Life on the Road

Okay, this is one of those “the news got me thinking” kind of posts, so please bear with me!

NEW YORK (AP) — A sharply increasing portion of America’s working mothers say their ideal situation would include a part-time job, rather than working full time or staying at home, a new national survey finds.

This article, from Bay News 9, finds that 60% of Working Moms would rather work part-time than full-time (up from 48% 10 years ago), while 19% would prefer to stay home entirely (essentially unchanged).

Meanwhile, the responses from the at-home moms indicate that very few of them think working full-time outside the home would be good (16%, down from 24%), and most feel that they are doing the best thing - staying home (48%, up from 39%).

Interesting - maybe that whole SuperWoman / SuperMom thing is finally going out of vogue?

The big issue that I find is not addressed at all in the study is working from home. I know and awful lot of WAHMs - myself included - who believe we truly have the best of both worlds.

Why do women want to work part-time, but not full-time? Seems likely that they’re thinking they want to contribute to the family income, and maybe have some “grown-up time,” but they don’t want all their time and energy to be drawn away from the home and family.

This question puts it into perspective:

The survey also found differences in how working and stay-at-home moms assess the job they do as parents _ mothers working full-time give themselves lower ratings, on average, than at-home mothers or mothers working part-time.

So why not get all the benefits of the job, without going out into the world to look for it? WAHMs create their own schedule, have all the flex-time and sick days they need, and never have to worry about an accident on the freeway making them late for work. Plus, there are a lot of great companies to get involved with now that even off traditional “working woman” perks like Direct Deposit, benefits, and a 401k! (Didn’t know that? Check us out!).

Sadly, reality isn’t in sync with the preferences expressed by the women in the survey.

According to the latest federal figures, 70.5 percent of American women with children under 18 work outside the home _ including 60 percent of mothers with children under 3. And the newly emerging preference for part-time work doesn’t mesh with current reality: three-quarters of the working mothers have full-time jobs.

How did this happen? When did this happen? Why?

Even the women who don’t want to work, or don’t want to work full-time, are working. If they’re anything like my friends back in L.A., they don’t even feel like they have a choice.

Isn’t that an interesting conundrum? You choose to live in an expensive place, you choose to get a biger house, you choose to buy two new cars, you choose the designer wardrobe and the plasma TV, and on and on… Then you say you don’t have any choice but to work, since you can’t live on one income.

Even the media points out over and over again that most people vastly overestimate the value of a second income. You lose the income, but you also go down a tax bracket, don’t have to pay for daycare, save on food and clothing… Even CNN - not known to be family-friendly, has a great article on Planning: Going from two incomes to one, including a worksheet proclaiming:

MONEY Worksheet: The real value of a second income
When you or your spouse stops working, your family loses a paycheck — but also eliminates all the costs associated with earning it. When you compare income and outgo, you may be surprised at how little that second salary really adds to your family’s bottom line.

Now we’re really to “frugal living” - that’s quite a ramble from full-time versus part-time work!  But actually, I think that many people tend to put on their blinders and consider one tiny fact out of context.

Frugal living is - in fact - integral to a discussion of the value of a second income, which is integral to a discussion of whether mom really needs to work, which also requires that we consier how important our childrens’ education is - and how well it will be handled if we leave it to someone else, which also requires consideration of our beliefs about our responsibility before God for child-rearing…  And so on, and so on.

It’s like saying, “but I exercise, why am I still fat?” without considering the fact that you eat five times more calories than you need.

It’s time to step back from banging our head against the tree.  Back up far enough to really get a good look…

Ah…  The Forest! 

We choose to be home, “training up our children,” and building a secure financial legacy for them at the same time.  Thank God for providing this opportunity to us.

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