Numbers of SAHMs increasing

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Numbers of SAHMs increasing
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Sun, 10-12-2003 - 3:41pm
Interesting article in the Globe today about Gen-Xers, SAHMs, and how their numbers are increasing.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2003/10/12/stay_at_home_mothers_finding_theyre_not_alone/

Stay-at-home mothers finding they're not alone

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff, 10/12/2003

FRANKLIN -- It's morning on Greystone Road, and the routine looks like a flashback to a 1950s neighborhood: Fathers jump into their cars for a day's work, while their wives, holding babies and toddlers, wave goodbye. But on this block of $200,000 split-level and ranch homes, the women insist they are not modern-day housewives. All of them, they point out, graduated from college and worked for at least a decade before having their first child in their early 30s.

"We are our own generation," said Rebecca McLean, 32, a former personnel recruiter who stays home with her 6-month-old son, Derek. "We're doing it our way."

These residents of Greystone Road are part of a new shift in family life: More married couples with young children rely on their husband's income. After years of increases in the number of working mothers, census figures show the first significant rise in stay-at-home moms. In 1998, 41.3 percent of mothers with infants stayed home with their children; in 2000, the figure rose to 44.8 percent.

The trend is clear on Greystone Road. Stay-at-home mothers and full-time working fathers occupy four of six homes. Retirees own the other two.

Even though the women earned more than enough money to boost their families' total income and cover day-care costs, the parents on this block chose to cope with the financial pinch. For example, they sacrificed having a bigger house to be at home with their children.

The fathers, too, say they are far from being the Ward Cleavers of 2003 -- quick to change diapers and wash dishes, and equal partners with their wives in trying to offer the best life for their children.

"We all married when we were older," said Mark Collins, 41, He is an occupational safety manager who, with his wife, Christine, 34, have a toddler, Allison. "I lived in the North End for 13 years, eating out whenever I wanted. Now it's homebody time."

The increase in stay-at-home mothers is most pronounced among college graduates as well as white and Hispanic women. There also is a rise of stay-at-home mothers for older children. Last year, 10.6 million children under 15 in two-parent homes were raised by stay-at-home mothers, up 13 percent in slightly less than a decade, census figures show.

Researchers have identified Generation Xers, now loosely defined as those in their 20s and 30s, as leading the way in taking on this more frugal -- and, they hope, less frazzled -- lifestyle. If they cannot afford to rely on one income, or both parents choose to work, many are demanding flexible work schedules or limited hours to help meet their children's needs.

Today's new mothers feel less need to wave the banner of feminism, and "staying at home is more culturally acceptable," said Stacia Ragolia, a vice president at iVillage.com, a popular website for women.

"If they work, it may be that they have something to prove to themselves, but it's not about proving something about women's role in society," said Michelle Poris, a director at Yankelovich, a national marketing research firm, who has tracked differences between Generation X and baby-boomer parents.

In addition, while some Generation X parents may leave the work force because of the nation's poor economy, many others arrive at this decision because "they're nostalgic for something they never had" in their own upbringing, Poris said.

This generation, they say, grew up with peak divorce rates, high maternal employment, and expanding day care, and are well-versed in the crushing body of literature about the pros and cons of each trend.

The Greystone Road parents also are part of a generation that has put in many years of full-time work and had a long time to think about how to raise their children. The average American woman now has her first child at age 25, compared with age 21 in 1970. In Massachusetts, the average age a woman has her first child is 28.

After watching her divorced mother raise eight children by herself, one stay-at-home mother on Greystone Road said she was determined to carve out a different life for her two young daughters. "I wanted to make sure I had a good marriage and found someone who had the same values as I did," said Julie, 39, who asked that her last name not be used.

New approaches toward family life are starting to influence the way companies peddle products. Increasingly, companies are introducing distinct advertising campaigns aimed at Generation X parents, instead of offering what one marketer called "warmed-over boomer campaigns." In launching its new 2004 Nissan Quest minivan, company officials began ads with the slogan, "Moms have changed." In these commercials, women drivers are depicted without children, using the minivan's storage space for their own guitars, surfboards, or horse saddles.

The ads don't differentiate between working or stay-at-home mothers, but are designed to get away from the "soccer mom" stereotype often associated with baby-boomer women.

"We are speaking to the woman behind the mom," said Kim McCullough, Nissan's senior manager for marketing.

Companies throughout the country are waking up to the distinctive attitudes held by Generation X parents, from how they juggle work and family to how they spend vacation money, said James Chung, who operates Reach Advisors in Boston, a youth-oriented market-research business. This past week, Chung, 37 and a father of two, started a national survey of his own generation's attitudes toward family life and children.

He has speculated that the recent shutdown of the women's professional soccer league can be blamed, in part, on marketers' failing to recognize that today's parents need fresh promotional campaigns, not ones in which they are lumped with all the other "soccer moms."

Along Greystone Road in Franklin, residents said they don't see themselves as trying to make any collective statement. They had never met until they each moved, one by one, onto this small residential street.

In fact, when Christine Collins first moved into the neighborhood in 2000, the 31-year-old teacher worried she would be lonely when she would finally stay home after her first child was born. There was no one in the neighborhood in her age group.

But by the spring of 2001, the McLeans and then the Cunninghams -- married couples in their 30s with no children -- had moved in. Within the last three years, each couple had a child, and Christine Cunningham is expecting a second. During this time, another couple, who had two toddler girls, moved in.

In their morning chats in the yard these days, the mothers occasionally talk politics, though mostly they talk about who slept through the night and other family topics. The husbands also have gotten to know each other. Scott McLean, 35, a controller at a Boston advertising company, is getting home renovation tips from contractor Colin Cunningham, his 32-year-old neighbor.

