Asymmetrical Information

During my last year of grad school, I stayed home with my kids and took night classes. It was lonely since the only other neighbors around during the day were stay-at-home moms, and I didn't want the appearance of impropriety (I'm a man). My wife has enjoyed being a stay-at-home mom, partly because of the opportunity to spend time with the other moms. With dads, that typically isn't an option.

Great analysis! I've always thought of this from the psychological point of view: Women want approval for their choices, especially when they feel ambivalent themselves. But there's a lot to be said for the economic perspective.

On the other hand, I as a working mom bought a house in a school district with lots of stay-at-home moms. The schools in our district have a huge supply of intelligent, capable, energetic volunteers that care about the children and the quality of education, and I don't have to feel guilty about not volunteering. And if I'm really desperate for a babysitter for a sick child, my chances are much better if I turn to neighbors that aren't working. As a working mom, I feel that I benefit greatly from knowing stay-at-home moms.

Interesting take. It jibes well with my antisocial nature, which has led me to stay single and childless. Good pals one has sex with are so much better.

The other part of the question, though, is how important should the mommy wars be. There are a lot of different "us vs. them" divisions that can be made; which ones are likely to have the most impact on the winners and losers?

Nice, Megan. I agree with much of what you wrote -- that being a SAHP is much harder then it used to be, that two incomes has become a necessity, and that there is great insecurity among mothers about whether or not they are doing the right thing.

Some small quibbles. There aren't the strict lines between working and SAHM mothers. For example, I'm a SAHM right now, but I'm very much in favor of subsidized daycare because it's the right thing to do and because I might need it very soon. Women move in and out of the workforce and realize that their position might change tomorrow.

I'm not sure that having more working mothers is going to make it acceptable to snooze at a business meeting and to make one's husband pick up the socks. 75% of women with kids are in the workforce already and snoozing still isn't allowed and husbands still leave dirty socks around. What we need are pissed off working women withholding sex. Then things will change. (joke)

There are some wonder political interest groups that are aimed at increasing the political rights of mothers of whatever employment status. (SAHM mothers have their own political goals, too.) MOTHERS is one of the best. But they have a devil of a time organized mothers, because women are just too busy.

There are mommy wars, but it is really more of tussle. Just a few diehards pursuing those battles. Most of us just want to get through the day.

And I agree with everything in the teeny-tiny font.

I disagree with the basic premise that two incomes are a necessity. In Econ 101 terms - it's simply a matter of choice. If you want to live in a nice brick colonial in a close in suburb and both drive newer cars, then yeah, two incomes, or one very big income, is sort of required.

Or you can choose to live father out from the big city, with somebody driving a beater instead of a beamer, or maybe even move somewhere in flyover country where the equity on your east coast house will buy a small estate, and then one parent can stay home.

Obviously, the choice isn't usually that clean cut, but the point is many two-income families could do just fine on one income by making different choices. However step one would be realizing (or maybe admitting) that it is a choice.

Note - I'm talking about two income, white collar types of families. The family that needs mom's tip money from the diner to buy groceries doesn't have the same choices.

COD, the response from some study published around the world a year ago was that the more money plowed into real estate was actually an investment in competitive schools that are found in those neighborhoods. People are spending more money on the nice home not necessarily for palladian window and acre lot, but to be sure that most other kids will be at a comparative educational disadvantage to theirs.

Neat, COD. But why make the choices when you can join "Laura" in advocating that federal gunmen come and force you to subsidize everyone else's daycare?

My kids don't go to school - you really don't want me getting into the school system discussion here :)

Keeping it in Econ terms, I question how good of a return yuppie suburban parents are really getting for the $8000-$10000 per child that gets spent on education.

It's been very lonely staying at home in my neighborhood, while most of the other moms go to work, and their kids stay in daycare. Pre-schools eliminate a lot of that alienation, though the moms you meet live in different neighborhoods, and thus aren't as handy as neighbors.

Now that my older child is registered for kindergarden next year and my younger will be in a mother's day-out program, we are busier and don't notice the isolation so much.

Kindergarden went to full days this year in my entire school district. I suspect that's working-mom driven, though I don't know.

Finally, I am extremely irritated that the class schedule at the new Excite Gym for kids is geared toward working moms. I don't want my daughter in a Tuesday evening class -- that's daddy time, and he works so hard, there's not enough of that!

Very good analysis, but I think you need to include the impact of mass immigration (including illegal immigration), of which you approve.

Children are still cared for by women during the day. The problem is that they're cared for by Mexican nannies (this is coming from southern California) with whom a middle-class Anglophone American women would have significant linguistic and cultural differences.

