Numbers of SAHMs increasing
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| Sun, 10-12-2003 - 3:41pm |
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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PJM, I'm sure you in particular would understand - when a lawyer has responsibility for a litigation case, there are a wide variety of tasks to handle - dealing with the clients, opposing counsel, conducting discovery, arguing in court, and researching and writing motions. If I were to be PT, there's no way I'd be doing anything other than researching and writing, and possibly only snippets of briefs at that. I LIKE having responsibility for the whole case, and my strengths are largely in the areas I wouldn't get to do if I were PT. It would be like teasing myself if I got to do one little piece but was left out of the rest of the "good stuff." I am a perfectionist in that I am not satisfied with doing something halfway - it just wouldn't be fun for me. I'd be at work feeling bad because I would be missing out on stuff I wanted to do at home, and if I were at home I'd be feeling I'd be missing out on stuff I wanted to do at work. Like I said, I wouldn't find that satisfying. My perfectionism is manifested in preferring to do one thing, and do it with all my might, rather than trying to have my irons in several different fires and not be able to do what I wanted to do with any of them. No issue regarding teamwork per se at all.
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PS, LOL at your favorite quote - my attitude is similar, might have something to do with our lowered centers of gravity, LOL!
You said:
This is absolutely true for me...I could not have articulated it better. Thank you for your great self-expression.
You're close this time, but still not quite. I'll try again. "Teamwork" got dragged into this by Hank as a misunderstanding of something admittedly a little vague in my post. Perfectionism interfering with teamwork *would* be just as you described, something like "I don't think anyone else can do it as well as I could, therefore I'll take my cookies and go home." That's not me. I worked with supremely qualified people, I'm not so arrogant as to think that others couldn't do it as well as I could. (And many of them did it better - I wouldn't have found it exciting to work where I did if I hadn't had such respect for them!) I often wanted to, and did do, things at work in team situations. That's both necessary and pleasant the vast majority of the time. (Well, there were definitely SOME people I'd rather have my teeth drilled than work with - I'm sure others thought the same of me.) What I have is perfectionism in the sense of not being satisfied unless I have the *power to do things precisely the way I want* to do them. I had gotten to that level of authority on several of the cases I had been working on before DS was born. Working PT would have meant giving up the ability to choose when, how, and even if to do things for those cases, to the point of giving someone else about 85% of the good stuff *I* would be wanting to do - plus I would have to give up doing a lot of the good stuff I wanted to do with and for DS - so it would be very far from being able to do things *precisely the way I want* to do them, either at home OR at work. It simply wouldn't matter to me that I likely could find someone to do *as good* a job in either place - the loss of the freedom to choose what, how, when, etc. I did what I did would be be what was *imperfect* and unsatisfying.
Clearer? (I'm trying!)
PS - my deepest sympathies re: the anniversary of the loss of mother. I can't even imagine.
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Thanks for the PS - this time of year is very difficult. I keep waiting for it to get better....
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