Career woman vs stay-at-home mom which direction do you lean?

This is my old fashioned view, motherhood is a career, a full time one I think. So when a woman chooses to have children it should be her full time job. I never wanted to give up my life for a child so I never had any. Now I know many women, especially these days, have both, but in my perfect world, child rearing would be the career until the kids are in school then pursue another if you choose.

I would probably say career woman! I mean I am not just going to stay at home and do nothing, if you are a stay-at-home mom Ithink its really difficult. Because when your husband leaves you, you will not have as many good friends and if you were a career woman.

A family can get by on one income. That is news to me.

My wife couldn’t think of letting him go to others. We paid the price in some ways, but we got a great kid as a result. We could never accept someone else raising our child, it was a sacrifice we accept, You may not, as many others, you must do whats true to you.

@johnpowell Many do and could if they wanted to give up the country clib, yachts and Caviar. I am sure many at AIG, Goldman/Sachs etc can life of a single paycheck if they were not living so large.

@rooeytoo That was sweet, 10,000 larvae for you. D’oh! I can only give you one but the thought that counts. :-)

Children deserve to have the attention of the people who gave birth to them. I don’t believe that anyone who is for hire can be as attentive or concerned about them as their own parents can be.

It’s amazing how much a family can save if one of the parents is at home, preparing home cooked meals and finding ways to be prudent. I don’t think that the “stuff” two working parents can provide is a fraction as important as the many advantages to having their mother, or father in some cases, with them each day.

Of course, this supposes that the individuals are mature and emotionally healthy adults who are capable of putting the needs of their children before their own. If not, then the children are probably better off being raised by someone who can.

I think it depends, at least to some extent, on the mom. I know women who would have been absolutely miserable as stay-at-home moms. These are driven women who thrive on their career and in order to be the best mom to their children they need that part of their lives. I chose to stay at home with my kids. I thank God that I have been able to make it work financially and I am happy with my choice, but I would never judge a woman who decides to do things differently. Also, the reality at this point is that many a parent who would like to stay home simply cannot afford to. The bottom line is that the children feel loved and respected by their parents. IMO there are no simple answers to this question, only opinions.

Like many other people, I don’t think there is an answer to this question that is right for everyone.

Generally, I think happy parents make good parents. If a mum just isn’t happy without having things in her life other than her family, then I think it’s unlikely that the “stay at home mum” option would result in her being the best mother to her children. On the other hand, if a mum isn’t happy spending time away from her children when they’re young, then I don’t think continuing work would be the best thing either.

Obviously, there are masses of other variables other than parental happiness that influence how successful the child-rearing experience is, and I guess there’s even more variables there that define ‘successful child rearing’ too… so I’m afraid I can’t give a better answer!

There’s a balance to be had. Absolutely. But every family is different and every marriage is different. I get no help with the kids or the house, so I’m a 24 hour mother and ‘housewife’ but to keep my sanity, I started a little business on the side where I can exercise my brain and ignore the dishes and laundry for a few hours. I can honestly say, without the side business, I never would have lasted this long. It’s my social life (what little I can scrape out) and reminds me that I do have a brain.

What’s more important for women? You need to ask each individual woman. I for one would want to kill myself if all I had in my life was a partner and some kids.

Why is a woman’s income secondary? Her life is about shoes and notoriety? I find this idea disgusting. How about love of work or a drive to help others. Maybe a woman couldn’t even think of having kids and staying home. Maybe she wants to show her kids that a woman is more than wife and mother.

I’m disgusted by your stereotypes and false dichotomies.

It is up to the couple if someone, either partner, should stay home or work. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. Neither option is perfect, or easy; neither option is the be-all-end-all.

I love how the working mom/stay at home mom debate always implies that mothers work so they can afford perks like new cars, wonderful vacations, dinners out, and fancy clothes. Shit, I worked full-time until we had our third child so we could make the mortgage payments on our small house, the car payments on our used cars, and to put homemade food on the table. All of the women I worked with, worked for the same reasons. Each time we were expecting a child, we sat down to figure out if we could afford to lose my income and still keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, the answer was clearly “NO” for the first several years we were parents.

