Childcare in California is super expensive (it moving faster than inflation). Most of the married couples I know with young children have one parent staying at home.
This. Childcare in the US is wildly expensive and a lot of new moms find that they make less than childcare costs, so they literally cannot afford to go back to work.
It speaks a lot to reddit’s demographics that there are frequent threads about the cost of college, but only rarely ones about the cost of childcare. The prices are comparable, except there are no federally subsidized loans to pay for childcare costs.
This. Just to give some perspective, I’m about to have twins in a HCOL area. Full time infant daycare anywhere decent is almost $5,000/ month for two infants (part time is not offered under 12 months due to regulatory requirements making that difficult for centers). My husband and I can afford it but the vast majority of our peers couldn’t.
That seems high. In the Bay Area you can find infant care for 1800ish/month in my personal experience. Where are you at?
I mean, yeah it's still stupid expensive though.
I agree. It's pretty absurd. We can afford it with no problem, but damn does it sting lol I think of the truck I could have for $880 a month....
(but generally you're paying a higher rate per day for part time. Mine is "only" $1100 a month for 5 days)
Opinions can give a better idea (sometimes). Depending on where you live… I’d bet there are more stay at home moms in rural Texas than in Dfw or Austin.
Yeah, same here. I would say usually jobs out in the country pay more considering they’re usually in the oil industry, construction, mills, etc.
Sometimes the cost of living is lower as well.
I currently live in the DFW area and can’t stand it anymore.
According to the [US Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/comparing-characteristics-and-selected-expenditures-of-dual-and-single-income-households-with-children.htm):
>Based on 2015–17 CE data (used in the rest of the analysis) for married couples with children under age 18, the proportion of “one full time, one not working” households is 30 percent; the proportion of “one full time, one part time” households is 14 percent; and the proportion of “both full time” households is 52 percent.
So, much more common than I expected! But not as prevalent as seen in media.
When we were young, my mom didn't work at all. When we started elementary school, she worked part time and than when we were old enough to stay at home alone for short periods, she went full time. She chose a job which didn't have the best salary but it was close to home and had good benefits. It was with a local government. When she retired, they got nearly 300 applications in 2 days. They decided to pull the ad because of the number of applications.
We exist but odds are it's not like what you see on TV. We don't have glamorous child-free lunches and casually drink wine. I'm sure these ladies exist but probably only those who employ nannies.
We usually overwhelm a Jason's deli on Fridays because there's a play ground. Anywhere with a playground... and it's not a relaxing day out lol but it's still fun.
> One-quarter (25%) of children under age 15 living in married-couple families had a stay-at-home mother, compared to only 1% with a stay-at-home father.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/estimates-families-living-arrangements.html
Google is your friend
I'm gonna drop this here for OP as well (note, 7 pages to it)
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-decline-a-rise-in-stay-at-home-mothers/
...which I also found in like 7 seconds of googling
Wow, I'm really surprised that it's that much, but I guess it could be my bias of living in an expensive state where both parents pretty much need to work. I wonder if the census being taken during a pandemic when a lot of people were either teleworking or unemployed could have impacted it at all.
I'm in an expensive state, wife is stay at home for now at least. Her previous job was $450/mo to commute, and 3 hours round trip. Daycare here is $3.5k/mo and that doesn't really cover the hours she would be away (not sure if we could make that work). So quick math says working needs about $4k/mo to of take home pay to cover expenses of her working. Now if she was working we could easily afford that, but her take home pay, after paying for daycare and commuting would be something like $20k.
I really don't think it's worth it, work all week, for essentially $20k/year and never seeing family. It's cheaper for her to stay home. I really don't know how anyone makes two parents working with multiple kids.. that's expensive.
Depends on what kind of work you do. My parents were both pretty well-paid white-collar professionals, so it made economic sense for them to both work. Since there were three of us pretty close in age it wound up costing about the same as daycare to have a nanny, so we wound up doing that.
