Sometimes a trend sneaks up on you. In this case, I know more and more new parents who are choosing to stay at home with their newborn babies, instead of hiring a caretaker and heading back to work. I applaud this decision of my stay-at-home mom friends, and they should be valued monetarily as well as emotionally. A new study even placed a monetary value on the work that staying home with young children is worth. It adds up!
Stay-At-Home Moms Are On The Rise
An estimated 24 percent of mothers in the U.S. are stay-at-home moms, which is up 9 percent from 2022, according to Motherly’s State of Motherhood 2023 Survey Report. Forbes quotes Pew research that puts that number of parents choosing to stay at home to raise young children even higher, at 27 percent.
All the studies agree that once kids get to school age, the moms want to return to the workforce and take jobs outside the home. At the point when everyone is at school for most of the day, many women have transitioned from being full-time at-home moms to being full-time-outside-the-home career people.
The Cost of Childcare is So High, Most Jobs Barely Cover It
The main reason given for the growth of SAHMs is that the cost of child care has risen (52 percent reported), while the possibility of WFH and also taking care of a child is more doable now (64 percent said), due to flexible meeting schedules. Plus, 67 percent of parents say they are paying well over than $1,000 monthly on child care.
If you want to stay home with your child, it should be possible, either due to extended family leave from an employer or a massive tax break from the government. That’s what some countries do.
Many countries now provide extensive paid maternity leave, such as the Czech Republic (28 weeks), Hungary (24 weeks), Italy (5 months), Canada (17 weeks), and Spain (16 weeks). Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all provide extensive paid leave which either parent can take, while in the US the norm is 12 weeks unpaid.
Whether it was the pandemic, where we got used to the WFH flex schedules, or the economy, which made room for gig work, of a shift in the parenting perspectives of young 30-somethings (whose moms mostly went to work) the trend is to stay at home as a parent. Even more dads are choosing to stay home, the latest Pew study reports.
How Much Is a Stay-At-Home Parents’ Job Worth?
Stay at home parents work just as much if not more hours than someone who has a 9 to 5 job, the study found. (Of course someone with a day job outside the home and kids at home does a double shift, since when you get home you start the dinner, bath, bedtime ritual that are all part of your children’s routine.) That was me, and I loved doing it since it gave me the sense of being a hands-on mom, but here is what the Pew research found:
A stay-at-home parent of two does roughly 200 hours of cleaning, shopping, cooking, childcare and other tasks monthly. In cities such as New York, LA, DC, Chicago or San Francisco, that would cost you between $4,000 and $5,200 a month.
Over 20 years, you’d have to spend $1 million to get the same services from a third-party. Moms? Are you listening? You are worth more than your weight in gold! But it’s not just the moms who are now pitching in to make breakfast and deliver the kids to school neat and tidy, with homework done and in hand. Dads now represent 19% of stay-at-home parents, Pew Research Center found.
Appreciation for Stay-At-Home Moms
The best way to show appreciation for someone is to pay them what they are worth. For me, as a mom-at-the-office I benefited from tax breaks for early child care such as preschool and such. As we look at ways to pay moms back who stay at home with their kids, they should get tax breaks that essentially repay them for their time, since it’s likely they don’t get “paid” by their spouse or other family member. We do a lot for each other, the moms and friends and family members who help us survive and our kids thrive, when it comes to styles of parenting.
But one thing we could do better as a country is make it clear that we value everyone’s choices, whether it be to stay-at-home with a youngster or go outside to work. Me? I not only loved to work and the job of running magazines for decades while raising my two kids, but I had to work to afford a life that I chose to live, which included going on vacation, living in Manhattan, and sending the kids to private schools.
Staying at Home Was Not a Choice for Me
There was no moment when I could have stayed home and gotten by on a single earning family budget, since sending our kids to private school felt like a necessity (a debate for another time), and also to get them out of the city for summer camp and other programs that allowed them to live wholesome lives in the city. Yes, these are lifestyle choices but I made them so I had to pay for them.
My day job (outside the home) was both remunerative and satisfying and honestly I was better at it than I would have been parenting full time. Ultimately as much as I love and adored my kids, I realized quickly that I am not a patient person. The sitter who helped raised my kids during the day and watched them until I got home for dinner was both more kind, loving and patient than I have a tendency to be when faced with the prospect of staying home and wwatching my kids all day every day.
I was good for weekends and evenings, mornings and holidays, ,but by the time I got to my desk in the morning I was happy to be there and knew my strengths lay elsewhere, in running teams and in editorial strategy. I had a mind for the media and not for blocks, Barbie and all of the other child-centric play and learning that the kids needed from an adult in the room.
I say: Know your strengths, be generous and appreciative to the people who help you raise your kids, and appreciate the stay-at-home mom who is a hero and deserves to get paid like one.
For more helpful work and career advice and content like this visit The Advice Pages Work Life articles. Have a topic you need advice on? Please post a question or DM us @advicepages.For more helpful work and career advice and content like this visit The Advice Pages Work Life articles. Have a topic you need advice on? Please post a question or DM us @advicepages.
Leave a Reply