<p>This article got my dander up: [Stay-at-Home</a> Moms, You May Believe You Left the Workforce by Choice, But Did You? - Careers Articles](<a href=“AOL - Finance News & Latest Business Headlines - AOL.com”>AOL - Finance News & Latest Business Headlines - AOL.com). I chose to stay home for many reasons, and I am smart enough to know why I chose to stay home. The fact that my employer might not have been flexible enough for me to work & raise my kids was not a factor for me … and I actually do know that for a fact. </p>
<p>I think it would be helpful for parents (both moms & dads) to have more flexibility in their jobs, but I know that not every company can provide this flexibility. Those that do will probably be very attractive to parents who want to (or must) work & raise a family. But the fact remains that many moms (and dads, too! :)) choose to stay home because that is what they want to do … not what they are stuck doing.</p>
<p>This isn’t really a big issue in the scheme of things, but I am feel just grumpy enough today that it rubbed me the wrong way. ;)</p>
<p>It’s not a matter of being “too dumb,” but women do figure workplace-related factors into the choice.</p>
<p>In my case, one reason for staying home was that my husband and I weren’t planning to move, and the only jobs in my field were in a major city a 90-minute commute away. The commute had been acceptable to me as a non-parent, but I didn’t want to continue to do it after I had a child.</p>
<p>Might I have kept my job if I had been able to work at home two or three days a week and only do that commute on the other days? Maybe, if my husband’s employer (ten minutes from home) could have coped with the fact that it would be Dad who would deal with calls from the school nurse, etc., two or three days a week. But it’s a moot point because partial telecommuting wasn’t available then, anyway.</p>
<p>Edited to add: My current employer is family friendly beyond my wildest dreams back in the 1980s. But my kids are grown, and I no longer need the flexibility.</p>
<p>It’s a badly-written article, and possibly a badly-designed study, if the authors really went into it with their conclusion foregone. I think that many polls are flawed in the same way: you get wildly different responses depending on how you phrase your questions. And I, too, resent very much anyone who assumes that they know me better than I do. The choice of whether or not to stay home with children is way, way more complicated and varied. It may be true that some people stay home because it is not possible for them to raise kids the way they want to raise their kids, in this culture, at this time, and work full-time as well: that is, there are negative pressures enacted by a workplace that does not support parents well enough to allow them to do what they consider to be a good enough job as a parent. It may be that some people accept those limitations as part of the capitalist imperative of our culture, and don’t fight them because they accept that imperative. The implication that they are either unaware or mistaken in that acceptance is insulting, and does overlook the possibility that some people choose to stay home from more positive visions of what it is to be a parent. It also assumes that no one with a “true” choice would actually want to stay home, and that staying home is less desirable, since it is (obviously) a forced choice.</p>
<p>I agree with marysidney. The article is condescending and badly written, and perhaps the study is as well.</p>
<p>The first thing that caught my eye, however, was the statement that they thought discrimination against working mothers was as “prevalent as it ever was.” Well, there was a time when women lost their jobs if they became pregnant, so I think things are better now than they were then. Things are better now in many ways, but of course it is still difficult to juggle working outside the home and taking care of your family.</p>
<p>One of the big, big mistakes made by some of the spokespersons of the women’s movement in the 60s and 70s was to set up a false antagonism between stay-at-home moms and women working outside the home. This was similar to the big, big mistake made by some of the anti-war activists who maligned our soldiers coming back from Vietnam. Both of those things felt wrong to me at the time and I was right. (Not that I am always right about everything, but I was right about those two things.)</p>
<p>When I made the decision to stay home, it was not only because I wanted to be with my kids, but because after taxes, commuting costs and daycare I’d have only netted about $5k/year. Didn’t seem worth it.</p>
<p>BUT… what I neglected to take into account was that if I kept working, my salary would most likely have gone up and I’d have moved to positions of more responsibility. Then 10 - 15 years later I’d have had a “career” and been making decent money. Instead, when I re-entered the market I was basically starting over in entry-level positions, because it had been so long since I worked in the field that too many things had changed for my previous experience to mean much.</p>
<p>Do I regret the decision to stay home for 8 years, then work part-time while the kids were in school? NO</p>
<p>But I did underestimate the economic impact my choice would have on our family. Between H and I we now make a good income, but I’d be making significantly more money now than I am now if I had kept working. Also there’s a lot of things we’re just now buying (or doing to the house) that we could have done years ago if I had continued working. The cumulative difference was a heck of a lot more than $5k/year.</p>
<p>I absolutely understand what you are saying. I experienced the same thing, but I had many more years away from full time employment (19-1/2). However, I have always understood that my decision to stay home would result in a loss of income in the long run. I was okay with that, but like you I was not quite prepared for having to start over. Actually, I didn’t even “start over.” My first job out of college was a really good job in supervision with very good pay. So when I went back to work at 48 … having left the workforce before the internet was invented … I was at a bigger disadvantage than I ever could have anticipated. It has been frustrating to earn less than I did in 1984. But I left work because I wanted to leave, not because I felt I had no choice but to leave my job. I could have afforded a good nanny had I stayed at work, but I just didn’t want to do that. I resent the assumption the researchers seem to have made that the decision was not made with both eyes wide open.</p>