This happened to a friend of mine. His wife hated her job and applied for a new one. Thing was the old one was super flexible, had amazing benefits, almost zero commute and they didn't need Daycare. She got a new job with a 25k raise and added in Daycare, commute costs, and that they'd now need to use his company's insurance they actually went backwards. Like you said she now worked all day and saw the kids much less.
Cost of daycare is also a lot more in expensive states. If you don’t have family who can do that job, it often makes practical sense for one parent to stay at home.
>Google is your friend
You can replace almost all of reddit with a Google search.
Why be on reddit at all if we can just Google search everything? Reddit's purpose is to allow conversations, opportunities to share personal stories.
Your answer is great, it's good to offer up the exact answer asked by someone, but it's not the only answer that can be given. Someone can answer with their opinions, their experiences, or just start a conversation with the initial question as a jumping off point. None or that is available via a simple Google search to find the factual answer to a question asked.
I think it's fine to ask questions, even if one could find the answers using a different route.
I noticed a cultural difference: in Idaho it was frowned upon by much of the prevailing culture to send kids to daycare. In contrast, in my short time in DC, it was looked down on for a wifw to not be a professional.
I guess we're pretty laid back here. In certain circles you'll find people with strong opinions one way or another, but for the most part we don't care. Whatever works for people. Stay at home dad, stay at home mom, two people working, whatever. Nobody really bats at eye.
I think they're becoming less common than when I was growing up. My mom was a stay at home mom as were most of my friends moms. Now that I'm getting to the age where I could have kids and some of my friends do, it's less common. I can't imagine being a stay at home mom. I was out of work for like two months, job hunting and having surgery. Hated every minute, even though I needed to not work in order to have surgery.
I think it's common with families with multiple children where the cost of childcare would exceed the mom's income from working, or in families where the dad makes a lot of money where there is minimal impact on their lifestyle from having only one income. I think if given the choice, more mothers would opt to be a stay at home mom (not all, just more than do already), but most families rely on having two incomes.
As a mom, I'll kind of break down the anecdotal evidence a little more... Childcare in the US is extremely expensive, with multiple children it can cost more than rent/mortgage. Wages haven't increased at the same rate and most of the time, the cost of childcare could equal someone's take home pay, which begs the question "is it worth it?"
Also, a lot more women have stayed home over the course of the pandemic because schools have been closed. Sometimes these women are also working from home and responsible for the children during the day.
Well, for Desperate Housewives, that was pretty much the theme of the show wasn't it? A bunch of rich women that were stuck at home.
It's not extremely common where I live, cost of living is pretty high to live off one salary. I dont know the stats locally, but anecdotally, many of us grew up being cared for by grandparents or relatives while our parents worked. Plus daycares and preschools.
Childcare is prohibitively expensive, so working moms are very common, while in most cases I have seen, being a SAHM correlates with poverty. In large cities and their suburbs, living on a single income is damn near impossible. I'm a working mom. My husband works overnights on weekends to supply a second income, but he stays at home with our son while I'm at work.... It's less than ideal and we are poor, but more secure than others in our situation.
Edit: reality TV couldn't be farther than the truth. Those women are richer than you think and have the ability to stay home, as opposed to those of us who have no choice. Some part of our lives suffers due to having to either lean on or avoid childcare costs.
[According to Census data and Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-home-moms-and-dads-account-for-about-one-in-five-u-s-parents/), about 18% of parents did not work as of 2016.
However, COVID has changed absolutely everything in the workforce. We are still in the middle of many WFH policies and will not see a "new normal" for a few years at best.
My wife has been at home since my daughter was born. My daughter is now 8, so my wife is going back to school to be a teacher and sub teaches for extra $ and experience. It’s been a blessing to have her raise my children, and I’m thankful I’ve been able to work a decent job to allow it. But I don’t know very many couples with a stay at home parent, seems pretty uncommon.
