Mother’s Day is a day to show love for all types of moms: biological, adoptive, single, working, and stay-at-home.
Demographically, there has been a slight increase in one particular type of mother: those choosing to stay at home with the kids.
A 2014 Pew Research Center report showed that, in 1999, 23 percent of all U.S. mothers were stay-at-home moms. Characterized as a “modern-era low,” it followed a trend that saw the Leave It to Beaver nuclear family arrangement decline over a period of decades.
Since 1999, there’s been an uptick in mothers staying in the proverbial nest. The most recent figures indicate that in 2012, 29 percent of moms did not work outside the home.
There are many reasons why more American moms are choosing to stay home, some based on economics.
Mary Krueger, the director of the Women’s Center at Bowling Green State University, attributed part of the increase to the global financial meltdown in 2007-08. It gave couples permission to stay home, including dads.
“Times were tough, and it’s a matter of whoever has the best job, whoever was able to bring in the highest salary,” she said. “There was a trade where it began to outweigh gender ideas of who was supposed to work out of the home or supposed to stay home. There has been a trade where whoever makes the most money is whoever works outside of the home,” she said.
The high cost of child care also weighs on parents’ decision.
For the Jones family in Sylvania Township, finances and the loss of a stillborn child, Elora, factored into Lauren’s and Julius’ decision for her to leave her teaching job when their son Myles was born in May 2014.
When she was pregnant with Elora, Lauren had planned to go to work after a three-month leave. Her mother-in-law would watch the baby.
“After I lost her, it took us eight months to get pregnant with him. I just decided that I wanted to stay home … I didn’t want to miss out on his life moments after the tragedy,” the 31-year-old mother said.
The couple compared her teaching income against child care and gas expenses.
“Day care was a lot compared to my income. Plus, I devoted a lot of time to my students and I didn’t want to neglect either [my students or my child], ” she said.
The U.S. Census Bureau found that child care costs increased to an average of $143 per week in 2011 from $84 in 1985, based on families with an employed mother and children younger than 15.
Mrs. Jones holds two bachelor's degrees — Spanish and education — along with a master’s in education curriculum and instruction. She did struggle with the transition from working wife to stay-at-home mom.
“When the kids went back to school, that’s when the transition was a little more difficult for me. It felt strange to know my friends, coworkers were going back to work. I wasn’t going to get to see the students I had taught every day,” she said.
For the Case family of Delta, Valerie, 38, told her husband Aaron before they married that she was a career woman.
“He said, ‘Well one of us is going to stay at home with the kids. We’ll have to figure that one out,’ so we kind of let it go,” she said.
And then they had Isaac, 11, the first of four children. Ava, 9, Enoch, 3, and Elijah, 1, followed.
After Isaac was born, she returned to her teaching position after three months maternity leave.
At the time the couple were living in Tennessee. A student’s mother babysat while Mrs. Case taught elementary school. However, she could not bear time apart from her newborn.
“I cried every day when I had to drop him off. So at the end of that school year we talked about it and decided I would stay at home,” she said.
Finding work
Unlike Mrs. Case’s and Mrs. Jones’ situations, not all stay-at-home moms do so by choice.
Pew researchers noted that more moms are at home because they cannot find work. In 2012, the figure was 6 percent, versus 1 percent in 2000.
“Single and cohabiting stay-at-home mothers are more likely than married stay-at-home mothers with working husbands to say they are ill or disabled, unable to find a job, or enrolled in school,” according to Pew’s 2014 article “7 key findings about stay-at-home moms.”
Pew also found that religion, ethnicity, and education factored into Americans’ opinions about whether a mom at home was best for a child’s upbringing. Hispanics, white evangelical Protestants, and those who never attended college are more likely to say children are better off with a parent at home, compared to college-educated women.
Olga Martinez, 34, who emigrated from Mexico to the United States 10 years ago with her husband Jose and son Melvin, 13, was able to bring baby Melvin to work in Mexico, where she was a store cashier.
