The Return of the Stay-at-home Mother

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In 1967 the share of mothers who did not work outside the home stood at 49%; by the turn of the millennium it had dropped to just 23% (see chart 1). Many thought this number would continue to fall as women sought to “have it all”. Instead, the proportion of stay-at-home mothers has been rising steadily for the past 15 years, according to new data crunched by the Pew Research Centre.

Taken as a whole, the group includes mothers at both ends of the social scale (see chart 2). Some are highly educated bankers’ wives who choose not to work because they don’t need the money and would rather spend their time hot-housing their toddlers so that they may one day get into Harvard. Others are poorer but calculate that, after paying for child care, the money they make sweeping floors or serving burgers does not justify the time away from their little ones.

The first group is fairly small. Pew estimates that there are 370,000 highly educated and affluent stay-at-home mothers (defined as married mothers with children under 18 who have at least a master’s degree and family income in excess of $75,000). That is 5% of all stay-at-home mothers with working husbands. One-third of stay-at-home mothers are single or cohabiting, and on average they are poorer than the rest.

The increase in stay-at-home mothering sits oddly with a second big trend affecting women’s lives: their relative success in the labour market. Women now hold half of the jobs in America, up from 32% in 1964. Women lost just one job during the recession for every 2.6 jobs lost by men, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics (though men have since staged a recovery). At the highly skilled end of the jobs market, women are in a strong position: they earn 57% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded by universities. The same is true in the low-skilled bit. The industries where the government expects the most employment growth between now and 2022, such as health care and hospitality, are mostly dominated by women. Unless men become more like women, the argument goes, changes in the structure of the economy will consign many of them to futures as indolent sperm donors.

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Policies that make it easier for women to stay in work after having children, should they choose to do so, would probably be more constructive. America is unusual in not granting statutory paid maternity (or paternity) leave or providing much affordable child care. Both policies were recommended by a commission headed by Eleanor Roosevelt shortly before “The Feminine Mystique” was published, but have been largely ignored.

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