<p>I know what you mean Lafalum84. I would be in much better shape career-wise and my house would look a lot better right now if I had stayed working. I loved every minute of my stay-at-home time, and I left the workforce very willingly, but I do wish I could find a better job now. It’s hard to re-enter the workforce after 18 years, but it’s not like I didn’t know all this when I made the decision.</p>
<p>I had a pretty high profile, high paying “glamour” job when I choose not to return when my generous maternity leave was over. I have never regreted the decision, I am fully aware of the financial ramifications of the choice I have made and I am 100% satisfied in those decisions. I don’t consider my choices “dumb” but do I think this study is dumb.</p>
<p>I was very aware of why I left the work place. My job was not flexible enough for me to stay. I had started the mommy track a few years earlier because I hated being away from my oldest dd and I felt no need to stay after having my twins just shy of 40. </p>
<p>I don’t know how women do it well but I am not one of them to even try.</p>
<p>This is one of the single dumbest things I’ve ever read:</p>
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<p>Nearly every at-home mother I know talks about the lack of flexibility as a factor in why they are not in the work place. It certainly was a factor in my decision to be an at-home parent.</p>
<p>I did not get the point of the article. Few of us make any choices with all of the factors in consideration because it’s tough to get them all lined up at the time we make the decisions. Staying home to raise children is just one of those choices. </p>
<p>Any commitment is a problem when you are raising cihldren. They get sick and have needs regardless of what commitment a parent might have made. Having a job is a series of commitment so it becomes a continual problem.</p>
<p>I did flirt with the option of working part-time when my baby was born & H & I had each exhausted parental leaves. Employer said part-time was NOT available, so I opted to stay home full-time. I did do some work part-time on my own terms. It was OK but not as enjoyable as being full-time mom, so I did that instead and waited until the kids were older before working more hours part-time.</p>
<p>Have had held ONLY several part-time jobs since then & enjoyed them. Actually am NOT all that interested in going back to any full-time job as I LOVE the flexibility of part-time and am OK not to have benefits.</p>
<p>The idea that we’re too DUMB to know why we make the choices we make is offensive. Most of us know what the options are and weigh intelligently the pros & cons of those we are aware of to make the decision that works for us & our families. Why is this DUMB?</p>
<p>Lafalum, I made a similar calculation. After I figured in childcare, commuting, lunches, and work wardrobe needs, I was making about $2 per hour. And someone else was raising my child. And (sorry, authors of study, to throw in a non-economic factor) I cried every night.</p>
<p>I went home when D was 9 months old, and was able to find a series of minor work-at-home jobs which kept a tiny bit of extra money dribbling in, but no question, it was tough. We gave up alot, and will probably never quite catch up. We didn’t travel, our house doesn’t look like a magazine cover, we don’t have the best cars, and our retirement isn’t where it should be. But I still wouldn’t trade that precious, irreplaceable time with my child for anything in the world.</p>
<p>There are several young mothers where I work, and I see the anguish anytime their child is sick. I’m so grateful I never had to decide between keeping my boss happy and my job secure, and being with my baby who needed me. It’s terrible that anyone has to make that choice.</p>
<p>It is very wrong that young parents have to choose whether they keep their jobs or be with their sick kids. Our hospital has/had (haven’t kept track) of a program where they will watch sick kids, as long as they’re not highly contagious (like measles, mumps, chicken pox, I believe). That seemed to be a good program but I believe it was pretty expensive.</p>
<p>I am grateful that we were able to allow me to stay home with our kids while they were young, until they were pretty comfortably settled at school. This also gave me a lot more flexibility when both developed chronic health issues & I frequently had to shuttle them among DR visits & pick up their homework assignments from school when they were too ill to attend school.</p>
<p>We would have had a LOT more saved and had significantly more security if I had continued to work at least half-time, but I have NO regrets and loved the time I was able to spend raising our kids. It is amazing what kids pick up from their caregivers, whether its parents or others.</p>
<p>So many of the places that I worked at in the 80’s (before I had kids) were “family hostile”. When I had D in '91 I went back full time for almost 5 years, my own boss was terrific as was my department head, but overall the company was just so-so to working parents. (although due to the way the sick leave was structured, I was able to take a 3 month PAID maternity leave- don’t hate me for that!).</p>
<p>I ended up staying home for almost 11 years after S was born. I did enjoy it and don’t regret it. However, had workplaces been more family friendly and part-time more available, I very likely would have worked outside of the home.</p>
<p>The company I am at now is family friendly and I am glad to see that things are changing.</p>
<p>I did not feel insulted by this article, I simply feel that it is realistic. Just as many moms who return to work out of economic necessity do not really feel as if they had a choice, some moms who stay at home feel that they didn’t have a choice,either.</p>
<p>I hope we are past the point (now that it is 2011) of judging a woman if she chooses to work or stay at home. It’s such a personal choice and there are too many variables to say it’s only because of one thing. Articles like that are just annoying. To all the stay at home moms … cheers! To all the moms that work … cheers. To all of us having a ladies night out once in a while … extra cheers.</p>
It is amazing what kids pick up from their caregivers, whether its parents or others.</p>