Women work because they can -- and one of the reasons they can, is that we've imported a helot class. That's the same reason you'll rarely see a teenage southern Californian mowing his family lawn.

Mayonnaise sandwiches?!? Must have been love.

While I agree that women argue against each other, there's also a societal reason to care about women's choice, regardless of gender or parenting status.

Non-working parents are more likely to require subsidies. They're at increased likelihood to require welfare (if the breadwinner leaves or loses his job), or court support for child support.

So those who think these risks are bad for children can think it's better for women to work.

Those who think that children are better off with mothers at home and therefore produce a better society will, of course, hold the opposite view.

But I think your claims are overstated. There are many cities and towns in which the number of stay at home parents is large, and the network of such people has not falled dramatically compared to the 50s. Also, I think your comments in teeny tiny print should be bigger. The "we must have two incomes": well, yes, you do in order to have the same standard of living as those around you who have two incomes, but no, in many parts of the country, you don't need two incomes.

But I absolutely agree with the externality comments. The more SAHMs in my neighborhood, the less I have to fight the standard of living battle. The more SAHPs in my state, the more likely the state will pass tax legislation favorable (or at least not unfavorable) to me. The more that women fight for "paid maternity leave", the more I'm financially disadvantaged, since my taxes and my household income pay for that leave, but no one pays for mine.

"Some small quibbles. There aren't the strict lines between working and SAHM mothers. For example, I'm a SAHM right now, but I'm very much in favor of subsidized daycare because it's the right thing to do and because I might need it very soon."

And why would you need subsidized daycare? Since daycare is an expense of working, if the money you get from working doesn't cover it and show enough of a profit to make it worthwhile, doesn't this constitute a "price signal" that maybe working isn't the way to go for you?

"I'm not sure that having more working mothers is going to make it acceptable to snooze at a business meeting and to make one's husband pick up the socks. 75% of women with kids are in the workforce already and snoozing still isn't allowed and husbands still leave dirty socks around. What we need are pissed off working women withholding sex. Then things will change."

Lots of pissed off women already withhold sex, along with their (ex) husbands' paychecks, and contact with their kids. How's that working out?

"COD, the response from some study published around the world a year ago was that the more money plowed into real estate was actually an investment in competitive schools that are found in those neighborhoods. People are spending more money on the nice home not necessarily for palladian window and acre lot, but to be sure that most other kids will be at a comparative educational disadvantage to theirs."

Well, there's also the advantage of not getting shot by thugs. But at any rate, there's nothing stopping those other school districts from flunking idiots no matter how numerous they happen to be, and teaching and passing anyone willing to work to a high standard rather than the standard that the teachers tend to assume that "those people" are capable of.

But when you get right down to it, when you find people bidding up the price of something, and the price of that something keeps going up and the supply of it does not, this is a sign that the supply is being artificially restricted. Lift the restrictions, and all the working mothers in the world aren't going to jack up the total price of a good school. Stick with a system like ours, and you'll find good schools with a several thousand percent tax in the form of an expensive home (whose supply is also restricted by various laws) that one must buy to get access to them.

"the more I'm financially disadvantaged, since my taxes and my household income pay for that leave, but no one pays for mine."

A tiny drip in the bucket of bennies your non-working spouse collects when you retire, in the form of Social Security checks she didn't work for. And of course, there's her status as "dependent", giving you an extra deduction on your taxes.

Nonworking spouses are subsidized directly by the government in a number of ways. Working spouses are not.

That's no excuse for subsidized daycare, of course, and I don't support it. But the idea that you're just some hardworking schmoe subsidizing other people's choices is absurd. Your stay at home luxury costs people far more than the self-supporting model.

"On the other hand, I as a working mom bought a house in a school district with lots of stay-at-home moms. The schools in our district have a huge supply of intelligent, capable, energetic volunteers that care about the children and the quality of education, and I don't have to feel guilty about not volunteering. And if I'm really desperate for a babysitter for a sick child, my chances are much better if I turn to neighbors that aren't working. As a working mom, I feel that I benefit greatly from knowing stay-at-home moms."

It's fun being a Free Rider, isn't it, Ann? When are you going to share that paycheck with the rest of us? I'd love some of the luxuries you can probably support that I can't.

No, no, no, you've got it all wrong. The mommy wars are a creation of radical statists and haters of human liberty on both sides - feminist Stalinists on the one hand and good ol' Kinder, Kuche, Kirke National Socialists on the other. In a flat-tax, minarchist utopia, the small minority of mothers with strong avocations to time-intensive careers would create lots of jobs for the large majority of mothers who wish to focus primarily on their children but also wish, or need to make some money. (There will also always be a small minority of mothers who do not wish to do paid work and are able to live entirely on their partner's income.)

