More thoughts about income and SAHPs
Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday’s post. For those of you who aren’t addicted to statistics and didn’t find it quite as thrilling, this is why I think those figures matter.
It’s really hard to talk about income and work-family choices without getting into the mommy wars. I think most of my readers would recognize that it’s a fairly hostile statement to tell parents in dual-income families that if they just got their priorities straight and "cut corners" and didn’t waste money on luxuries, they could afford to stay home. It’s obnoxious because it implies that you, the speaker, know better than the parents what their priorities ought to be. But, as Jody pointed out, comments like that get made all the time.
It’s just as annoying for families who have chosen to have a parent stay home to have to listen to comments about "how lucky they are" to be able to afford it, especially when those comments come from dual-earner parents who live in bigger houses, drive nicer cars, or send their kids to private school. Attributing it all to "luck*" denies the real financial sacrifices that many families make in order to live on one income, as jen commented. Suggesting that only the rich can afford to have an at home parent makes the experiences and concerns of lower-income families invisible.
I think that the vast majority of discussion in this country about the incomes and needs of dual-earner families, and of families with SAHMs are totally disconnected from reality — they’re about people’s fears, fantasies, and projections. So I was excited to find real data — especially data on the distribution of income, not just averages or medians — because it helps us develop a more accurate picture of the real range of experiences of American families. And then maybe we can start to have a dialog that doesn’t assume that a single solution is going to be right for everyone.
* I’m not denying that luck can play a role; as I’ve mentioned before, we can afford to live on my salary because we were lucky enough to have bought our house before the real estate market went haywire. That said, we made a deliberate choice to spend significantly less than the banks would have loaned to us.
October 21st, 2005 at 10:10 am
What about the balance between the cost of child care and the extra income come into the picture? As a single parent, the choice I have is between paying for child care and earning more money at a ‘real’ job (my current job being incredibly flexible and personally meaningful but very low-paying), or earning less money and raising my child myself.
But I’m not sure that even if I wanted to I could net more money by putting my daughter into day care and getting a real job. For me, it’s no more a sacrifice to stay home and save child care costs than it would be the other way. And no, I am not receiving AFDC or other government aid.
October 23rd, 2005 at 7:52 am
We both work, even though we could clearly afford to have one of us at home. It’s financially a lot better to have us both work (my wife makes 2 1/2 times what I do, but gets no benefits, and if I left the job now I would lose pension eligibility but if I stick it out for another five years I get a defined-benefit pension and health benefits for the family until the kids are 21 and she and I die) but either one of us could quit and we would have enough. I make enough – just barely – that we could use my after-tax income to pay a full-time care-giver for our kids to come to the house every day, and that included paying her social security and Kaiser Health Plan. And the whole time we did that I was still getting our health benefits and building pension eligibility at my job. Now that our youngest is in nursery school, we actually turn a profit on my working (!). And I do think the Census data may not capture people’s fear/costs of stepping out of the career track for four-five years in terms of future income possibilities.
We think our kids are doing okay. We like the care we have cobbled together for them and they do, too. And we like to work – she does in particular, it’s a big part of her values to have a career. The kids would prefer a stay-at-home parent, but it’s not a big thing with them. So we chose this, think it works for our family, no envy for SAHPs.
October 23rd, 2005 at 2:52 pm
It may in fact be obnoxious to point out to someone what their priorities should be. But that doesn’t mean that it is wrong. It’s just insensitive.
I mean, if we have children then shouldn’t they be our first priority? Couples where both parents place career, or status, or comfort, ahead of time spent with their children do in fact have their priorities all wrong. Although I realize it is perfectly obnoxious of me to point that out.
Being there for your children is especially important when they are very young. It is amazing how physical proximity breeds child-parent closeness. And I have seen many times how losing a nanny or baby-sitter can be a very traumatic event for a child.
It’s also curious how a stay at home parent can never predict those moments when a conversation about the important things in life, death, sex, spirituality, etc will come up. And what a large effect the words you choose will have on shaping a young mind.
Of course if both parents need to work to pay medical bills or some other necessity, then their priorities are not wrong. But those cases are just the exceptions that prove the rule.
October 23rd, 2005 at 10:41 pm
Maria, I agree that most families with a SAHP don’t think that overall it’s “a sacrifice” to have the SAHP parent. (Sure, there are some who have martyr complexes, but I think they’re the exceptions.) There are tradeoffs to everything, and most people are reasonably happy with the choices they’ve made.
Dave, I agree that the long-term financial issues are really hard to think about and to model. Almost every article I’ve read on “how you can really afford to stay at home” (here’s a typical example: “http://lifestyle.msn.com/FamilyandParenting/BabyandPregnancy/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=29039” ) only looks at the short-term financial questions, not at the effects on long-term earnings capacity and retirement security. (And yes, I sometimes worry about these things for my family.)
