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: 08-29-2002
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 3:19pm
Well, we are neither of us at a university so that saves us an enormous amount of grant chasing :-). I have to say, though, that neither of us ever worked really crazy hours even when we didn't have kids and were at a university, and most researchers who are in the lab 12+ hours a day are usually, ime, wasting quite a bit of time on non work-related things (chatting and internet surfing being the top 2 things to do :-)). Some of dh's best papers came out of his absolutely laziest post-doc: he happened to hit on an excellent topic that was in fashion at the time and got really good results fast...often that is all it takes. There are periods when I do spend a few hours on the weekend in the lab for several weekends in a row. I find that the key for us to being successful at what we do is not necessarily to devote every waking hour to research, it is more a matter of being prepared to be very flexible. I have a lot of days where I run over my normal working hours and I have a fair number of working weekends, but then I do take a lot of time off when things slow down. The same goes for dh.

We have very close friends who are on the university track, aiming for tenure, and they still manage to find a pretty good balance between work and family. They live very close to their work and dc and swap off the drop-off and pick-up of the kids so that the kids are in dc from about 8:30 or so to 5, while the parents swap off working later (usually until 7pm) They also take a good amount of vacation every year, and they still have an impressive 3-4 paper per year publication rate as well as having landed some very prestigious grants.

I think for the most part when it comes to science you are right...people rarely take off so much time. The reasons I did had to do more with circumstances than my actual intention. OTOH, in Sweden, most people take off at least a year and it is not always the mother. One of the group leaders in my department took off a year and a half to be at home with her daughter. One of the IT guys (with a PhD) took off 6 months to SAH with his son. I think that it is surprisingly easier to get back into the "feel" of research after a long break than people realise. Many fields don't change that fast and all it might take to make the transition back easier is just keeping up with the literature at home.

Whew!! And that was probably more than you ever wanted to know about scientific research :-).

Laura

Avatar for mjdphd
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 3:24pm
My experiences also formed my life. My mother worked for a time and stayed at home for a time, but it was clear that she liked working. However, never did we take that as any indication that she liked it better than she liked us. I felt about the same about her when she worked as when she stayed at home. She wasn't a baking cookies kind of mom anyway. I taught myself how to bake when I was older. When we were younger, we were home with a nanny, who was wonderful BTW, we spent the summers at our beach house, and when we were older, we came home by ourselves. None of my sisters or I ever turned into a wild child. We came home, did our homework, made dinner, and that was it, except for the days when we had activities. I am sorry that you felt that you missed out when your mother worked, but my sisters and I never did. It is not the work status that gives the child the feeling of security, it is the parenting. My mom did a pretty good job.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 3:33pm
I have known a few very educated women who either went to full-time SAH right after the first child or else worked the first few years and then went to ft SAH when the kids were in school (they felt that kids tended to do very well in a good dc setting but really benefitted from having a parent at home in the afternoons when they were older). OTOH, practically everyone I know here are scientists and all of their kids have SAH for at least 1 year, usually 1.5 to 2 years. The parents have usually swapped-off a bit, though the mothers have tended to take more time off than the fathers. They have always taken this time as serious full-time SAH, nothing on the side. I don't think this is quite the same thing as you are thinking of, though, as it is always seen as a short-term thing, not really a life-style change, and all of them have gone back to their old jobs and kept in very close touch with the lab the entire time.

"I'll also take this opportunity to tell you I enjoy reading your posts, BTW."

*blush* thanks! I don't always feel like I am making very much sense :-).


Laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2003
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 3:46pm
You're right. In almost everything, it's what you make it.

It's hard, though. We were out most of this past weekend at this "fall festival." When we got back, there was this message on our answering machine from one of my dh's coworkers asking my dh for some assistance. Let me back up. My dh is a junior faculty at a University (not science science, but in research). He's been working on this grant and this guy who called was one of the "minor" guys on the team. My dh had written this final piece of the grant and his mentor/PI had asked this other guy to edit it. I don't know the particular reason why he was asked, but I assume it's because he couldn't get a hold of my dh. (This PI works non stop).

So I told my dh that he should give out his cell phone number so that he can be reached on the weekend. My dh said, "absolutely not." He doesn't want work to interrupt his "family time."

I understand what he's saying and it's good that he feels that way, but I can't help but wonder what impact this attitude will have on his career.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 4:07pm
I think I would be with you on the reachable part. Even when I am at home with sick kids or taking a vacation day, I always make sure that I am reachable. My department has a website where every number, including the cell phone number, is listed for everyone LOL. But then we never have managed to completely seperate out "family" and "work" time. Even our private "dh and me" conversation time tends to revolve around science stuff :-). OTOH, we have never been shy about taking off when there were slow-downs. This year the kids ended up having about 12 weeks vacation, we split some of the vacation time, but most was taken as a family.


Laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 4:17pm
How does that relate?

1)If a parent doesn't have a higher education she can still relay the importance of higher education to children.

So you mean to say by comparison

2)If a parent isn't home all day they can still relay the importance of being home all day to a child?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 4:20pm
Right up there with a childs realization that a parent couldn't stand to be away from them.

I don't think any child on the face of the planet ever ever suffered from a realization that there are things Mommy likes to do other than Mommy things related to and in the presence of a child. I think they suffer when this isn't true.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 4:21pm
No.

If a parent isn't home all day, "here are an infinite number of ways to communicate to child that she is loved beyond all reason and that she is loved more than the job mommy goes to every day."

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 4:34pm
"I have no one other than my nanny and paid sitters to help with the kids. When they are both in school 30 hours a week? No problem. But at their ages, and with no family help, there's no way I'd SAH."

And there was another comment about not being able to stand the whining and fighting.

I'm not stretching and nowhere did I say that she couldn't 'ever' stand to be with her kids.

Also, as I've said again and again I would go a little nuts if I was with *anyone* 24/7. Luckily, even though I'm a sahm, I'm not with anyone 24/7. I think everyone appreciates having some alone time, however I couldn't ever imagine telling my kids that I needed to spend 9 hours away from them every day because I couldn't handle taking care of them during their waking hours without some sort of paid help.


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 10-20-2003 - 4:35pm
Again, please refer to my post where I directly countered your now repeated assertion that I HAVE to spend NINE hours a day away from my kids every day.

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