May 23, 2012 • 25 mins
In this episode, Cristen and Caroline look at mothers across the employment spectrum, exploring how the 'Mommy Wars' pit working moms against non-working moms. Listen in to learn more about working moms -- and why part-time employed moms are the happiest.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we
(00:21):
are talking about and intentionally polarizing question are working mothers happier?
A because it's a relevant debate. Well, I don't even
want to say debate. Let's called a conversation because I
don't think this is necessarily a We're not looking for
a right or wrong. We just want to have a
conversation because this whole working mother versus at home mother
(00:45):
who is arguably doing just as much, if not more work.
Um is something that came up recently with and Romney,
wife of Mitt Mitt Romney and yes, his wife Anne Um. Yeah,
Bill Maher and a Democratic talking head Hillary Rose, Hillary Rose,
(01:10):
and thank you. We're both touching on the fact that
Anne Romney did not have a job outside of the home,
and they made some maybe not so sensitive comments about it,
and it basically started this huge flap. And now there
is an ad that's going to air on Mother's Day
by Restore Our Future, which is a superpack that supports Romney. Um,
(01:30):
that kind of slams those people on the left for
criticizing and who you know by saying she's never worked
a day in her life basically, And we should say
that as we're recording this podcast, Mother's Day has not
yet happened. Listeners out there will have already experienced Mother's
Day and perhaps listen future and we'll have seen this ad,
(01:53):
so it'll be uh, you know, I wish we could
go ahead and tell you current listeners out there what
the future is going to um respond to it thus
Lee wise, Now I'm just saying words so uh so, Yeah,
it's brought this question of the experiences of working and
non working mothers and whether or not one camp is
(02:16):
happier than the other. And it's gone on for so long.
And the term that is used often is the mommy wars.
And this what I considered kind of a deplorable phrase
because it seems kind of diminutive to call a bunch
of adult women mommy's Well, it's also pitting them against
each other. I mean there, yes, there is debate over
(02:37):
is one better than the other, But yeah, no, let's
not pit women against each other, right, but nevertheless, the
whole mommy Wars phrase comes up, and we have a
nineteen eighty article in Child magazine to thank for it
um And just to back up to add a couple
of milestones in working motherhood. In eighteen sixty the first
(03:01):
FDA approved birth control pill, in AVID, hit the market,
and in that year, surprisingly HyG percentage of moms were
already working outside the home. Twenty seven point six percent
of moms with kids under eighteen had jobs, so we
were not a nation of Betty Draper's. And then moving
(03:22):
forward a little bit, in nineteen sixty four, the Civil
Rights Act prohibited employment discrimination based on sex, and so
now you have more women in the workplace without threat
of discrimination. And you know, obviously around this time you
have second way feminism saying, hey, women, we don't need
to be chained to our stoves and bound by girdles.
Get out of the house, gets yourself a career, find
(03:43):
fulfillment that way. And now we're kind of in what
I consider a pretty interesting time where the choices are
so much and you know, they're wide open, because in
one sense, we're seeing a cultural shift back to very
invested motherhood and this culture of you know, nurturing woman
(04:04):
and in natural childbirth and raising your children in a
very dedicated kind of way. And at the same time,
we're seeing the rise of women in terms of out
earning men, earning more bachelor's degrees than they are. So
this mommy wars debate will never stop. Yeah, but is
it even that big of a deal to most people
(04:26):
or is it just something that keeps getting batted around
in the media. And a two thousand nine Pew Research
Center survey found that only nineteen percent of adults thought
that married women should stay home. Granted, nine is still
more than zero. Uh, they should stay home while the
husband acted as sole breadwinner. Granted this is down from
(04:47):
in and our perceptions about how spouses should contribute to
the household income has changed. This is still a little
bit dated, but between and two thousand two, for instance,
the percentage of American adults who thought both spouses should
contribute to the household accounts rose from forty percent to
(05:09):
and it would be interesting to see how that percentage
may have changed, probably on the upswing with the recession. Yeah, well,
did your mom did both of your parents work outside home?