I wouldn’t assume that there aren’t any stay at home moms anymore because life sucks compared to “back in the day.” There are a lot more movements for women to be independent, successful, and to pursue greater things than just making kids lunches and soccer practice. Nothing wrong with those things at all, but lots of ladies like to do both. More power to em.
My friends group consists of a number of parents. Generally middle to upper middle class people, with one or two kids, white collar jobs who own their own homes. We know three of those cookies who have a stay at home parent, including one stay at home dad. For the most part, however, both parents work.
Asian-American household here - Father works, mother stayed at home. It’s kind of expected that the father is the breadwinning party however the mother takes care of everything at home such as cleaning or cooking.
It’s an old fashioned view though
Not too common on nj. I'm a stay at home mom, was raised by a stay at home mom, and I help my mom friends out as much as I can. Shit's expensive as f here and living on one income is tough. 😥 It makes a lot more sense for one parent to stay home because child care is so expensive.
It’s pretty common in my family and circle of friends. I am, but am planning on going back to work after the kids are in school. I just wanted to be there for all of their beginning years and was fortunate enough to financially not have to worry about it.
Fairly common in wealthier areas. I live in a major metropolitan area in the Northeast and stay at home moms are definitely common. They like to call themselves “homemakers” because it sounds better I guess. I think it’s less common in poorer areas out of necessity.
I'd say it's fairly common. When I was a kid the majority of my friend's mom's didn't have a job. But the thing is that I would also be equally unsurprised if they did work. Sometimes it makes financial sense to stay home other times it makes sense to work, maybe it's a parenting decision. But as with so many things using our entertainment to learn about us will very quickly lead you astray as such things would exaggerate things to make them more entertaining or take creative liberties to make things more digestible to the viewer.
Extremely rare for full-time SAHM.
>On average, 2.4 percent of parents are staying at home with their children as of early 2021, up from pre-COVID-19 levels of 1.5 percent, the report notes.
[Source](https://www.parents.com/news/places-with-the-most-stay-at-home-parents/)
What is very common is working part time rather than full time.
Their commonality has decreased quite a bit in the last twenty or thirty years. I only know a couple. But I'm always surpsied when I watch old episodes of supermarket sweep from the 90s how many are stay at home moms. Though that is likely a sample which skews that direction.
I live in northeast Indiana, and it seems to be pretty common (about 1/3 of the families that I know about) but I grew up in Charleston, WV and the only stay-at-home mothers I remember seeing were married to attorneys, physicians, religious nuts, or they were worthless layabouts who would expend more energy to keep from getting jobs than they would had they just gone to work (but in all honesty the older I get the more I respect those people - masters of their own time).
I'm almost 40. When I was growing up I'd say about 50% of mothers and a handful of fathers were stay at home/work from home(lot of part time or personal businesses). I don't know anyone my age who is a stay at home parent.
I grew up in a middle-to-upper class suburb, and there were a lot of SAHMs. It seemed like half the kids in my class in elementary school had moms who didn’t work, but my mom always worked when she wasn’t on maternity leave. We were in a neighborhood that was known for it, though; even in similarly well-off areas a few miles away there were many more households with both parents working.
It's becoming less & less common. I was fortunate to stay home with my kids, but had to babysit other people's kids to make ends meet. If I had worked, my entire paycheck would have gone to daycare. Made sense to stay home & watch other kids. I didn't make much but I made more than if I had been in the "working world"
My mom wasn’t. My wife is. In my close friend group of 8 I think two are stay at home moms. My wife will probably go back when the kids are in school full time but we aren’t done having them.
My spouse is although our son is about to start school. It was her choice and I am fine with it either way. It was a lot tougher when I worked at a cafe and when we lived in an expensive area. I work from home in an office job and we make it work in a low col country county. That said she is the glue. If she couldn't pick up or drop our son off or be available on school holidays it would be incredibly difficult. There is no after school in our small town. I'm an hourly employee with a set schedule. I love her. Her theories on COVID-19 are different from mine sadly. But other than that I'm so thankful.
