NYT: professional moms who opted out of work after kids are now opting back in

[Anonymous]

I think some of you guys are being a bit pollyanish. This is not about personal choice; it's about economics and politics. The reason the original opt-out article was so grating was that it completely ignored the fact that all women might find themselves in the position of needing to earn money someday. You can't just leave the work force and expect no repercussions, not in this country. The follow-up article gave a bit of needed perspective - some day you may need to go back to work, and then what? It is not about personal choice; it is about economic reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it is so embarrassing, to every single one of us women, that we spend SO much time worrying about what other moms are doing. Work outside the home, work primarily at your home, work part time, work full time, work because you need the money, work because it's part of who you are or a calling, DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO for your family and your own personal happiness. Since when is a career synonymous with personal fulfillment? Are we all so one-dimensional? I don't assume that a big time job haver gets her personal fulfillment exclusively through work anymore than I assume a non-paycheck earning mom gets her fulfillment exclusively through their kids. I am sure there are some women who check one of those boxes or the other, but most of us, thank god, are complex people who manage to do a ton of things in life that offer us fulfilment. Some of us find child rearing to be tedious. Some of us find working to be tedious. Some of us find both things to be tedious! Some of us are working for the weekend and some of us can't wait to go to work on Monday. Who the hell cares? To be clear: I care if you are a crappy mom or parent, because your kids are valuable human beings who deserve good parenting. But I don't care which road you take to get there. There is not one right answer.

It's embarrassing that we complex, nuanced, intelligent women believe in the Santa Clause type fallacy that there is ONE path to fulfillment, security, happiness, and ONE right thing to do, and for fuck's sake, that that thing is the rat race.

Signed, a woman with a kick ass job.

I love you!!!

signed, a mom of two kids who works full time and has a DH who works full time and doesn't give a shit what other families do, as long as they're loving to their kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So the lesson learned here is: If you're unemployed for a long time, it is harder to get back into the paid work force. It may take much longer to get a job. You may have to start from a lower rung in the hierarchy. You may not get paid as much as before you left the work force.

And the only reason this is news is because it is about middle-class and upper-middle-class women making this shocking discovery.

Ok, I'm going to go back to looking at pictures of cats on the internet now.

+1

What bothers me is that the women didn't anticipate that problem? I don't have children yet, and I realize that is a problem. If you leave the workforce for a year or more, it's going to be hard to jump back in. period. It doesn't matter who you are. Sure, there are outliers, but how do people not anticipate this problem when they decide to stay at home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think one of the main reasons I didn't stop working is that I worried about this with my husband:

" Many of the women I spoke with were troubled by the gender-role traditionalism that crept into their marriages once they gave up work, transforming them from being their husbands’ intellectual equals into the one member of their partnership uniquely endowed with gifts for laundry or cooking and cleaning; a junior member of the household, who sometimes had to “negotiate” with her husband to get money for child care.

The husbands hadn’t turned into ogres. Their intent was not to make their wives feel lesser. But when traditional gender arrangements were put into place, there was a subtle slide into inequality. “The dynamic changes,” said Hope Adler, a former manager at the professional-services firm..."

I've seen this happen with people I know. In some cases, the woman had a far more extensive or prestigious education/job, but as soon as she becomes a SAHM, the relationship changes. The husband sees her as a dependent. It's difficult to view a dependent as an equal.

What bothers me is that women of my generation don't anticipate this. There is this romanticism about being a house wife and mother. And I'm not saying those are bad things, but it isn't a mystery that issues crop up when one person assumes the role of the domestic and the other as the bread winner, even among the most enlightened and healthy couples.

[Anonymous]

But I don't care which road you take to get there. There is not one right answer

I agree with most of what you said, and this as well, but perhaps part of the point of the article is that there is really no right answer, not just that there are different right answers for different people. We need more family friendly policies here in the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree with PPs who said the people had marriage problems unrelated to the working/staying home issue. Their marriages probably would have dissolved either way. They also may have had self-esteem issues -- feeling devalued and trying to please to feel better about themselves and their relationships. I do think that SAHMs are often devalued, but these women seemed particularly searching for some meaning/value in their lives aside from this.