My mom, growing up, it was sort of a all told,
mom was more of the breadwinner. To be honest, I
(05:30):
mean both of them were working. There was when I
was pretty young. Mom was home um and homeschooling and
all of that. But really for the majority of my upbringing,
she was always working. Yeah, my parents, both of them worked,
but I didn't have I mean, I wasn't a latch
key kid by any means my parents because they worked
for an airline. My mom is a flight attendant still
(05:52):
and my dad was a pilot. They would always fly
opposite schedules, so they pretty much worked equally, and my
mother is actually more senior in the airline my father.
I like to point that out. Hey Mom, congratulations Caroline's mother, Well,
don't sell it. And today, stay at home mothers are
more the exception than the rule. According to data from
(06:15):
the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, by more than
seventy of US moms with school age children worked outside
of the home, and the proportion of working moms is
the highest at among unmarried women who double as heads
of household. And on a personal note, and then we'll
get back to some statistics. Uh, I mean, I've I've
(06:39):
thought a lot about this, obviously, I am. I'm not
a mother, so this is not, you know, an immediately
relevant choice that I have to make. But when I'm
uh on a work day, if I'll see a mom
out with her kids, half of me says, oh, that
seems great. You know, I enjoy spending time with my
nieces and nephews. That seems like a really fun, full
time job. And then I come to work and I'm like, man,
(07:02):
I could never leave this. So I can only imagine
that for on an individual basis, this whole mommy wars
thing is, you know, it's it's gotta be tough, but
I think it's it's so much created from the outside,
not from within. Because one of my very best girlfriends
is a mom. Oh and he's just having his first
(07:23):
birthday next weekend. I'm very excited. Anyway, Um, she loves
her job as a teacher, loves it, loves it, loves it. However,
she said that if she were able to, she would
love to stay home with him instead of going to work. Now,
this is a woman who, because she teaches very small children,
used to assign herself essays to write on books because
(07:44):
she was not as mentally challenged as she had been
in college and grad school. So I'm wondering how successful
she would be and happy she would be at home.
But I mean it's it's really so much more of
a personal choice. Absolutely, And we are intentionally leaving men
largely out of his conversation. I mean, we can talk
about stay at home dad's guys. Uh, your participation at
(08:04):
home has skyrocketed since nineteen sixty five. Dad's participation with
childcare has increased threefold, um, and and men are also
struggling with their own kinds of work family balances. But
let's get back to this working mom debate, right, you
keep calling it a debate. I'm breaking my own rule
(08:25):
conversation conversation discussion. Yes, yes, well, briefcase or no. Moms
are doing most of the work at home still, and
according to a University of Wisconsin national survey of families
and households from two thousand eight, working full time moms
put in an average of twenty eight hours of housework
each week versus sixteen hours per week for working husbands.