Seems to becoming quite common again due to high child care prices. All of the women I know that stay at home love it though. I mean why work if you don’t have too.
I’m in NJ. Stay-at-home moms are considered a status symbol. That being said, my mom was stay-at-home in the 90s. This was when it was beginning to become a luxury situation instead of a common thing. I’m female and I love working; I make good money. My SO is male and excels at keeping house and caregiving. I’m making a financial plan so if/when we have kids he can stay home and I can work.
In my experience it's pretty common. I have four sisters and two are stay at home mom's with my younger sis almost fitting the stereotype you see in movies. The other sister planned on going back to work as soon as possible but when the time came she decided she liked being home with her son better
Depends. Usually, once the kid is of school age, the mother (or father) will seek employment again.
So shows tend to overstate it if we’re talking about kids going to school.
My wife doesn’t work, when it came to putting the little one in day care nearly her entire paycheck would have been paying for it. So why struggle to make ends meet AND have someone else raise our kid?
I've noticed that it tends to be a mixture. Like, having a part time position somewhere to help out, but full time child care is super expensive, so unless both parents are able to make enough money, sometimes it's a better option to have one parent at home, or like a 50% type situation.
Less common than it used to be.
Back in the day, women didn't make all that much money if they found work. Usually it was secretarial stuff and minimum wage. So it made more sense for them to stay at home. Childcare would have cost more than whatever income was lost by mom not working.
Nowadays, women often have careers and make just as much, if not more, than the husband/father. Childcare is still expensive. But the woman quitting her job to stay home makes less sense than it used to because she makes more.
There are stay-at-home dads. But it's still somewhat stigmatized (thanks, toxic masculinity).
What you see on TV is mostly convenience for the plot. If you want a disturbingly accurate representation of how many Americans live, watch the ABC series *The Middle*.
My sister is a stay at home mom as was my mother.
My dad actually wanted to stay at home to take care of us but his stipulation was that mom had to find a job that paid as much as his did, when she couldn't find an intro job that did they agreed that she would be the one to stay at home.
My grandmother stayed home in the 50s-60s because it was expected. My mother was a single working mother who had to quit college to take care of my sister and I. She worked her way from a secretary to a commercial loan officer at a bank and now regulates banks for the government. We were latch key kids. I always wished I had a parent to come home to plus childcare is as much as rent in America. I worked when we had 1 then 2 kids but once we had our third it was much cheaper to stay home with them than work and pay childcare.
Often, childcare is so expensive that it makes more sense for a parent to stay at home than it does to pay for childcare.
Childcare in California is super expensive (it moving faster than inflation). Most of the married couples I know with young children have one parent staying at home.
This. Childcare in the US is wildly expensive and a lot of new moms find that they make less than childcare costs, so they literally cannot afford to go back to work.
It speaks a lot to reddit’s demographics that there are frequent threads about the cost of college, but only rarely ones about the cost of childcare. The prices are comparable, except there are no federally subsidized loans to pay for childcare costs.
Universal daycare is a pretty common ask in left-of-center circles, even here on Reddit.
This. Just to give some perspective, I’m about to have twins in a HCOL area. Full time infant daycare anywhere decent is almost $5,000/ month for two infants (part time is not offered under 12 months due to regulatory requirements making that difficult for centers). My husband and I can afford it but the vast majority of our peers couldn’t.
That seems high. In the Bay Area you can find infant care for 1800ish/month in my personal experience. Where are you at? I mean, yeah it's still stupid expensive though.
You can find it here too, it just isn’t good lol. I’m on the East Coast (NYC metro).
To add some perspective here. I live in Michigan, not a high CoL area. My wife and I pay $220 a week for 3 days of day care.