No, I disagree. Perhaps the people in the article do have problems in their marriages. But I do think that even in very good marriages, the dynamic changes when one spouse stays home, especially if that is the woman. There is a subtle but very real slip into traditional roles, and over time (I've seen this happen) the relationship changes, the level of respect changes.

It's a shame, but I do think it's a problem.

[Anonymous]

My thought about the article was that none of them, wives or husbands, seemed to believe that real life was going to happen to them. They seemed to think that they would work hard for awhile and then be living like people with inherited wealth -- lots of vacations, big houses, as many well-mannered and cared for kids as they wanted.

But then it turned out that kids actually did change things. Wives had to stay home, or they had to spend a ton of money on childcare. Working spouses were too busy to enjoy those fancy vacations. When the kids were old enough for the wife to return to work ... it didn't happen.

Anyway, I'm now old enough to see this happen several times: a much-hyped study where women under 30 (no children) say that they've never encountered sexism and its an even playing field. Then, they are suddenly shocked at what happens when they do have children, both at home and at work.

[Anonymous]

I think some of you guys are being a bit pollyanish. This is not about personal choice; it's about economics and politics. The reason the original opt-out article was so grating was that it completely ignored the fact that all women might find themselves in the position of needing to earn money someday. You can't just leave the work force and expect no repercussions, not in this country. The follow-up article gave a bit of needed perspective - some day you may need to go back to work, and then what? It is not about personal choice; it is about economic reality.

This exactly.

[Anonymous]

I'm a FT WOHM and you make some good points, but the fact is it is just going to be more difficult for some women with big gaps in their resume to get back in the workforce (if you aren't rubbing elbows with loaded people who will gladly commit to investing in your new business over cocktails). You seem to be saying, what is best for our kids? But I disagree that it would be best for either our boys or our girls to be raised in a society where it is expected that a woman become a mom or have a career. Sorry, but that has implications that I don't think anyone wants. Grad schools and colleges and employers would be much less likely to invest in girls if the thinking is that they will probably just quit to raise kids. And you clearly have a bias. We've used both daycare and a nanny, and neither has raised our child, though they certainly have helped raise them and I'm very grateful for them.

And actually, you can protect yourself from bad circumstances by working. Economic security is pretty critical.

I do agree that the workforce needs to change for both men and women. I do not think a mom staying home while dad works 80 hour weeks and never deals with a sick kid, field trip, etc. is not ideal, and that happens a lot in this area. I think that unfortunately for many, technology instead of giving you more freedom has just meant you can work longer, and that's silly and counter-productive at some point. Honestly, we blame companies but a lot of it is individual. Some people are addicted to work and could do just as good a job in fewer hours. I see that a lot around here. But I do think overall our workforce is not that friendly for many two parent working families, and I think it would be better for everyone if it was. I know a lot of women who feel forced out of the workforce because it is 50 hours or nothing and their husbands have that too.


+1 Exactly. The problem with this area is that the economic security thing doesn't SEEM as critical if you are really comfortable financially, because it seems impossible/implausible that you would ever be economically insecure. But growing up in a home where one parent faced layoffs, et cetera, I'm very uneasy about limiting my employment potential (even if it were feasible financially for me to quit work when I have a child).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was glad to be able to stay at home but now I'm facing the professional consequences.

I had a master's degree and many years in the workplace and then left it all to stay at home with DD (now 7). Now it's a struggle to get back in. Fortunately I have a supportive husband who has admitted on several occasions that what I do with DD and at home is much more difficult than his career (in finance). But it still sucks that now I have to choose between having a job for which I'm grossly over qualified and being available to my family OR getting back on the career track and have to put DD in before and aftercare every day.

It's frustrating and I don't know which way I will go. It's a shame that I have to choose (no high powered friends in my circle).

Boo hoo.

What did you do to ease reentry into the workplace?

Why the sarcasm? Am I not allowed to join this discussion?