Overall, my takeway is that I think these things are much more shades of grey than are generally portrayed. And there’s no point in saying “which is better, all else equal” because everything else is NEVER equal.
October 23rd, 2005 at 11:14 pm
OK, I’ll bite.
Well, Stephen, I guess it depends on what the needs of the parents are. If you’re a person who can live reasonably happily spending all day, every day with small children for 5-10 years — if you don’t require an intellectual life and work, sustained adult conversation, trips to the doctor or dentist where your priority is your health rather than keeping your child safe and amused, exercise, regular sleep, the security of a well-funded retirement account, an active resume, and a few other things — then sure, have at it. If not, though…well, I have seen many times how watching a parent lose his or her mind can be a very traumatic event for a young child.
I’m a writer, which means I make no money to speak of. My work is absolutely not necessary to our financial wellbeing; if anything, it’s a drain on my own purse. I work at home, but work means work, not racing through things at the computer inbetween shouts for Mommy. My daughter (26 mo) is at the local hippie daycare five-six hours a day, eats lunch and naps there, and I say hooray for the hippie. I trust everyone who works there to come up with sensible, reasonable answers to questions about life, death, sex, spirituality, etc. I also trust them to tell me when she asks such questions, so that we can talk about it, too. And one thing she learns is that different people have different explanations, which I’d call a valuable thing to know. (Incidentally, if you’re worried about what other people are going to tell your kids, you’ve got a big problem. Other people open their mouths whether you’re there or not. It’s taken us six months to persuade our daughter that candy does not, as the school-psychologist neighbor says, make you choke; it’s just not good for you.)
Come to think of it, she’s had many sitters, and spent 2.5h/wk in a parent-run playgroup co-op from ages 8-23mo. She doesn’t seem to be traumatized when any of the kids or sitters fade out of her life for a while. She might ask about them once or twice, and then after that, it doesn’t seem to be important to her. She’s fully capable of saying “I miss ______,” or “I want to play with ______, please call his mommy,” when she stops seeing a major friend often, and we don’t discourage her from any of that — if she wants to play with someone, we can usually arrange it. But it just doesn’t happen much. She seems to have a full day at the hippie’s.
Now, your response to that may be “then don’t have children,” but that reflects, I think, some profound lack of understanding about how much time children — even small children — may need with their parents. Which isn’t surprising, given the general nonsense in the culture surrounding children. I thought the same way; I didn’t want to put my girl in daycare, & only did after my husband got sick and couldn’t care for her while I worked. It turns out she needs a lot less time with us than I’d thought. And I’m not talking about quality time or any such garbage; I’m just talking about time with us, including time being told “no”, time being told she has to be quiet because we’re trying to talk or listen to somebody on the phone, time playing by herself, time watching TV, taking a bath, playing, reading, going to the store, all the normal things. 2-3 hours in the morning and 5 hours at night seems to be plenty for her during the week.
(Besides, if the only people who had kids were ones who had nothing serious going on upstairs, I think we’d be in trouble within a couple-three generations.)
October 24th, 2005 at 7:53 am
A few points before we get too deep into the mommy wars.
Stephen, I agree that very young children do best with consistency of caregivers, whether parental, relative, or hired. Doesn’t mean one person has to be there 24/7, but it’s hard on kids to have lots of turnover. (Some adjust to it ok; some don’t.) For older kids, the studies actually show that working moms spend only marginally fewer hours with their kids than stay-at-home moms. It’s sleep, personal time, and other household tasks that suffer, not time with the children. And the kids get busy with their own lives, especially once they hit school age.
Amy, I think it’s a low blow to suggest that people who can be happy as SAHPs “don’t require an intellectual life” and “have nothing serious going on upstairs.” BS.
October 24th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
You do make some good points Amy. To the extent that you are trying to blur the line a bit, I think you are successful. Different kids do need a different amount of attention. My 3 year old loves “preschool” three afternoons a week. He took to it like a duck to water.
And I suppose I am lucky as an at home parent. My sideline ambitions are artistic, and I can easily pursue my own goals from home.
You are also right to point out that kids don’t benefit from a stay at home parent who is a wreck. And no, I wouldn’t suggest that those parents not have kids. What I would suggest though is that if the culture placed more value on staying home, and provided more support, then perhaps many more parents would embrace it.
As Elizabeth points out there are a lot of grey areas. But there are also black and white areas, and there’s no point in denying them. I live in NYC, and it’s just sad to see the kids whose wealthy parents both work 12 hr weekdays and weekends. I still say that those type of people need a priority adjustment.
