Of course you could argue with any of those assumptions, but it seems to be in the right ballpark.
Hmmm...my second income doesn't benefit anyone. I don't have kids. I tell you the 16th ammendment is the problem.
A more realistic view is from one professional relative who is a working Mom because she enjoys her career for its intellectual stimulation. She says that if she added up the cost of day care, taxes, work wardrobe, restaurant meals, and all the other costs, she would barely earn anything. (And this is an MD researcher).
So, the $1m figure probably looks only at gross pay forgone, and not all the associated costs of earning that pay.
Good luck with that! My husband is one, also.
I think a lot of husbands/wives both work to support their overleveraged, lavish lifestyles. The nice new cars, the big fancy homes, etc. If they lived within their means, they could have a stay at home mom on this tax system.
The most important job is motherhood. No children, no future.
&&
Exactly.
So sad to see this author talking about how rough it is on the mother to be in the workforce while the kids are in daycare. What about the effects on the children who are left with strangers for 8 hours or more each day?
Priceless!!
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You said it!
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