Stay-at-home-moms and the neglected men’s perspective
Posted 1st-May-2008 at 02:52 PM by Denise Noe
By
Denise Noe
There is a current trend toward more stay-at-home-moms. An article in a 2003 issue of Jet commented, “According to a recently released census report from the U.S. Census Bureau last year, nearly 11 million children under age 15 are raised by a full-time stay-at-home mom, a 13 percent increase from less than a decade ago.”
Most articles and programs about this phenomenon center around the importance of respecting women’s choices and why more women are making the choice for fulltime homemaking. A segment of 60 Minutes was typical in interviewing group of well-educated former career women who decided to stay home fulltime after their babies were born. The program also featured a woman who objected to this choice because she thought it was bad for women as a group.
Men are usually left out of this discussion altogether even though they make it possible for mothers to quit the labor market. The 60 Minutes segment was typical in not interviewing or even showing a single husband.
Yet the impact on a man of having a wife who stays home with the baby can be enormous. It means that he becomes the only source of income at the same time that the family’s expenses have gone up.
An irony of the position of American men is that they are widely assumed to be the dominant sex yet are in crucial areas supposed to submit to women’s preferences and, in the case of SAHMs, enable those preferences without complaint. Just as men who wanted their wives to be fulltime homemakers a generation or two ago were blasted as chauvinists, today men who do not want to shoulder the entire economic load are criticized as slackers.
Some men object to supporting stay-at-home-moms. Awhile ago, Dear Abby published a letter from a woman who had just had a baby and wished to stay home but whose husband strongly wanted her to cont inue working outside the home. That man is not alone. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, an advocate of stay-at-home parenting, has written that mothers have asked her what to do about “husbands who threaten divorce if they stay at home to raise their children.” Dr. Laura condemns men who have such sentiments, saying they “are used to material possessions and diminished responsibility for the family.”
The objections some men have to a sole breadwinner role are not without merit. Being sole breadwinners can put enormous pressure on men. At the lower economic levels, a breadwinning father may accept physically dangerous jobs because they pay more. At the upper echelons, being sole provider may lead a man to cut ethical or even legal corners to make more money for his family. Being sole breadwinners also frequently means that men at any economic strata must spend extra time at work, diminishing their emotional influence on the children for whom they are worki ng. It can leads to great stress and the illnesses that can result. Finally, in our fast-paced and ever-changing economy, it is only too easy for a one-paycheck family to become a no-paycheck family. Tension can hover over a sole breadwinner afraid for the security of his job. That security may crash down on the entire family if he loses it.
There is nothing wrong with the trend toward more full-time homemakers and much that is right with it. However, any discussion of this trend must recognize that this is not solely a women’s choice since it must be made possible by men and consider the effects, both psychological and physical, that stay-at-home-motherhood has on the men who foot the bill for it.
Denise Noe
There is a current trend toward more stay-at-home-moms. An article in a 2003 issue of Jet commented, “According to a recently released census report from the U.S. Census Bureau last year, nearly 11 million children under age 15 are raised by a full-time stay-at-home mom, a 13 percent increase from less than a decade ago.”
Most articles and programs about this phenomenon center around the importance of respecting women’s choices and why more women are making the choice for fulltime homemaking. A segment of 60 Minutes was typical in interviewing group of well-educated former career women who decided to stay home fulltime after their babies were born. The program also featured a woman who objected to this choice because she thought it was bad for women as a group.
Men are usually left out of this discussion altogether even though they make it possible for mothers to quit the labor market. The 60 Minutes segment was typical in not interviewing or even showing a single husband.
Yet the impact on a man of having a wife who stays home with the baby can be enormous. It means that he becomes the only source of income at the same time that the family’s expenses have gone up.
An irony of the position of American men is that they are widely assumed to be the dominant sex yet are in crucial areas supposed to submit to women’s preferences and, in the case of SAHMs, enable those preferences without complaint. Just as men who wanted their wives to be fulltime homemakers a generation or two ago were blasted as chauvinists, today men who do not want to shoulder the entire economic load are criticized as slackers.
Some men object to supporting stay-at-home-moms. Awhile ago, Dear Abby published a letter from a woman who had just had a baby and wished to stay home but whose husband strongly wanted her to cont inue working outside the home. That man is not alone. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, an advocate of stay-at-home parenting, has written that mothers have asked her what to do about “husbands who threaten divorce if they stay at home to raise their children.” Dr. Laura condemns men who have such sentiments, saying they “are used to material possessions and diminished responsibility for the family.”
The objections some men have to a sole breadwinner role are not without merit. Being sole breadwinners can put enormous pressure on men. At the lower economic levels, a breadwinning father may accept physically dangerous jobs because they pay more. At the upper echelons, being sole provider may lead a man to cut ethical or even legal corners to make more money for his family. Being sole breadwinners also frequently means that men at any economic strata must spend extra time at work, diminishing their emotional influence on the children for whom they are worki ng. It can leads to great stress and the illnesses that can result. Finally, in our fast-paced and ever-changing economy, it is only too easy for a one-paycheck family to become a no-paycheck family. Tension can hover over a sole breadwinner afraid for the security of his job. That security may crash down on the entire family if he loses it.
There is nothing wrong with the trend toward more full-time homemakers and much that is right with it. However, any discussion of this trend must recognize that this is not solely a women’s choice since it must be made possible by men and consider the effects, both psychological and physical, that stay-at-home-motherhood has on the men who foot the bill for it.
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A lot of good points made here.Posted 22nd-July-2008 at 04:34 PM by MadShangi
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