(08:47):
And this leads us to talking about the second shift. Yes,
the second shift is a term coined by sociologists are
Ye home child in nineteen nine. UM and she came
up with this idea because she was working um as
a professor and there wasn't enough child care for so
(09:08):
she'd take her kid with her to work sometimes and
was basically pulling her hair out out of the two
full time jobs that she had. So there's this whole
notion that when women go to work, they're completing their
first ship. They get off the clock, they come home,
and they enter the second shift, right, And something that
slightly contradicts with that idea is this is more data
(09:31):
from the Bureau of Labor and statistics from that showed
that the total amount of work that women and men
do each day, combining work at a job and work
at home, it's pretty much the same. They found that
men work about eight hours and eleven minutes a day,
whereas women work about eight hours and three minutes, So
very very small difference there, but nevertheless, we are putting
(09:53):
in a lot of time with childcare, household duties, all
of that off the clock. And I thought it was
interesting that sociologist Suzanne Bianci's analysis of couples time diary
data from two thousand three to two thousand five found
only a ten hour difference in the amount of household
(10:14):
and childcare work that non working mothers did compared to
women employed outside of the home. Yeah, and part of this,
you know, it seems surprising you would think that a
mother staying home would be spending more time. But this
is part of a trend of upper middle class moms
being part of this intensive parenting idea, or, as sociologist
(10:37):
Annette LaRue calls it, concerted cultivation, which basically means that
the parents, in this case, the upper middle class mother
is aggressively grooming kids for social success and kind of
teasing out their talents by putting them in lots of
classes taekwondo, piano, ballet, whatever. And on the extrem and
of that, we might, uh, you know, think of Amy Chiwa,
(10:58):
a k a. The Tiger Mom, who is that huge
kerfuffle with her book talking about how she you know,
so rigorously raised her daughters who are now headed for
Ivy League schools. Um. And yeah, that's the question, Like
career moms are incredibly stressed out. We're all stressed out, frankly. Um.
But there's also the question of whether or not, to
(11:19):
some extent, are we doing this to ourselves? Are we
trying to mold these unrealistically perfect, imperfect in quotes, lives,
bring home exorbitant amounts of money, feeling fulfilled in that way,
keeping our bodies fit and healthy and you know, pleasing
our partners, and also raising these like blue ribbon children.
(11:42):
It sounds like a lot of word blue ribbon children.
I like that um Well article in New York Magazine
touched on this. It was was it was more focused
on does parenting make you had dis parenting itself make
you happy or not? And they pointed out that children
of women with bachelor's degrees spent almost five hours on
organized activities per week, as opposed to children of high
(12:05):
school dropouts, who spend two. That might not seem like
a huge division, but when you think about women with
super duper high power jobs and then coming home to
spend even more time with their kids, you know, waiting
for them in a waiting room of a dance studio
or whatever, that's a lot of time taken out. And maybe,
you know, I'm sure that you could also say, well,
it's completely worth it when you are totally in love
(12:28):
with your child, because it's your child. But nevertheless, we're
talking statistics here, and not surprisingly a two thousand five
per Research Center survey found that working moms feel a
lot more rushed throughout their day than non working moms.
But the thing is, it seems like if we're talking
about our working mothers happier than non working mothers statistically
(12:54):
full time not necessarily like forty hours a week, no,
but a little bit of work, goldilocks. Work just the
right amount of work, just enough work does a mother good. Yeah.
U n C. Greensborough study found that those with part
time jobs are subjectively happier than those without jobs or
(13:15):
with full time jobs. And this is sort of in
line with the January Rutgers University study that agreed that
flexible work options do allow that work life balance. So
if you work part time a couple of days a
week or a couple of hours a day, you still
get to go home, have dinner on the table for
your child, you know, play games with them or whatever.
But then you get to go and have mommy time
(13:36):
at work. Frankly, yeah, yeah, And then it allows for
individuation that some full time moms feel robbed of because
a lot of their you know, all of their time
is absorbed by kids. But you know, at the same time,
women who are not working outside of the home can
still have plenty of other you know, non I guess
(13:57):
paying ways to cultivate their interest and give back to communities.
And so we're not saying that stay at home moms
are just sitting on their hands all day. But I
do think it says something that a little bit of
time outside of the home, doing some work, earning some
money makes us feel good. It just I think it
does make a lot of people feel good. Not to
mention you get to talk to adults, it's true. But well,
(14:20):
depending on where you work, I don't know, I don't know,
unless you work maybe at a preschool. Yeah, exactly. Well,
uh Bianchi, who we mentioned earlier and to other sociologists
John Robinson and Melissa Milky wrote Changing Rhythms of American
Family Life, which that New York Magazine article refers to
as data porn because it's just so many statistics found
(14:41):
that all parents today do spend more time with their
children than they did in nine including mothers, in spite
of the rush of women into the American workforce back
when the study started. And that's something that we need
to remember. I think we all often put and I
say we as though I'm part of the parental collect
out there, But it seems like there is a lot
(15:02):
of societal pressure placed on parents today to focused on
their kids all the time, when hey, we're actually doing
a pretty good job of that. Don't beat yourself up.