Not the sarcastic PP -- there is no good reason for the sarcasm. Some people on DCUM are just like that. If you say anything's hard, they'll belittle it because it's not as hard as something else, or it's your own fault, or whatever. You're right, it is hard. It's all hard. And the notion that we were supposed to know this at 20 and therefore plan careers that would allow us to be part-time or mostly-home mothers (and know that we would want that) is ludicrous. At 20, for all I knew, I'd never find someone worth marrying. The truth is we have a bad economy, falling real wages, and therefore you can't get by on one income anymore, unless it's one really unusual income. And even then, that will likely mean your kids won't know that parent.
good luck.

I agree with you about the unwarranted meanness of previous PP's reaction, and I can totally sympathize with first PP's situation - but to say that "you can't get by on one income anymore" is losing touch. Of course you can, even as a middle-class family where the one person working makes 140K, which I assume is not what you have in mind when you speak about an "unusual" income. We do it. It's tight since we do live in NW DC with two kids, but it's possible.

Perhaps you are out of touch, because for me and most of my friends, with BOTH spouses working, they still don't have an HHI of $140k. So imagine if your combined income was $100k, and living on one income in DC meant living on $50k for a family of four. That's what we're talking about. You are lucky if you have a spouse who pulls in $140k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was glad to be able to stay at home but now I'm facing the professional consequences.

I had a master's degree and many years in the workplace and then left it all to stay at home with DD (now 7). Now it's a struggle to get back in. Fortunately I have a supportive husband who has admitted on several occasions that what I do with DD and at home is much more difficult than his career (in finance). But it still sucks that now I have to choose between having a job for which I'm grossly over qualified and being available to my family OR getting back on the career track and have to put DD in before and aftercare every day.

It's frustrating and I don't know which way I will go. It's a shame that I have to choose (no high powered friends in my circle).

Boo hoo.

What did you do to ease reentry into the workplace?

Why the sarcasm? Am I not allowed to join this discussion?

Not the sarcastic PP -- there is no good reason for the sarcasm. Some people on DCUM are just like that. If you say anything's hard, they'll belittle it because it's not as hard as something else, or it's your own fault, or whatever. You're right, it is hard. It's all hard. And the notion that we were supposed to know this at 20 and therefore plan careers that would allow us to be part-time or mostly-home mothers (and know that we would want that) is ludicrous. At 20, for all I knew, I'd never find someone worth marrying. The truth is we have a bad economy, falling real wages, and therefore you can't get by on one income anymore, unless it's one really unusual income. And even then, that will likely mean your kids won't know that parent.
good luck.

I agree with you about the unwarranted meanness of previous PP's reaction, and I can totally sympathize with first PP's situation - but to say that "you can't get by on one income anymore" is losing touch. Of course you can, even as a middle-class family where the one person working makes 140K, which I assume is not what you have in mind when you speak about an "unusual" income. We do it. It's tight since we do live in NW DC with two kids, but it's possible.

Perhaps you are out of touch, because for me and most of my friends, with BOTH spouses working, they still don't have an HHI of $140k. So imagine if your combined income was $100k, and living on one income in DC meant living on $50k for a family of four. That's what we're talking about. You are lucky if you have a spouse who pulls in $140k.

No, I'm not out-of-touch, I am perfectly aware that we still have it pretty good. I am, however, pretty certain that the PP I responded to had a much higher income in mind when she was speaking of the "really unusual" income that would allow one parent to stay home (and her response somewhere upthread seemed to confirm that). So that's what WE were talking about. It's all relative. You are right, however, that the issue overall affects people of different socio-economic status in a much more pressing way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it is so embarrassing, to every single one of us women, that we spend SO much time worrying about what other moms are doing. Work outside the home, work primarily at your home, work part time, work full time, work because you need the money, work because it's part of who you are or a calling, DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO for your family and your own personal happiness. Since when is a career synonymous with personal fulfillment? Are we all so one-dimensional? I don't assume that a big time job haver gets her personal fulfillment exclusively through work anymore than I assume a non-paycheck earning mom gets her fulfillment exclusively through their kids. I am sure there are some women who check one of those boxes or the other, but most of us, thank god, are complex people who manage to do a ton of things in life that offer us fulfilment. Some of us find child rearing to be tedious. Some of us find working to be tedious. Some of us find both things to be tedious! Some of us are working for the weekend and some of us can't wait to go to work on Monday. Who the hell cares? To be clear: I care if you are a crappy mom or parent, because your kids are valuable human beings who deserve good parenting. But I don't care which road you take to get there. There is not one right answer.