The silly term "working mother" elides the huge differences between mothers who work for avocation as well as income and mothers who work primarily for income. The first group of women are the natural employers of other mothers. Domestic service, home daycare, small schools, lesson-giving, are just a few of the services mothers are ideally suited to provide. If more high-earning mothers kept more of their income, there would be more paid work available to other mothers that would not conflict with childrearing.

Free-to-user taxpayer-funded programs that are used by working parents take money out of my pocket twice - directly, by taxing my husband's paycheck, and indirectly, because if those free afterschool programs didn't exist, my services would be a lot easier to sell. It's not a mommy war. It's a war between state employee and private business.

I think the tastes you refer to in terms of high earning men seeking spouses are somewhat generational. Most of the high earnering men I know over 40 are married to stay at home moms, and do seem to have sought that out in a spouse.
However, most of the high earning men I know under 40 are actively seeking to marry similarly high earning spouses.

The reasons are clear if you think about it. If you are young and look at the high earners married to stay at home moms, they are chained to their jobs. They never seem to garner the benefits of their high earnings that one sees accruing to younger high earning couples. I know several high income men with stay at home wives who do things like paint their own house (which they do not enjoy) etc because they need to save the money to pay for the tuition for their children.

The common pattern for younger high earners seems to be two high earning people marry, enjoy 5 or so years as DINKS (with all the fun things you can do as high earning DINKS), then have 1-2 kids, arrange for flex time/telecommuting/gold plated enrichment activities (which happen to double as day care) for their children. Sometimes, one or both of them go part time (30 hours a week) and they time shift their schedules so someone can always look after the child. In general, their life looks MUCH richer, and MUCH less stressful than their over 40 high earning peers with stay at home spouses.

Given the choice between the two lifestyles, which would you expect a high earning male seeking a spouse to prefer?

there's also the advantage of not getting shot by thugs.

You have a really distorted view of what life is like in the 75% of neighborhoods that are neither inner city nor good-school suburbia.

Many men, especially high-earning men, want women who will stay at home and take the burden of childcare and housework off of them.

Do they? My sense is that there are a lot more women who would like husbands to take the burden of earning a high-income off of them.
Among my high-earning neighbors I see a combination of dual-income couples and couples where the wife has either no paid job at all or a 'hobby job' that pays little but gives her something to do. But this latter arrangement seems to be much more the wives' preference than the husbands' (judging from the comments the husbands make over beer at the bar).

there's also the advantage of not getting shot by thugs.

You have a really distorted view of what life ...

Might I suggest that this is simply shorthand for the moderately strong inverse correlation between neighbourhood income and crime. One reason why many parents consider two incomes a necessity is that their is a correlation between income and school quality and even more importantly, the child's peer group.

If parents are trying to insure (as much as possible) their children's financial success, then (statistically) the only thing they can do is try an be as financially successful themselves as possible. (Obviously within the limits recognized by reasonable people).

It might sound pretty shallow, but as a parenting philosophy, it is very common.

I read a similar article in my local paper (Bergen Record) and thought that it was BS. Especially the comment Steiner made about her husband going out to a job he really loved for 14 hours each day - that was hilarious.

There is conflict between working and stay at home moms that has nothing to do with taxes and government programs. Many of the stay at home moms resented the working mothers for relying on them to run most of the volunteer activities. The working moms often viewed the stay at homes as women of leisure, or professionally deficient.

My wife stopped working when our first child was born and we took a sharp hit to our household budget. We didn't go on fancy vacations and we didn't drive luxury cars. But that was a tradeoff that we gladly embraced and one that still benefits us now, as we don't have quite the appetite for consumption that we might have had we been a dual income couple.

My wife works now, after both of our kids finished high school. I know one working woman who seemed kind of resentful toward my wife pre-work, whose resentment has vanished now that she has joined the working world.

So there are conflicts and animosities. Big deal. When people have choices there are always insecurities when they compare themselves to those making different choices. Did I make the right choice?

On the other hand, I as a working mom bought a house in a school district with lots of stay-at-home moms. The schools in our district have a huge supply of intelligent, capable, energetic volunteers that care about the children and the quality of education, and I don't have to feel guilty about not volunteering. And if I'm really desperate for a babysitter for a sick child, my chances are much better if I turn to neighbors that aren't working. As a working mom, I feel that I benefit greatly from knowing stay-at-home moms."