And with the recession, though, this whole to work or
not to work issue might just be a completely moot point,
because hey, you know what, you gotta put food on
(15:24):
the table somehow. So the question is if you bring
extra money in at least, does that buy you some happiness?
Surely it does, Surely it does, right, I don't know, well,
not so much. A two thousand three meta analysis by W.
Keith Campbell and Jean Twins found that married couples overall
marriage satisfaction went down if they had kids, and each
(15:48):
successive generation since the seventies leading up to us now
Kristen has been more put out, they say, by having
kids than the last. And part of this has to
do with as we go along down the decades, we
are waiting longer to have kids, so we're more secure
in our employment. Maybe we've been at our jobs longer,
or we have higher paying jobs, and so Twins frames
(16:10):
that are not so nice. Away, go ahead, and go ahead,
she said, now you know what you're giving up. So basically,
with the whole money aspect Campbell and twins, you're arguing
that if you quote unquote do things the right way.
You know, you set up your nice little nest egg,
you get yourself your sweet job, and you and your
(16:34):
whoever go on some sweet vey case because you're waiting
to have a kid until you've got that nice nest
egg tucked away. And then Junior comes along and three
am feedings and you're like, I missed that sweet vec Yeah,
because I missed three am being when I was awake drinking.
Now again, two parents out there, let us continue to
(16:57):
reiterate the fact that we are speaking in words of
that sociologist data porn. This doesn't take into account the
nuance of and and value and fulfillment of parenthood. Well,
I think, I mean, I think my brother and his
wife are a very good example of that exact thing.
My brother loves his children, loves his children, those little
bundles of joy. Um. But right after my nephew was born,
(17:20):
we we went out to lunch and Dad gets up
and goes to the counter and my brother and I
are sitting there with the baby and the little baby
carrier thing, and he looks at me. He goes, Caroline,
if you ever decide to have children and get married,
enjoy your spouse for a long time, go out to
parties with your friends, drink wine, go to movies that
(17:43):
aren't children's movies, because all of a sudden, that's all
going to be gone. And I was terrified, terrified, I
tell you. I just think I was like nineteen, still
no kids or husbands. I know, I like wine and movies. Um,
it was just a great Cathy come image in my head.
But the question is, you're talking about the bundles of joy. Hey,
(18:04):
you know who we have not talked about really in
this whole conversation. We're just like me, me, me, what
about the kids? Oh yeah, what about the kids? You know? Mom?
Mom stressed out, dad's stressed out? Are the kids going
to fare? Okay? If we are working, if we are
not home doing whatever, what have you, are the kid's
(18:28):
gonna be all right? Well? Yeah, I mean it seems
like except for a basic, tiny little gap at the
very beginning where they're not not that they're doing terribly.
They eventually turn out fine, that's the end of the story.
That was a shakyus. Yes, well, it's the same thing.
And we talked about something like this in our Only
Child podcast that you know, only children, they have that
(18:48):
little gap when they first get to school, but then
they get socialized in their fine. It's really the same
thing with with kids of of who have working parents.
Meta analysis of child development litterally you're from the American
Psychological Association found no long term adverse effects of mom's employment. Yeah,
and like you said, I mean, aside from you know,
(19:09):
some developmental gaps at the beginning by adolescents, you know,
I mean, kids will be kids anyway. That adolescent brain
is gonna go crazy on its own, whether mom is
working or not, because the prefrontal cortex has yet to
fully develop. But that's another podcast. So as moms and
dads are completely stressing themselves out over making enough money,
(19:31):
enjoying live, drinking that wine when they can grab a glass,
the kids are gonna be okay. Yeah, So I mean,
just don't leave them alone. I spent a lot of
time alone as a child. I guess I did too.