Do I like staying home more? There are drawbacks and benefits. Do I think my kids would have suffered if I hadn’t stopped working? Not at all. I know far too many loving, happy families with two working parents. I know moms who don’t work, or didn’t for a long time, and mainly let the TV entertain their child. I’ve known families with two working parents who would bring their child to daycare at 7:00 in the morning and pick him or her up at 6:00 pm, even on their days or weeks off. I had parents yell at me for calling them to pick up a very ill child, but I also had parents who spent every lunch hour at the daycare with their kids, never hesitated to pick up a sick child, or worked out a schedule that allowed one parent to bring the child in later in the morning and the other to pick the child up earlier in the afternoon.

Good parents are good parents, regardless of their working status.

I think it’s a misconception that all a SAHM has is her spouse and children. It can be that way, if you let it consume you..and especially when a baby is born, if you are nursing you have to give your body up for that for much longer than the 9 months of carrying the baby.

I think staying home for the first year would be ideal for lots of women, but I also know of women who were itching to get back to work even before the six week post-partum visit. Nothing wrong with that. For my family, it’s important for me to stay home for minimum the first year. I do attend school, which keeps my sanity (even though it’s near impossible to study, it’s still something I do for myself and our future.)
Once I start working, I’ll never see my husband…and I really dread that. I’ll have to work on his days off just so we can avoid paying childcare because we simply can’t afford that. Once I have a career and not a job, things will hopefully be different.

I’ve done both at various times of my children’s life. Quality day care is, in many ways, more enriching that being home with mom, because children are engaged in play and activities that they are the center of activity. When I was home with the children, I also had to clean and keep house, and very often I would have the children watch a video or television while they played so I could get things done. At daycare, there was no television or video, it was all open ended play, art activities, outings, puppet shows, musicians, etc.

Several rounds of periodically staying home were very hard on our finances. For me, the ideal would have been to work 20–30 hours a week. The best year I had while working was the year I didn’t work on Wednesdays. It was not stressful on work, because everything would keep from Tuesday to Thursday, whereas not everything keeps from Thursday to Monday, or Friday to Tuesday. It would have been easier for me to work if I had a back-up system for child care; it was stressful at work when I had to unexpectedly stay home with a sick child; my husband would not do that. Juggling housework and spending time with the child when we got home was difficult, and I would often stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning to get things done. I was constantly tired.

I guess my answer is that there’s not really a right answer. Both are stressful, both come with benefits and costs.

Sometimes it’s not “extras” if one person’s income isn’t enough to keep the family out of a seriously run down neighborhood! I knew plenty of kids when I was coming up whose parents both had to work to provide them with the necessities, not frivolous things. When I was a tween, I’d think, “If only Auntie could find a man, then they could get married and they’d both have jobs and we could get out of here!” After all, everyone isn’t going to be college-educated and middle class. Everyone isn’t going to make $200K a year. Sometimes a mother’s income is the only thing keeping a family out of the projects (council estates).

To be frank, the vast majority of working class families (or lower) and/or non-white families have never had the culture wars about stay at home moms vs. career moms in the US that white middle and upper class class people have had these last 40 years in the mainstream media. And the mainstream media reflects their concerns, not everyone’s. The whole of feminist discourse in the US, with a some exceptions, has a framework based on the concerns of white, non-disabled, middle to upper class, cis-gendered women, but that’s an argument for another day.

IMO, if one person is making enough for a family to live in reasonable comfort, and they both agree that one person should stay home with the children, then someone stays home, regardless if it’s the man or the woman.

Who says a stay-at-home mom has no social life? You can have one if you want one, just like anyone else. I joined a moms club that introduced me to friends who are happy to do child-friendly activities, cookouts for our whole families, and nights out with just the girls. There are surely other ways to make friends if you other ones suddenly leave once you give birth.

Staying at home has been a challenge for me in many ways. The financial aspect is obvious, but the main thing is that I am miserable doing dishes and laundry and dusting. Still, I will never have these young years with her again, so I am sticking with it.

The ideal situation, for me, is to go back to work part time after she starts school.