Each couple says they expect they may someday want two incomes to help support the cost of a larger home and more vacations, as well as their children's college educations. The women hope their decision to stop work doesn't set them too far back in their professions.

For now, however, they save money watching for store sales, and sometimes going to secondhand children's clothing stores. They see their division of labor -- mom staying home, dad going to work -- as the right decision.

"For this generation, it's a choice," said Jill Cunningham, 33, a former executive assistant who lives in her two-bedroom ranch with her husband, Colin, and their 22-month-old son, Luke. "My husband and I are both conscious of that. He doesn't come back at the end of the day, stick his feet on the couch, and expect dinner."

Patricia Wen can be reached at wen@globe.com.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.




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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 12:10pm
Thank you, Hollie!! i thought she was telling me she can light candles and veg in the bathtub as a litigater. i was on the internet looking into how to become one. i know at my job, i am responsible for producing for my company, not myself, so that time is not ever "me" time. when i sah with my kids, i would put in an educational video if i wanted to catch an article in a magazine. that is not to imply i used the tv as a babysitter, as i was far from that type of sahm. i was very attentive to my children, but i had waaay more "me" time while i sah than i do woh.

p.s. plz pass the "Queen of Sarcasm crown". thank you, very much.

beth

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 12:44pm
OTOH, I would definitely count the lunch and coffe breaks as "me" time at work, especially since I spend most of my lunch hours with dh and good friends (ok, that might be an odd quirk due to the fact that dh and most of my friends work at the same company :-)). I am required by the company to schedule in 50 minutes of lunch every day (not counted towards worked hours) and am allowed 30 minutes total per day for coffee breaks (counted as part of worked hours). Coffee breaks are really cool we do breakfasts on mondays and cakes on fridays, people rotate the responsibility. Soon we'll be getting a new coffee room with a balcony and a view....definitely feels like "me" time to me :-).


Laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2003
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 12:51pm
rofl at your sig sue!
Hollie

Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.  Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense and choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2003
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 12:53pm

That depends on the job. I work through lunch almost daily. I have lunch "meetings" at least weekly (Monday is executive committe meeting ... BORING). And I don't take breaks; I'm just too busy working for my company to do that.


Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.  Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense and choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 1:02pm
I think it is a bit a matter of culture. People at my company would have a rather poor opinion of someone who didn't take often take part in the coffee breaks and a good rest at lunch. It is considered vital down-time that should help people become more productive over-all and better team players. Bizarre I know :-). But I know that I would be much less effective and productive in the end if I couldn't take at least some of those breaks. My work is so finicky and physically exhausting (at times) that I need a chance to shake it all out every couple of hours or so....


laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 1:21pm
Absolutely not complaining, but neither can I, unless DH is home or DS is at school, unless I'm letting the TV or the computer babysit, which is not something I'm much inclined to do - or the book is something DS wants to hear too, of course! Well, I sometimes do get to visit with friends, esp. when those friends have kids too. (Oooh, the dreaded "entertainment thing," LOL!) (What's 'visit BOB,' BTW?) Certainly I usually have more flexibility to plan what order I do things in, which is a definite benefit of SAH.

I've gotta say, the world would be a better place if there were more employees like you who are consciencious about their time there being the company's time. I've certainly worked at a lot of places where people treated their "work" time as their time to read magazines, do their nails, make long-distance calls to everyone they knew at company expense, gossip over the water cooler, have a drink over lunch, be on this board a shocking (to me) amount of time (I'd definitely have been fired!), yadda yadda yadda. C'mon, admit it, you know these folk too.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2003
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 1:38pm

I can see that. Breaks are important because it gives people down time which helps them concentrate and not get burned out and are, therefore, more productive. We are a small office however. So even without breaks we get that same socialization. (Our Exec Asst and I are always talking through the wall at each other ... lol)


And, my office provides sodas for the staff so that they're less likely to leave the office for a break. lol


Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.  Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense and choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 1:40pm
That was another weird cultural thing I hadn't been aware of until an American collegue came over to our group for a couple of months and was truly shocked by the two coffee breaks and extended lunches (50-60 minutes usually, though not counted as work time). She just couldn't get into the habit of it and thought that people were shockingly wasting their company's time....until she realised a major difference between her American group and my group: namely that people in my group, outside of the set breaks, tended to work in a very focussed and usually silent manner. There was no chit-chat, no goofing around, very little web-surfing. The time was really spent working. Her American group tended to take rushed sandwich lunches at the desk and coffee there as well, but there was plenty of chatting around the water-cooler (so to speak) and a lot of non-work related conversation going on throughout the day. The silence in the labs kind of unnerved her a bit in the beginning, I think :-).

Laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2003
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 1:42pm

Well, I admit, I do post on these boards a lot from work. But then, as a salaried employee I do a lot of work after hours and from home that I don't get *directly* paid for, so its a wash. I've had people on this board say "An employee shouldn't do anything personal on work time. I'd fire people who did." to which my reply is "Then an person shouldn't do anything workrelated on personal time. " lol


And I don't necessarily think SAHMs get "me" time during the day. Many are fully busy with non-me stuff all day. But, I just can't support the notion that WOH IS me time.


Yep, I know those folk you're talking about. But it has nothing to do with WOH. Those same poeple would be the ones eating bon-bons and watching soaps if they SAH.


Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.  Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense and choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Sun, 10-19-2003 - 2:05pm
"I've had people on this board say "An employee shouldn't do anything personal on work time. I'd fire people who did." to which my reply is "Then an person shouldn't do anything workrelated on personal time. " lol"


Oh so true!! I can't count the number of outside hours that dh and I have spent on journal reading, talk preparations, heck even most of our evening casual conversations tend to revolve around work issues and we often give each other tips and possible solutions. That should all be counted as work time, imo :-).


Laura

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