Today, she stays in their South Toledo home with 3-year-old Marvin, while Melvin is at school and Mr. Martinez is at work.
“I know that I can take care of my family, and my son is an adolescent. It is very important to be involved in his life and to give them both love and understanding,” she said with the assistance of a translator.
Staying at home enables her to teach them values such as respect and gratefulness. For her, the most difficult aspect of motherhood is earning her children’s trust and confidence.
Life at home
There are many challenges that come with being a stay-at-mom, including falling into the Groundhog Day routine.
Mrs. Case, who home schools her eldest children, claims 5 to 7 a.m. for herself. That’s when Mr. Case sets off to work out and work in Toledo and before the kids wake up and pile into bed with her for a little family snuggling.
“I get up and read my Bible and pray. I pray hard! Because so many days I cry and think, ‘I can’t do this.’ I just don’t want to get out of bed and admit that a new day is here because then I’d have to go through it all all over again. I beg God for help and wisdom and strength to face another day. And I know that He does because here I am 11 years into the job and still trucking,” she said.
The moms interviewed for this story do sometimes manage to break up the routine by meeting with friends or relatives with children for play dates, going to the zoo or park, or even having “me time” that consist of a women’s only adult talk or heading to the gym. Of course, that is when dads step in on child duty.
Women today clearly have more resources to enrich their children’s lives or to occupy their time. Today’s digital devices even allow moms to easily connect with friends from home.
Mrs. Martinez uses her phone to connect with friends in a health group on Facebook. Mrs. Jones is teaching Spanish and sign language to Myles. Mrs. Case uses the computer to create lesson plans.
Times change
Sylvania Township resident Brenda Bishop, 74, recalled what it was like growing up in rural Tennessee. She couldn’t recall mothers who worked outside the home when she was a toddler in the 1940s.
In a time without washing machines, furnaces, or plumbing, women were basically chained to the homestead.
“My mom worked 24-7, practically. There wasn’t a washing machine. We barely had running water. My mom was carrying pots in and out of the house at nighttime for us. She would get up in the middle of the night and make a fire in the potbelly so it was a little warm for us,” she said.
Ms. Bishop was herself a stay-at-home mom in the ’60s. She earned some money by typing theses for college students at night. To her, “me time” was a foreign word. As a couple she and her husband would visit friends’ homes or play cards in a group. Home chores and children were completely her responsibility, while he worked.
Bowling Green’s Mary Krueger believes that no matter the time period, there has always been pressure on moms.
“[For much of the 20th century] there was zero expectation of men contributing in that whatsoever. Whereas today we know that men can and usually want to be more equal partners with the household and with the children. Wherever you are at any given point in time there are upsides and downsides,” she said, adding that in the ’50s dads were not expected to know their child’s birthday.
“There’s a tendency to either think that the past was so much better than today or today is so much better than the past,” she said. “Really we are all just going along trying to do the best we can.
“There might be this whole belief that modern-day stay-at-home moms in particular may have certain pressures on them to enrich their kids up to their eyebrows and sign them up for certain things, and run them around … That may be. However, in the past mothers were expected to do 100 percent of the child care all of the time,” she said.
While in today’s families, husbands often assist with getting children to bed, reading stories, preparing dinner, and more, moms of yesterday often faced social pressure not to take free time for themselves. Even when spending time with their friends, they still were producing something.
The quilting or canning parties of the 20th century were a “way for women to hang out with their girlfriends, have other women around, but still being productive,” said Ms. Krueger. “We are not just sitting around drinking coffee at Panera. We are quilting, sewing, and embroidering.”
Times may have changed, but the challenges of motherhood — stay-at-home or not — remain.
Contact Natalie Trusso Cafarello at: 419-206-0356, or ntrusso@theblade.com, or on Twitter @natalietrusso.
First Published May 8, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