It's embarrassing that we complex, nuanced, intelligent women believe in the Santa Clause type fallacy that there is ONE path to fulfillment, security, happiness, and ONE right thing to do, and for fuck's sake, that that thing is the rat race.

Signed, a woman with a kick ass job.

Because trends do affect all people. It affects expectations in the work world. It affects the economic stability of the country. But I would argue that the focus on upper class women and their choices is not as important as a discussion on the middle class, where there is a lack of choice and families are struggling b/c neither spouse earns enough to support the family on one income but even with both incomes, childcare is too much, causing families to go into debt. The answer I hear is "don't have children." The problem for society there is that then having children becomes solely a luxury of the wealthy or an activity of the destitute. For a country that has nonstop beat the drum on the importance of the middle class, it is a concern that having children is becoming too expensive for the middle class and there aren't subsidies or programs to assist them. This is a huge shift in the demographics of our country, and it will only lead to a widening of the gap between the rich and poor, because the middle class will quickly die out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was glad to be able to stay at home but now I'm facing the professional consequences.

I had a master's degree and many years in the workplace and then left it all to stay at home with DD (now 7). Now it's a struggle to get back in. Fortunately I have a supportive husband who has admitted on several occasions that what I do with DD and at home is much more difficult than his career (in finance). But it still sucks that now I have to choose between having a job for which I'm grossly over qualified and being available to my family OR getting back on the career track and have to put DD in before and aftercare every day.

It's frustrating and I don't know which way I will go. It's a shame that I have to choose (no high powered friends in my circle).

Boo hoo.

What did you do to ease reentry into the workplace?

Why the sarcasm? Am I not allowed to join this discussion?

Not the sarcastic PP -- there is no good reason for the sarcasm. Some people on DCUM are just like that. If you say anything's hard, they'll belittle it because it's not as hard as something else, or it's your own fault, or whatever. You're right, it is hard. It's all hard. And the notion that we were supposed to know this at 20 and therefore plan careers that would allow us to be part-time or mostly-home mothers (and know that we would want that) is ludicrous. At 20, for all I knew, I'd never find someone worth marrying. The truth is we have a bad economy, falling real wages, and therefore you can't get by on one income anymore, unless it's one really unusual income. And even then, that will likely mean your kids won't know that parent.
good luck.

I agree with you about the unwarranted meanness of previous PP's reaction, and I can totally sympathize with first PP's situation - but to say that "you can't get by on one income anymore" is losing touch. Of course you can, even as a middle-class family where the one person working makes 140K, which I assume is not what you have in mind when you speak about an "unusual" income. We do it. It's tight since we do live in NW DC with two kids, but it's possible.

Perhaps you are out of touch, because for me and most of my friends, with BOTH spouses working, they still don't have an HHI of $140k. So imagine if your combined income was $100k, and living on one income in DC meant living on $50k for a family of four. That's what we're talking about. You are lucky if you have a spouse who pulls in $140k.

No, I'm not out-of-touch, I am perfectly aware that we still have it pretty good. I am, however, pretty certain that the PP I responded to had a much higher income in mind when she was speaking of the "really unusual" income that would allow one parent to stay home (and her response somewhere upthread seemed to confirm that). So that's what WE were talking about. It's all relative. You are right, however, that the issue overall affects people of different socio-economic status in a much more pressing way.

