The Costs of Staying Home

According to author and Ph.D. Linda Hirshman, there has been a 15% increase in stay-at-home mothering in the last ten years. You might think that this statistic refers to low earning, less educated women working in entry-level positions, and you would be wrong. Hirshman ran a study using the couples who posted New York Times wedding announcements in 1996, the high-powered, Ivy League educated couples who have careers primarily in law, medicine, and academia. 85% of the wives were at home either half time or full time. Alternet.com also reports that “Half of the wealthiest, most-privileged, best-educated females in the country stay home with their babies rather than work in the market economy.” Montana.edu reported that 2003’s graduating class at Berkeley Law was 63% female. Women at Harvard Law were 46% of the graduating class in 2003, while Columbia Law graduated nearly 51%. So, women are being increasingly educated for success, and yet women comprise only 16% of law firm partners according to the American Bar Association. Similarly, women make up roughly 50% of undergraduate business majors nationwide, and yet only 16% of top level executives are female (only 10.6 percent of Wall Street’s corporate officers are women, and a mere nine are Fortune 500 CEOs). Where are these mid-career females? Do these headlines shock anyone besides me?

Should mothers work? The debate is hardly a new one. In 1900, only 5.3 million women were employed. Compare that to 18.4 million in 1950, and 63 million in 1997. The 1980s in particular saw droves of non-feminist working mothers entering the workforce, many unprepared by education or experience, compelled largely by divorce to take on the role of breadwinner for their young families. The 1980s brought us the term “latchkey children”, along with a marked rise in district funded after-school programs. Throughout the 80s and 90s, popular culture contrasted the warm, maternal stay at home mom with the cold, modern careerist. Mothers suffered from a collective guilt as the child psychologists advised them to take time off to raise their young children. Dr. James Dobson of radical right wing Christian organization Focus on the Family says of Linda Hirshman and her fellow supporters of working motherhood, “Most of these (radical feminist) writers…had never been married,” Dobson said. “They didn’t like children and deeply resented men.” This seemed to be a running diatribe from the mouths of televangelists and radio preachers. Do working mothers hate men and love their children less that their stay-at-home counterparts? It seems hardly likely. And yet, for those with the luxury of choice, how was a loving mother to choose her path?

The point that is clear to almost all critical observers of culture is that stay-at-home mothers are not sitting on the couch with their feet up watching soap operas and eating bonbons. It’s a hard job that requires a level of patience deserving of notice. Women who choose to stay at home are sacrificing their careers and daily intelligent adult interaction, not to mention the salaries they could have commanded. As Betty Friedan states in The Feminine Mystique, “Vacuuming the living room floor, with or without makeup, is not work that takes enough thought or energy to challenge any woman’s full capacity.” It’s hard work, without question. But it isn’t the kind of intellectually stimulating work that women have won the right to be hired for, in a capacity where they deal with powerful adults every day. It’s meant to be an unselfish choice. But what are the consequences of leaving the workforce for one, five, ten years or even permanently? What valuable minds are we losing in the intellectual community when women ages 20-50 are at home raising children?

“These are the women that would have gone into the jobs that run our world. These were the women who would eventually have become senators, governors. These women would have been in the pipeline to be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies,” explains Hirshman to CBS News. So who are our senators, governors, lawyers, doctors, professors? In large part, these positions are filled full time by loving parents; fathers. The majority of college men questioned in a sexual politics class at a top university responded that they will expect their female partners to take responsibility for childrearing. Maybe the question we should be asking is why? How is it that fathers can be fully loving parents while also working full time in the workplace? And how is it that gender roles haven’t changed as much as we think they have?

According to Linda Hirshman, “The family — with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks — is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust.” But is choice really the point here? As Mark Twain once said, “A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.”

I think that it is an unquestionable guiding principle of our society that children should be loved and nurtured, and raised with the utmost care. Fathers have shown for centuries that a parent can love a child and care for them while still working outside the home. Should one parent stay home? That is an interesting question that can only be answered by both men and women…and if the answer is yes, then the role should be shared equally if we are ever to have true equality among the sexes along with a diverse, thriving intellectual and professional community.

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