Employers Are Baffled as U.S. Benefits End and Jobs Go Begging

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. That is much truer than most people realize.

Nearly 40 years ago a financial advisor I knew talked about how much a wife needed to earn (and this is predicated on the traditional "The man makes the primary income" model) to pay for the added expenses, especially in terms of child care, to pay for those additional expenses. I forget the number, but it was astonishingly high.

Not long after, at a company picnic for the company my husband worked at, I was talking briefly to a wife who was (unexpectedly and unhappily) expecting their third child. When the new baby would be born they'd have three kids under the age of 5. Maybe 4. She was distressed that infant and daycare was going to be more than she earned at her reasonably decent job. I said something like, "Why don't you just stay home for the next few years?" and was stared at as if I was speaking Martian.

I persisted in being a stay-at-home mom in no small part because I did not have academic credentials, did not have any kind of well-paying job, and so staying at home was definitely cheaper than going to work and paying more than my paycheck for childcare.

Even though there were some downsides, I'm extremely glad I did that. I'm very glad for the time with my sons when they were young. I'm very glad I could respond to various crises and problems. It was incredibly convenient that I could be home when we scheduled some kind of service thing. My staying at home allowed my husband to have his career.

I don't every want to sound like I'm suggesting no woman should have a career of her own. We all have different circumstances. And I'm continually enraged that we don't have decent child care for all, that parents (mostly women, but some men) have to make hard decisions about their job and their children. People like me should have not trouble staying home. Others should have no barriers to going to work.