My husband and I have discussed this. Traditionally, mens’ wages are higher than womens’, which is (I suppose) why you phrased the question this way – if her income is miniscule and he’s Bill Gates, surely the woman’s job is the one to go (if one goes), right? But we don’t have it like that here. Our income is almost equal to each other, within a couple hundred bucks a year, and we could not afford to even live as two people in this house without both of our incomes (and before you ask, it’s a tiny house in the cheapest neighborhood in town, not a minimansion). (If the man’s job is tiny and his demeanor caring, why not keep the ol’ boy home as a SAHD?)

If we had a kid (which is unlikely, but again, we’ve discussed it), it’s not like there would be a choice. Heck, we can’t even afford a kid, that’s why we don’t have one. In a perfect world, the economy would be great and we could buy a hobby farm and grow enough food for our needs so I could stay home and farm that food and churn that butter and raise those kids, but it’s, again, an economic impossibility. Would that I had the choice!

I think assuming the woman has a choice, it’s her choice. There are good arguments for both sides.

There are many examples in life of children growing up perfectly fine who had career moms. And I’m sure there are just as many children with SAHM mom’s who aren’t perfectly fine.

It’s the mental health, happiness & good parenting style that’s most important to children – regardless of whether that mother has an outside career or not.

Bottom line is good parent, better than average chance the child will turn out ok, regardless of whether the mother (or father) stays home, or is a single parent, or a gay parent, yadda yadda.

@Hypocrisy_Central I always recommend making decisions assuming you are a top class Goldman Sachs exec, reality be damned.

I always lean in the direction of personal choice and personal responsibility, for men as well as women. I think if people can stay home without leaning on the state and they choose to do that, good for them. If people choose a career, that is also wonderful, as long as they maintain responsibility for any children they have chosen to have.

I think it’s important to recognize that people do not always have a choice, and equally important to recognize that men as well as women face this choice. We often make the assumption that men are going to have careers while the women stay home with the kids. This may not be the happiest choice for some families.

I am a stay at home mom – but I work part time from home. This allows me to earn income and be here when my kids need me, too. Perfect choice for me, but may not be for everyone.

What about having a career, and if the grandparents are willing then they could care for the children. The children are still with family all day, and you can provide them with the extras in life.
Best of both worlds

For me stay at home.
For others, that is their choice.

Sorry I don’t have an answer, but just one thought.

Maybe if you are a stay at home mom, your kid will think that moms should stay at home and not work? Could that have a negative (or positive) influence on the kid?

I’m not a parent so maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about.

I agree with @MissAusten and @aprilsimnel – mothers working is about their work and careers often and not at all about ‘perks’ – and sometimes it’s about affording things like rent, you know and all that. It is an assumption that a woman shouldn’t have to work and would only do so out of necessity.

That being said, I think that when two parents decide to have a child, that child should be cared for by at least one of the parents full time at least until the kid is 2, if not older. If you can not arrange for that because of finances, don’t have children, period. If your pregnancy was unplanned, I understand a little more but can not get behind many of my friends who are willingly having children and at 3 months handing them over to a babysitter as they go back to work – I don’t get it, would never do it. When my first was born, I was a stay at home parent. When my second was born, my husband was and is the stay at home parent. I believe when I have another child, I will again stay at home. Sometimes, circumstances arise and what we have planned for doesn’t come through – right now we’re in a very bad financial situation and Alex is thinking of going to work but we’re leaning against it (despite all financial logic) because I think Ark is too young to go to pre-school and it is against our philosophy to put such a young child into the care of someone else.

I used to think that I could never be a SAHM. We needed both our salaries to live and besides I didn’t think I had the personality to be at home with them all the time. I stopped working after our second child was born but not willingly. It was massively stressful trying to make things work on one salary.

Thirteen years later, I’m glad that I am not working. If I had been working I probably wouldn’t have pulled the kids out of a truly toxic school situation.

I have an acquaintance who went back to work when her youngest kids entered school. Her oldest child ended up going sideways just after. Now, who knows whether this would have happened if she had been at home but it may not have.

The plain fact is that this “choice” isn’t a choice for most women…they have to go work. In an ideal world I think it should be up to the mother as to whether she wants to or not, but we don’t live in an ideal world.