October 25th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Stephen, I see what you’re saying. Though, given the surprises I’ve had re daycare, I’m not in a hurry to believe that even the kids of the 80h-workweek parents are having a rough go. I just haven’t seen for myself. I’m also reminded of the old Shoes books (Noel Streatfield, wartime/postwar English children’s books) where frequently there was a child with glamorous, mostly absent parents and a nanny, and while those children were often horribly spoiled (with a comedown in the plot), they didn’t seem to be miserable children. But again, I don’t know.
Elizabeth, it may sound like a low blow, but in all honesty I have trouble understanding how someone with a serious intellectual life sustains the multiyear desert you get when you do fulltime childcare. I sure as hell couldn’t. There’s only so long you can be zen about it before thing start to rust painfully. You know how the mom/kid coffee thing goes: “So I was reading this — Ahri! Give that back to her. No, sweetie, she had that.” “Yeah, so this was the article in New York Review — oh hang on. No, sss–sss-sss, not for eating. Not for eating. Anyway. I’m sorry.” The kids aren’t brilliant conversationalists, either. Not their fault, of course, but there’s only so far you can get on “…and Tyler took his socks. Off. He took his socks off. But he can’t do that because the socks are on for inside, Tim said…”
When this is the focus from 6am-8pm, there’s not much room for anything else, esp. if you’ve got more than one kid and they’re not napping simultaneously. NPR begins to sound like heavyweight commentary. And forget it if you’ve got closely-spaced kids, because the longterm sleep deprivation (I’ll get up, spouse has to go to work in the morning, and we can’t have spouse getting fired) does real damage to your ability to think deeply.
My daughter had an awful lot of C-SPAN inflicted on her during her first year, and there’s probably still drool on the carpet where I fell asleep soldiering through _Unbending Gender_, but it’s only now that she’s in regular daycare that the ol’ brain’s lighting back up. I was much aware during her infancy and toddlerhood that I was barely able to take in other people’s thought, let alone come up with anything interesting of my own. I have trouble imagining the creature with a productive (and, to me, sustaining) intellectual life who does not need good solid chunks of time, while awake and largely undisturbed, for reading, writing, thinking, & conversation.
October 25th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
Amy, I believe you overestimate the “book learning” or academically-oriented view of intellectual life. You can learn plenty and have your eyes opened via many activities, not just reading, writing and conversation. In fact some of the most myopic people I’ve known spend their time on reading, writing, and conversation.
October 25th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
jen, that’s as may be; what I’m describing is intellectual work & life as they’re commonly defined. Afaics, it’s incompatible with fulltime childrearing.
October 27th, 2005 at 11:50 am
I’m the mom of two daughters. When my older daughter was born, I stayed home for a year, primarily because it would have cost more to put her in daycare than I could have earned at a job. I went back to work when my husband’s mother offered to pay for him to finish his bachelor’s degree, which he was only a few classes away from finishing. He stayed home with her until he got his degree, and then he got a job that included child care (he worked at a college with an early education program that employees could enroll their children in for free.)
We did have to make huge sacrifices for one of us to stay home, and the primary thing we sacrificed was stability. We moved several times (10 times altogether), often because our rent was raised beyond our ability to pay. Twice we had to move because the building we were living in was sold and all the residents were booted as the new owner turned apartments into condos. We moved twice because of bad neighbors, too.
When she started school, my husband and I both worked, and eventually, we had our second child. This time, we sacrificed staying home for the purpose of stability. When she was 2, we bought our house, and that’s the only home she’s ever known. It’s not a luxurious, big house – it’s a standard small Colonial on .14 of an acre of land.
We don’t take luxurious vacations, we don’t go out to eat, we only have one car (I take the bus to work), and quite frankly, we are finding it ever more difficult to pay all our regular bills even with two salaries. (Plus I have a second very part-time job – that’s our Christmas money, basically). We are more on the edge than most of the families I know who have one parent stay at home, and it’s not because we are crazy spenders. I don’t think I could ever look at another family and determine whether they are making good choices. One of my co-workers stayed at home with her kids for years, but they never had any health or dental insurance, so now her kids have terrible teeth and chronic health problems that could have been controlled better had they been dealt with earlier. Even so, she does not regret the time she spent with her kids.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:47 pm
I don’t think it’s EVER been true that most families had one parent at home in blissful communion with the urchin(s). TV shows from the 50s show a lot of such families, and maybe it was as frequent then as ever. But my North European peasant great-greats worked on the farm alongside their husbands, got widowed, took in washing, worked as seamstresses, left the family and went into service in wealthy homes… not to mention the unending grind of trying to maintain a non-electric home where you brought water in in buckets. I don’t think there ever was a paradise of parents with lots of time for the kids. Doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be swell, but it’s nowhere in our past, except perhaps for the brief and shining moment of the 50s…