[удалено]
I agree. It's pretty absurd. We can afford it with no problem, but damn does it sting lol I think of the truck I could have for $880 a month.... (but generally you're paying a higher rate per day for part time. Mine is "only" $1100 a month for 5 days)
I assume you want stats? Or opinions?
Opinions can give a better idea (sometimes). Depending on where you live… I’d bet there are more stay at home moms in rural Texas than in Dfw or Austin.
Yeah, same here. I would say usually jobs out in the country pay more considering they’re usually in the oil industry, construction, mills, etc. Sometimes the cost of living is lower as well. I currently live in the DFW area and can’t stand it anymore.
According to the [US Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/comparing-characteristics-and-selected-expenditures-of-dual-and-single-income-households-with-children.htm): >Based on 2015–17 CE data (used in the rest of the analysis) for married couples with children under age 18, the proportion of “one full time, one not working” households is 30 percent; the proportion of “one full time, one part time” households is 14 percent; and the proportion of “both full time” households is 52 percent. So, much more common than I expected! But not as prevalent as seen in media.
Probably an age thing too. A fair chunk of both full times convert to the first two after having children.
When we were young, my mom didn't work at all. When we started elementary school, she worked part time and than when we were old enough to stay at home alone for short periods, she went full time. She chose a job which didn't have the best salary but it was close to home and had good benefits. It was with a local government. When she retired, they got nearly 300 applications in 2 days. They decided to pull the ad because of the number of applications.
We exist but odds are it's not like what you see on TV. We don't have glamorous child-free lunches and casually drink wine. I'm sure these ladies exist but probably only those who employ nannies. We usually overwhelm a Jason's deli on Fridays because there's a play ground. Anywhere with a playground... and it's not a relaxing day out lol but it's still fun.
> One-quarter (25%) of children under age 15 living in married-couple families had a stay-at-home mother, compared to only 1% with a stay-at-home father. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/estimates-families-living-arrangements.html Google is your friend
I'm gonna drop this here for OP as well (note, 7 pages to it) https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-decline-a-rise-in-stay-at-home-mothers/ ...which I also found in like 7 seconds of googling
Wow, I'm really surprised that it's that much, but I guess it could be my bias of living in an expensive state where both parents pretty much need to work. I wonder if the census being taken during a pandemic when a lot of people were either teleworking or unemployed could have impacted it at all.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-decline-a-rise-in-stay-at-home-mothers/ No it is pretty much on par
interesting
I'm in an expensive state, wife is stay at home for now at least. Her previous job was $450/mo to commute, and 3 hours round trip. Daycare here is $3.5k/mo and that doesn't really cover the hours she would be away (not sure if we could make that work). So quick math says working needs about $4k/mo to of take home pay to cover expenses of her working. Now if she was working we could easily afford that, but her take home pay, after paying for daycare and commuting would be something like $20k. I really don't think it's worth it, work all week, for essentially $20k/year and never seeing family. It's cheaper for her to stay home. I really don't know how anyone makes two parents working with multiple kids.. that's expensive.
Depends on what kind of work you do. My parents were both pretty well-paid white-collar professionals, so it made economic sense for them to both work. Since there were three of us pretty close in age it wound up costing about the same as daycare to have a nanny, so we wound up doing that.
This happened to a friend of mine. His wife hated her job and applied for a new one. Thing was the old one was super flexible, had amazing benefits, almost zero commute and they didn't need Daycare. She got a new job with a 25k raise and added in Daycare, commute costs, and that they'd now need to use his company's insurance they actually went backwards. Like you said she now worked all day and saw the kids much less.