I am very thankful that we are in the financial position where I can stay at home with the kids. And believe me the “job” I’m doing now is 1000x harder than the one I did when I was working.

When I’m 80 years old and about to die (just a number) i would look back and while I’m appreciating the important things it will be the quality time I spent w/ my family, not the quantity, balance, balance, I don’t think I can afford not working, then again I don’t have kids yet, but this is how I feel my life will turn out

@Ludy, I like how you think.

@partyparty It all depends on the grandparents. I would rather live in a cardboard box than let my mother spend unsupervised time with my children. Even my in-laws, who are wonderful people, could not care for my children on a regular basis. The poor kids would turn into asthmatic sugar addicts. From the secondhand smoke and constant supply of ice cream and lollipops. Our kids were much better off in a high quality daycare than with any of their grandparents.

When considering motherhood for myself I’ve always leaned towards being a stay at home mom until they reach Jr. High. I would have wanted to do home schooling in addition to their regular schooling and extra curricular activities. To me that would have been a job in itself.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to this question. Personally, I’d like to stay home with my baby for the first few years of their life. In my eyes, motherhood is a full time job. I have no kids yet but I plan to within the next couple years. I currently work part time but once a baby comes, I plan to stay at home for as long as financially possible.

Thanks for all the input but the main jist of the question was not who is the better parent for their choice or who will have better kids. That is not a question I would need to ask you jellies because I feel I know which is better but then that is me. The circle of people I am in some read Cosmo, or they watch Oprah and there is all that talk about “having it all”, to be like the Anaglia, Brook Shields type with big careers and still be the mom. And most people are different and some try to “have it all” and barely keep it together because they are so stressed trying to keep the underlings nipping at their heels at bay at the same time clawing their way up another rung of the ladder all the while trying to make those dance recitals. Just as some feel somewhat guilty of devoting so much to a career and not the kids or family there are SAHM who feel guilty that their wanting to be home with the kids is selfish because they are not pulling any bucks into the house, that maybe their kids can have those karate lessons if they were out working. Some people have to work, they just earn that little, however some who have ½5th Bill Gates like mates and the family don’t need their money still feel incomplete unless they chase the career. Why?

@MissAusten @aprilsimnel ”I love how the working mom/stay at home mom debate always implies that mothers work so they can afford perks like new cars, wonderful vacations, dinners out, and fancy clothes.” That is not always the case but just as people who gamble for instance, the reason they do is they hope to win. Some do it just for the rush but if there were no chance at winning they would not do it. So a great deal of women (maybe they don’t think it where you live) want the career because it means money. They can make a career out of volunteering but that don’t bring any bucks in. From the time we graduate we are still looking for that report card, something to validate us as having done good; or at least keeping up. If neighbors you know who seem no smarter can afford trips to exotic locations, bigger car, a bigger flat screen etc people start to wonder what they are doing wrong or what can they do so they can do better. ”After all, everyone isn’t going to be college-educated and middle class. Everyone isn’t going to make $200K a year” Right, but those in that position can’t use having to make ends meet as the reason to not be home, so it has to be something else.

”Shit, I worked full-time until we had our third child so we could make the mortgage payments on our small house, the car payments on our used cars, and to put homemade food on the table.” Now working people (and I am one) rarely run in circles of people who know inside secrets, they are usually the rich sharing with the rich. But if you had known you could have adapted the strategy of renting an apartment taking the money saved off feeding a mortgage and investing in some lien sales of homes you would like to have had. In 5 years or less I believe one would have not been redeemed and you would have had an excellent chance to obtain the property free and clear. Then you would have had extra money to buy new ore new with cash.

But simply working to get through the month is not really much of a career, though make a career out of working job after job.

Most of the time everything comes down to cash, that is why we work and not just indulge our passions.

@roundsquare ”I always recommend making decisions assuming you are a top class Goldman Sachs exec, reality be damned.” It is reality, if a woman has a spouse who make 50k, 75k, 125k, 300,000k, 5 mil, or more she can stay with the kids it just comes down to what she is willing to trade of that.