But it still is a valid response to your assertion that people can live on one income. Most middle class families cannot live on one income because most middle class earners don't make enough to support a family of 4. Add to that the fact that even with two incomes, daycare costs put most middle class families close, if not over, the edge. This is a problem. Perhaps not for you individually, but it will be increasingly a problem for the U.S. as a country, as a society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think one of the main reasons I didn't stop working is that I worried about this with my husband:

" Many of the women I spoke with were troubled by the gender-role traditionalism that crept into their marriages once they gave up work, transforming them from being their husbands’ intellectual equals into the one member of their partnership uniquely endowed with gifts for laundry or cooking and cleaning; a junior member of the household, who sometimes had to “negotiate” with her husband to get money for child care.

The husbands hadn’t turned into ogres. Their intent was not to make their wives feel lesser. But when traditional gender arrangements were put into place, there was a subtle slide into inequality. “The dynamic changes,” said Hope Adler, a former manager at the professional-services firm..."

I've seen this happen with people I know. In some cases, the woman had a far more extensive or prestigious education/job, but as soon as she becomes a SAHM, the relationship changes. The husband sees her as a dependent. It's difficult to view a dependent as an equal.

What bothers me is that women of my generation don't anticipate this. There is this romanticism about being a house wife and mother. And I'm not saying those are bad things, but it isn't a mystery that issues crop up when one person assumes the role of the domestic and the other as the bread winner, even among the most enlightened and healthy couples.

I agree with this completely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was glad to be able to stay at home but now I'm facing the professional consequences.

I had a master's degree and many years in the workplace and then left it all to stay at home with DD (now 7). Now it's a struggle to get back in. Fortunately I have a supportive husband who has admitted on several occasions that what I do with DD and at home is much more difficult than his career (in finance). But it still sucks that now I have to choose between having a job for which I'm grossly over qualified and being available to my family OR getting back on the career track and have to put DD in before and aftercare every day.

It's frustrating and I don't know which way I will go. It's a shame that I have to choose (no high powered friends in my circle).

Boo hoo.

What did you do to ease reentry into the workplace?

Why the sarcasm? Am I not allowed to join this discussion?

Not the sarcastic PP -- there is no good reason for the sarcasm. Some people on DCUM are just like that. If you say anything's hard, they'll belittle it because it's not as hard as something else, or it's your own fault, or whatever. You're right, it is hard. It's all hard. And the notion that we were supposed to know this at 20 and therefore plan careers that would allow us to be part-time or mostly-home mothers (and know that we would want that) is ludicrous. At 20, for all I knew, I'd never find someone worth marrying. The truth is we have a bad economy, falling real wages, and therefore you can't get by on one income anymore, unless it's one really unusual income. And even then, that will likely mean your kids won't know that parent.
good luck.

I agree with you about the unwarranted meanness of previous PP's reaction, and I can totally sympathize with first PP's situation - but to say that "you can't get by on one income anymore" is losing touch. Of course you can, even as a middle-class family where the one person working makes 140K, which I assume is not what you have in mind when you speak about an "unusual" income. We do it. It's tight since we do live in NW DC with two kids, but it's possible.

Perhaps you are out of touch, because for me and most of my friends, with BOTH spouses working, they still don't have an HHI of $140k. So imagine if your combined income was $100k, and living on one income in DC meant living on $50k for a family of four. That's what we're talking about. You are lucky if you have a spouse who pulls in $140k.

No, I'm not out-of-touch, I am perfectly aware that we still have it pretty good. I am, however, pretty certain that the PP I responded to had a much higher income in mind when she was speaking of the "really unusual" income that would allow one parent to stay home (and her response somewhere upthread seemed to confirm that). So that's what WE were talking about. It's all relative. You are right, however, that the issue overall affects people of different socio-economic status in a much more pressing way.

But it still is a valid response to your assertion that people can live on one income. Most middle class families cannot live on one income because most middle class earners don't make enough to support a family of 4. Add to that the fact that even with two incomes, daycare costs put most middle class families close, if not over, the edge. This is a problem. Perhaps not for you individually, but it will be increasingly a problem for the U.S. as a country, as a society.

PP here. I completely agree with you. I didn't mean to say that all, or even most, people can live on one income. I was talking about my neighbors and people of similar SES who probably think they can't live on one income, even though they each make what my husband makes or more.

And for the record, I would support higher taxes to pay for subsidized childcare.