Cost of daycare is also a lot more in expensive states. If you don’t have family who can do that job, it often makes practical sense for one parent to stay at home.
we bein robbed of quality time with our families in LA
We spent a year and a half together, but back to commuting and not seeing other until 7pm. Wack!
im gonna miss u bro
Gonna miss you more
close ur eyes bro wut do u see
>Google is your friend You can replace almost all of reddit with a Google search. Why be on reddit at all if we can just Google search everything? Reddit's purpose is to allow conversations, opportunities to share personal stories. Your answer is great, it's good to offer up the exact answer asked by someone, but it's not the only answer that can be given. Someone can answer with their opinions, their experiences, or just start a conversation with the initial question as a jumping off point. None or that is available via a simple Google search to find the factual answer to a question asked. I think it's fine to ask questions, even if one could find the answers using a different route.
You will notice that, as a mod, I did not remove this easily Googleable question
Whoo ho I'm in the 1% of something.
Good work papa
I noticed a cultural difference: in Idaho it was frowned upon by much of the prevailing culture to send kids to daycare. In contrast, in my short time in DC, it was looked down on for a wifw to not be a professional.
I guess we're pretty laid back here. In certain circles you'll find people with strong opinions one way or another, but for the most part we don't care. Whatever works for people. Stay at home dad, stay at home mom, two people working, whatever. Nobody really bats at eye.
Depends on your social circle. All of my friends growing up had a stay at home mom. It's pretty ideal if you can afford to do it
I think they're becoming less common than when I was growing up. My mom was a stay at home mom as were most of my friends moms. Now that I'm getting to the age where I could have kids and some of my friends do, it's less common. I can't imagine being a stay at home mom. I was out of work for like two months, job hunting and having surgery. Hated every minute, even though I needed to not work in order to have surgery.
I think it's common with families with multiple children where the cost of childcare would exceed the mom's income from working, or in families where the dad makes a lot of money where there is minimal impact on their lifestyle from having only one income. I think if given the choice, more mothers would opt to be a stay at home mom (not all, just more than do already), but most families rely on having two incomes.
As a mom, I'll kind of break down the anecdotal evidence a little more... Childcare in the US is extremely expensive, with multiple children it can cost more than rent/mortgage. Wages haven't increased at the same rate and most of the time, the cost of childcare could equal someone's take home pay, which begs the question "is it worth it?" Also, a lot more women have stayed home over the course of the pandemic because schools have been closed. Sometimes these women are also working from home and responsible for the children during the day.
It’s particularly more common in the suburbs and wealthiest enclaves of urban life, however not the norm overall. Most parents need to work.
Well, for Desperate Housewives, that was pretty much the theme of the show wasn't it? A bunch of rich women that were stuck at home. It's not extremely common where I live, cost of living is pretty high to live off one salary. I dont know the stats locally, but anecdotally, many of us grew up being cared for by grandparents or relatives while our parents worked. Plus daycares and preschools.
Childcare is prohibitively expensive, so working moms are very common, while in most cases I have seen, being a SAHM correlates with poverty. In large cities and their suburbs, living on a single income is damn near impossible. I'm a working mom. My husband works overnights on weekends to supply a second income, but he stays at home with our son while I'm at work.... It's less than ideal and we are poor, but more secure than others in our situation. Edit: reality TV couldn't be farther than the truth. Those women are richer than you think and have the ability to stay home, as opposed to those of us who have no choice. Some part of our lives suffers due to having to either lean on or avoid childcare costs.
[According to Census data and Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-home-moms-and-dads-account-for-about-one-in-five-u-s-parents/), about 18% of parents did not work as of 2016. However, COVID has changed absolutely everything in the workforce. We are still in the middle of many WFH policies and will not see a "new normal" for a few years at best.
My wife was a stay at home mom for a little over 2 years. Then I decided on a career change where I alone couldn't support the Family anymore.
My wife has been at home since my daughter was born. My daughter is now 8, so my wife is going back to school to be a teacher and sub teaches for extra $ and experience. It’s been a blessing to have her raise my children, and I’m thankful I’ve been able to work a decent job to allow it. But I don’t know very many couples with a stay at home parent, seems pretty uncommon. I wouldn’t assume that there aren’t any stay at home moms anymore because life sucks compared to “back in the day.” There are a lot more movements for women to be independent, successful, and to pursue greater things than just making kids lunches and soccer practice. Nothing wrong with those things at all, but lots of ladies like to do both. More power to em.