If I had a spouse that was raking in enough to keep the family afloat I would so be there all day with the kids. And I will have a life; with them. We will have field trips, and other outings, if I was a SAHD I would home school them as not to miss nary a moment of their growing up. That is what I would do.

Let me put it this way; if you CAN’T “have it all” (not counting those who are so close to the grit they have no choice but to go earn money) which side of the fence are you going hop off on?

@Hypocrisy_Central I would like to see you support a family of five here on the East Coast making $50,000 a year. My husband makes twice that, and we have a no-frills lifestyle. Because my husband started his own business not long after we were married, no bank would even consider giving us a home loan for at least three years. We also were not in a position to afford an apartment—we lived with my in-laws. The cost of living here is quite high (median home prices in our area are $350,000), but something we are willing to deal with in order to be close to family and send our children to excellent schools in a very safe town. What works for one family simply doesn’t work for another.

According to this source over 70% of mothers are in the labor force. Are you going to try to say that “a great deal of them” (which seems like you are suggesting the majority of them) don’t have to work to make ends meet? In our area, where most of the families are upper middle class, very few moms with children not yet in school work. In our old town, which was more working class, almost all of the moms worked because they had to in order to make ends meet with a modest lifestyle. If 70% of moms work, and the majority of this country is made up of working class families, then most of those working moms probably don’t have much choice in the matter.

I respect your opinion that a parent should stay home with the kids, but it isn’t as simple as buying a used car instead of new, or eating out less often, or going from seven figure income to a six figure income. I’d be willing to bet that for most working moms, staying home would require the kind of sacrifice that would do more harm to a family in the long run in terms of stress, quality of education, and quality of living conditions.

My mother was a “career woman”. I think because my father basically raised me, I’m pretty emotionally distant. She wasn’t much of a mother to begin with, though. I’d definitely want to be a stay at home mom. That isn’t really even an arguing point once I get married. I really think that the relationship you share with your children will outlast any “fashionable clothes” you could afford with the extra money you’d earn missing your children growing up.

@MissAusten Oh dear grandparents looking after your children doesn’t sound good at all. I can see your reasons why your children were in a good daycare centre.
But my daughter was cared for by my mum while I was at work, and it was a good situation. I knew she was somewhere where she was loved, well looked after and secure.
Sometimes the grandparent situation works and sometimes it doesn’t I suppose.

My wife is a teacher, I’m a computer scientist. We raised 2 kids. We had help from their grandparents. It must not necessarily be an either/or decision.

Sorry you had some stick for this question, I can see it is only a question you are asking. We are all entitled to our own opinions, right?

Well my mum worked all the way through my upbringing, I think she would have gone mad if she stayed at home all day everyday. As a child it didin’t bother me much. She re-arranged her hours so she would pick me up from school.

My opinion is totally different to that. I would prefer to stay at home with my kids and see every moment. I am very much a home person, I get more out of my life looking after my man and our home, that is what is important to me. I think if I was more outgoing and more into people then I would choose the other option. But I’m not.

@mattbrowne GA :-)

@mattbrowne Not everyone has the grandparent option and that’s one of those factors that makes this decision so variable.

@cazzie – I know. We’ve been very fortunate.

I don’t think a woman should give up her life because she has kids. If it was a man the question wouldn’t even be asked if he should stay home or work. Shows the whole thing is based on bigotry not reason.

@shf84 That’s not true at all. I know plenty of fathers who are stay at home dads. Times have changed. It’s perfectly acceptable for a woman to work while the man stays home with the kids.

@ItalianPrincess1217 Well, I wouldnt’ say it’s ‘perfectly acceptable’ – it’s acceptable to some people in some areas – lucky we live in NYC, that’s all I’ll say.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir True. Everyone has their own personal opinion on the matter. But it’s certainly more acceptable now versus past years.

@ItalianPrincess1217 Definitely.

@shf84 ”I don’t think a woman should give up her life because she has kids.” If a mano or a woman is not prepared to give up their live literally and by making major changes that benefit the child then they should not have them. In many ways having a child these days is a purely selfish endeavor, it is because you WANTED the child not because you had to have some to keep the tribe going.

