Census Portrait of At-Home Moms Hardly Revolutionary
Categories: In The News, Childcare
Stay-at-home moms tend to be young, foreign and Hispanic. Credit: thenagainphoto, Flickr
Battle-weary professional women everywhere have discovered they can't have it all and are quitting the rat race to stay home with their rug rats.
It's called "the opting-out revolution." It's so much of a trend that it not only has its own name -- thanks to The New York Times columnist Lisa Belkin -- but several books have been written about it. So it has to be real, right?
Not if you ask the U.S. Census Bureau.
Spurred partially by curiosity over the opting-out phenomenon, bureau officials analyzed America's estimated 5.6 million at-home mothers. Their report issued Oct. 1 hardly portrays a house-broken Wonder Woman who has traded danger for diapers. Nor does it reflect June Cleaver, the quintessential housewife and mother of the 1950s from "Leave it to Beaver."
According to the report, at-home mothers these days are more likely to be younger women who are Hispanic or foreign born. They also make less money than the upper-middle class Cleavers.
The report is a snapshot of mothers in 2007, when the data was collected. According to the report, 44 percent of at-home mothers are 35 or younger. And 27 percent of at-home mothers are Hispanic -- compared with 16 percent of mothers in the rest of the population.
About a third of at-home mothers -- 34 percent -- were born in another country. In terms of education, 32 percent of at-home mothers have a college education, and about 19 percent left school without a high school diploma.
While other mothers have family incomes of at least $75,000 a year, according to the report, this is true for only 35 percent of at-home mothers. About 12 percent of at-home mothers live below the poverty line, compared with 5 percent of other mothers.
If there's an opting-out revolution, America's mothers apparently didn't get the memo.
"I do think there is a small population, very small population, that is opting out," Diana B. Elliott, a family demographer with the Census Bureau, told The Washington Post.
"But with the nationally representative data, we're not seeing it."
The full report is available online at http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/p20-561.pdf.
Related: About 25% of Moms Stay Home
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mommiedear 10-24-2009 @ 11:20AM
Whats the big deal many many moms have been staying at home for centuries it is no harder or more complex now that it has always been. On www.truuconfessions.com moms will agree with me.
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Linda Brizzi 10-18-2009 @ 6:40PM
My Daughter that was born and raised in USA, takes care of other people's children all day and works at home as an accountant till 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.
Her Father worked since he was 12, now retired, holding down part time job. I worked since I was 12, until I got married and became an at home Mother And now am out of job. We as parents are doing purely, we eat Hamburger Helper, cereal, etc. Go out maybe if we are lucky once a yr.
Thank you for taking such good care of your US Citizens. I plan on killing myself when I can't take it anymore....My daughter is so run down trying to keep up with school, clothes, food, gas, Dr. Bills and paying for other things that a family needs. She is unable to take care of us.
This is such a scary world and times. I fear for my Grandchildren.
No one cares......
Reply