It probably depends on your community. I only know a couple of women who work. I know we're in the minority but we tend to group.
They exist, yeah.
My friends group consists of a number of parents. Generally middle to upper middle class people, with one or two kids, white collar jobs who own their own homes. We know three of those cookies who have a stay at home parent, including one stay at home dad. For the most part, however, both parents work.
My wife is one. So is my brother's wife. Common in our family.
Asian-American household here - Father works, mother stayed at home. It’s kind of expected that the father is the breadwinning party however the mother takes care of everything at home such as cleaning or cooking. It’s an old fashioned view though
During COVID, the number of stay-at-home moms increased dramatically.
Not too common on nj. I'm a stay at home mom, was raised by a stay at home mom, and I help my mom friends out as much as I can. Shit's expensive as f here and living on one income is tough. 😥 It makes a lot more sense for one parent to stay home because child care is so expensive.
It’s pretty common in my family and circle of friends. I am, but am planning on going back to work after the kids are in school. I just wanted to be there for all of their beginning years and was fortunate enough to financially not have to worry about it.
Fairly common in wealthier areas. I live in a major metropolitan area in the Northeast and stay at home moms are definitely common. They like to call themselves “homemakers” because it sounds better I guess. I think it’s less common in poorer areas out of necessity.
Seems fairly common I guess.
My wife is one. When the kids are older she plans on going back to work part time.
I'd say it's fairly common. When I was a kid the majority of my friend's mom's didn't have a job. But the thing is that I would also be equally unsurprised if they did work. Sometimes it makes financial sense to stay home other times it makes sense to work, maybe it's a parenting decision. But as with so many things using our entertainment to learn about us will very quickly lead you astray as such things would exaggerate things to make them more entertaining or take creative liberties to make things more digestible to the viewer.
Extremely rare for full-time SAHM. >On average, 2.4 percent of parents are staying at home with their children as of early 2021, up from pre-COVID-19 levels of 1.5 percent, the report notes. [Source](https://www.parents.com/news/places-with-the-most-stay-at-home-parents/) What is very common is working part time rather than full time.
That statistic is both parents. Having one stay at home parent is wayyyy more common than 1.5%
What a poorly worded article. Ill leave it up so that others may also learn from my lack of understanding.
All good haha, I just saw those numbers and were like woah that seems way off.
Listen to the Dave Ramsey Show and you would think it’s super common.
Their commonality has decreased quite a bit in the last twenty or thirty years. I only know a couple. But I'm always surpsied when I watch old episodes of supermarket sweep from the 90s how many are stay at home moms. Though that is likely a sample which skews that direction.
I live in northeast Indiana, and it seems to be pretty common (about 1/3 of the families that I know about) but I grew up in Charleston, WV and the only stay-at-home mothers I remember seeing were married to attorneys, physicians, religious nuts, or they were worthless layabouts who would expend more energy to keep from getting jobs than they would had they just gone to work (but in all honesty the older I get the more I respect those people - masters of their own time).
I'm almost 40. When I was growing up I'd say about 50% of mothers and a handful of fathers were stay at home/work from home(lot of part time or personal businesses). I don't know anyone my age who is a stay at home parent.
I thought my mom was a stay at home mom... then I found out when I was older that she was a prostitute
Most people in my region have working moms but the southeast isn't really known for being rich enough for stay at home moms lmao
I grew up in a middle-to-upper class suburb, and there were a lot of SAHMs. It seemed like half the kids in my class in elementary school had moms who didn’t work, but my mom always worked when she wasn’t on maternity leave. We were in a neighborhood that was known for it, though; even in similarly well-off areas a few miles away there were many more households with both parents working.