”If it was a man the question wouldn’t even be asked if he should stay home or work.” The question was if it came down to choosing the kids or the career which has more sway. The question was not who SHOULD stay home or not. I have my believe on how I would handle it if it were possible, if this were centuries ago I would not have an option and neither would women.

”Shows the whole thing is based on bigotry not reason.” It is based on logic and tradition. Let go back before the industrial revolution before fridges full of vitamin D milk, gas ranges, clothes dryers, gas chain saws etc. Unless the faire wood was gathered someone had to go chop some trees and haul the logs back to the cabin (which was built with trees also). Who did 90% of that? Men. There was food to acquire, be it casting a net or shooting it on the hoof. Who hauled the carcass back to be cooked? Men. Who dragged the heavy nets back into the boat? Men. When a baby was born how did the baby get fed? Ummmmm……there was no Walmart to go to in which to purchase formula or milk from and there was no fridges to keep any milk from spoiling anyhow, the baby got fed off the tit –this bottle thing is rather new if you count the totality of mankind—. If women were doing this work how long would they last in pregnancy? Maybe until their 5th 6th month, then they would have to stop for the safety of the baby then would get the wood, haul in the fish, work the fields? Oh, right, men. Fault history if men ended up doing those physically demanding jobs full time I am sure women were deprived something by not having to sweat as much as those
men did.

However if the situation was such and the family could float on one paycheck and she wanted to go build bridges and such I would gladly stay home to build a well rounded child, and I don’t mind being the 1st to see him/her walk, speak, wonder over a butterfly, etc. If she wanted to miss all that because the bridge is something she can point at and say “I did that” I will point as a bright young mind and say “I done that”.

I think what some of us are trying to say is that working and parenting aren’t “all or nothing” choices. I guess, by your logic, my husband has nothing to do with the mental or emotional happiness and well-being of our children because he is off “building bridges.” It’s nice to know, just in time for Mother’s Day, that I am solely responsible for how wonderful our children are. :)

@MissAusten And I may take faming arrows saying it but there is only one you. Noone can take that place, no stepmother or anything. Even if you were adopted you will always want to know your real mom.

Yes, but what does that have to do with the current discussion? My mom worked off and on when I was a kid, but I never lacked for attention or affection, and certainly never felt slighted or ignored. I had a great time playing with the other kids at the sitter’s house, many of them (including the sitter, who was our doctor’s wife) are still family friends. My mom was the same kind of mom, whether she was working or not. That is the point you seem to ignore or refuse to accept, that a mom can still be a good mom even when she works full time. My mom wasn’t perfect, and in fact had a lot of quirks that eventually, about the time I was in college, blossomed into some kind of full-fledged disorder. If she’d worked throughout my childhood, I doubt my life would have been much different at all. Her working status never changed who she was as a person or as a parent.

A child may only have one mom (and I say “may,” because a child could have two moms, or two dads obviously) but that mom doesn’t have to be the same type of mom as every other mom on the planet to be able to raise the child well.

Of course no one can take the place of a parent, and parents shouldn’t expect it. I worked in daycare for several years, and even though I will humbly admit to being excellent at my job and forming deep attachments to many of the children in my care, never did I feel that I was taking the parents’ place. The children, even as young as toddlers, clearly knew the difference between daycare and home, teacher and mom (or dad). It literally makes me laugh when people talk about “strangers raising kids” because we clearly had very little influence on the development of the children in our care. We enforced school rules, had a lot of fun, and did a wide variety of activities to help the children learn. They might have spent 40 hours a week with us, but what they learned at home had a much more profound effect on them. Children don’t model themselves after teachers or babysitters, they model themselves after Mom and Dad. It might not seem to make sense, just when you consider the amount of time we spent with the children, but that’s the way it was.

@MissAusten It had little to do with the current question it was just a comment on “It’s nice to know, just in time for Mother’s Day, that I am solely responsible for how wonderful our children are. :)”. To let you know no matter what you have earned every accolade Mother’s Day brings, I don’t know of any kids who didn’t love mom (well, never knew any kids who had alcoholic mothers, that might changes things), even when she punished me. You have kods that adore you I say good going, that is all. :-)