It's fun being a Free Rider, isn't it, Ann? When are you going to share that paycheck with the rest of us? I'd love some of the luxuries you can probably support that I can't.

-- anony-mouse

Good grief, now there's three of us? I think I need to find a different sign-off.

It's fun being a Free Rider, isn't it, Ann? When are you going to share that paycheck with the rest of us?

Um, I believe she's already doing so. It's called taxes.

Tom,

Unfortunately, I suspect you will find that almost none of Ann's taxes are going to actually subsidize her middle class stay-at-home mom neighbors. For the most part those taxes are going to either subsidize the elderly (a statistically very wealthy demographic) or the poor, not her middle class stay at home mom neighbors.

In my own circle (mostly college-educated, pretty evenly split between urban- and suburban-dwellers), the rule seems to be similar to what quadrupole suggested: about 5 years as DINKS, but upon having children, instead of quadropole's immediate jump to daycare, one spouse (and, again in my circle, the gender of the SAH-spouse is immaterial - we know a surprisingly large number of SAHDs) takes time off until the kid or kids are in school at least half-time, then (usually) returns to work or starts a small or home-based business, sometimes only during school hours, sometimes full-time. So staying at home is more a temporary measure than a permanent lifestyle. The tradeoff is that the SAH-spouse loses three, five, eight (in my case, thankyou surprise third child) years of career development. Often the returner-to-work changes tracks altogether as a result. (For instance, among our friends, architect-to-entrepreneur, environmental-consultant-to-school-administrator, biochemist-to-web-developer, daycare-provider-to-Tupperware-gentleman - he hasn't been all that successful, in either endeavor...)

It's viable, and provides the benefit of (IMHO) less money-stress (about whether that second career is "worth it" given the cost of baby daycare - if the couple decides together to have a spouse stay at home, there's often - usually? - a financial sacrifice to be made, but both partners are hopefully in agreement about the common goal of surviving on one income until the child is ready for launch) and time-stress during that period when baby-stress is quite enough already, as well as the intangible benefit of having an in-family witness to baby milestones. (I read a baby/toddler-daycare book recently that cautioned providers not to tell parents when their child had achieved a milestone like walking or first word at daycare; they were advised to say something like, "Megan certainly was [getting close to the milestone] today - I wouldn't be surprised if she [achieves the milestone] in the next few days," so parents wouldn't feel so left out.) Considering how often people make full career-track changes even when they don't take time off for childrearing, the loss of time and need for retraining can be managed. I'll be starting my second career at 40; while it would've been more convenient to start over at, say, 35, the additional five years isn't going to kill me.

As a male, I would never want to be with a partner who wanted to be a SAHM. We wouldn't get past the first date, or whatever date this issue arises. And I'll pick up my own socks, thank you. The reason? Simple. Having spent too many years in the academic adjunct pool, my earning potential is prety much capped. I could never afford to be solely responsible for the family income. And I wouldn't want to be.

Great analysis.

I'm a SAHM, and I enjoy it greatly --- but crucial to my happiness, seriously, is the fact that we've formed close friendships with three other families in similar situations (dad works, mom's at home, kids are homeschooled) and we spend huge amounts of time together during the weekdays.

Typically we trade off days: Mondays everyone's at Melissa's, Thursdays at mine, Fridays at Hannah's, etc. We take some work with us, supervise all the kids' schoolwork around the kitchen table, help each other make dinner or take care of housework, and also we're available to each other on a moment's notice for emergency childcare and the like.

For example, Melissa broke her ankle this week and the rest of us are taking turns spending the day over there just to help her out with her kids.

I can't imagine how my days might go if all my friends were working and I had no one but myself and my own children in my own house. I think it would be terribly isolating and depressing. I try to remember that when I talk to women who are struggling with the home/work decision --- I don't regret staying home, but my home-staying experience has made me wealthy in relationships, and not everyone feels comfortable reaching out to other women to deliberately form this kind of a relationship.

Nevertheless, I try to encourage people to do it --- it makes all the difference in the world.

Oh, BTW to everyone who called Ann a "free rider" ---

Why are you assuming she isn't paying her neighbors to babysit her kids, or compensating them in some other way? She didn't specify.

From the article - "Most came of age after the first wave of feminism and assumed that they would combine motherhood with a meaningful career — until their early aspirations collided agonizingly with the twin brick walls of the typical American workplace and typical American males."

Wow. Some people really feel the need for gender dialectic.

So "meaningful career" is precluded by American workplaces and men? Or "motherhood" is? Or is it "combining them" that is precluded?

Sigh.

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