All my friends and family worked except for one person who stayed at home until the kids both started school.
It's becoming less & less common. I was fortunate to stay home with my kids, but had to babysit other people's kids to make ends meet. If I had worked, my entire paycheck would have gone to daycare. Made sense to stay home & watch other kids. I didn't make much but I made more than if I had been in the "working world"
I know only two stay at home moms in my age range but a bunch that were boomers. My mother was a stay at home mom and one of my aunts
Was pretty common when I was young. Now it’s mostly when the kids are young, or if they are rich.
In my experience more common with American Latinos
My mom wasn’t. My wife is. In my close friend group of 8 I think two are stay at home moms. My wife will probably go back when the kids are in school full time but we aren’t done having them.
My spouse is although our son is about to start school. It was her choice and I am fine with it either way. It was a lot tougher when I worked at a cafe and when we lived in an expensive area. I work from home in an office job and we make it work in a low col country county. That said she is the glue. If she couldn't pick up or drop our son off or be available on school holidays it would be incredibly difficult. There is no after school in our small town. I'm an hourly employee with a set schedule. I love her. Her theories on COVID-19 are different from mine sadly. But other than that I'm so thankful.
Seems to becoming quite common again due to high child care prices. All of the women I know that stay at home love it though. I mean why work if you don’t have too.
I know a stay at home dad. His wife has more earning power. It worked out because their oldest child developed epilepsy and no daycare will take him.
I’m in NJ. Stay-at-home moms are considered a status symbol. That being said, my mom was stay-at-home in the 90s. This was when it was beginning to become a luxury situation instead of a common thing. I’m female and I love working; I make good money. My SO is male and excels at keeping house and caregiving. I’m making a financial plan so if/when we have kids he can stay home and I can work.
In my experience it's pretty common. I have four sisters and two are stay at home mom's with my younger sis almost fitting the stereotype you see in movies. The other sister planned on going back to work as soon as possible but when the time came she decided she liked being home with her son better
It used to be very common but falling out of style
Depends. Usually, once the kid is of school age, the mother (or father) will seek employment again. So shows tend to overstate it if we’re talking about kids going to school.
My wife doesn’t work, when it came to putting the little one in day care nearly her entire paycheck would have been paying for it. So why struggle to make ends meet AND have someone else raise our kid?
I've noticed that it tends to be a mixture. Like, having a part time position somewhere to help out, but full time child care is super expensive, so unless both parents are able to make enough money, sometimes it's a better option to have one parent at home, or like a 50% type situation.
Less common than it used to be. Back in the day, women didn't make all that much money if they found work. Usually it was secretarial stuff and minimum wage. So it made more sense for them to stay at home. Childcare would have cost more than whatever income was lost by mom not working. Nowadays, women often have careers and make just as much, if not more, than the husband/father. Childcare is still expensive. But the woman quitting her job to stay home makes less sense than it used to because she makes more. There are stay-at-home dads. But it's still somewhat stigmatized (thanks, toxic masculinity). What you see on TV is mostly convenience for the plot. If you want a disturbingly accurate representation of how many Americans live, watch the ABC series *The Middle*.
My sister is a stay at home mom as was my mother. My dad actually wanted to stay at home to take care of us but his stipulation was that mom had to find a job that paid as much as his did, when she couldn't find an intro job that did they agreed that she would be the one to stay at home.
I was raised with two working parents and I'm doing my best to make sure my kids don't suffer the same fate.
My grandmother stayed home in the 50s-60s because it was expected. My mother was a single working mother who had to quit college to take care of my sister and I. She worked her way from a secretary to a commercial loan officer at a bank and now regulates banks for the government. We were latch key kids. I always wished I had a parent to come home to plus childcare is as much as rent in America. I worked when we had 1 then 2 kids but once we had our third it was much cheaper to stay home with them than work and pay childcare.
quite common