At at some point I was old enough to it.
Didn't matter, I guess, not as a child, not as
a baby. They didn't like leave me alone next to
(19:52):
a stove that was turned on. I mean that said,
I don't know that I am the poster child of
like normal adult development, not because I make all those
weird voices. At least you don't say if you will
anymore right on the podcast anyway, I watch out, We'll try.
Uh so the whole question get back to our original question.
(20:14):
Are working mother's happier? Not really? I mean, we're all
kind of stressed out. We all spend a lot of
time with our kids, which is great. And again by we,
I don't include myself because that's impossible right now. Um,
And it seems like a little bit of work outside
the home does give us a little bit of a
little bit of a boost. But since neither you nor
(20:37):
I can speak directly to this issue, working moms, non
working moms. Dad's anybody kids who are left home alone?
Right now? Yeah? Kids? Yeah, kids with working moms. I
know you're listening. We've heard from you. Let us know.
I mean, do you think that it is your life
better for working moms? Other is your life better by
(20:59):
your job? You wish that you could stay home. Do
you have that guilt? You know? I think that that
this is a very relevant topic that could use a
lot of levelhead of discussion outside of the whole media
mommy wars. I mean, because it's all it's all value judgments,
it's it's all what works for you and your family,
and so we do we want to know what works
for you, So let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff
(21:20):
at Discovery dot com is where you can send them,
and you can also post a comment on Facebook or
tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast. In the meantime, we
got a couple of letters here to read. I've got
an email here from Jessica in response to our episode
on age gaps and relationships, and she writes, I'm in
(21:41):
a relationship with a man twenty years older than me.
We're definitely on the outer edge of the statistics. We've
been together for four years and it has been absolutely fantastic.
It took me a while to decide if the backlash
would be worth it, but it has turned out just peachy.
I still agree with your point on generation gaps and
looking for different things in life, but from my experience,
(22:02):
as long as what you're looking for compliments the other person.
It's not much of an issue. He's not quite in
the December of life yet. But I do worry sometimes
about the point when our age difference will become a
true challenge. We were at Best Buy and I made
a comment about him not wanting to buy things online,
and the employee said, yeah, well, you know how parents
can be. I literally fell on the floor laughing. The
(22:24):
employee looked like a deer in the headlights and apologize
multiple times. I'm not easily embarrassed and try not to
take myself too seriously, so I just laugh about it. Overall,
we just meshed so well. The issues caused by age
are worth it because I'm spending my life with someone
I can't imagine living without. That does not quite peachy, Jessica, Okay,
I have an email here from Daniel about Chivalry. He
(22:46):
says that he loved the episode, but and there's always
a butt, isn't there. I see chivalry a little differently.
I believe that the chivalrous or courteous actions from men
toward women can be decidedly harmful. I'm sure you're aware
of the ejection against chivalry and even general courtesy, that
when men open doors for women or pay for dinner,
that it is oftentimes the extent of the male's involvement
(23:08):
in the relationship. It's not that these actions are wrong
in and of themselves. Feminists have an issue with the
action if a man opens a door to help a
woman but is absent and child rearing or house cleaning,
or if a man will pick up a check but
not be emotionally or spiritually present in the relationship. As
a male feminist, I still do the courteous actions for
my wife or other women and men in public, but
(23:29):
as I do them, I am reminded that this needs
to not be the extent of my involvement and effort,
especially in my marriage. Thanks Daniel, and I think it's
nice to open the door for people. I open the
door for men if they're behind me or you know whatever. Um,
but I do not like it when men pull my
chair out at dinner because then I don't know how
to sit down without, you know, I'm like, oh, when
(23:51):
are they going to scoot it in? Am I gonna
It's like a trust fall for dinner. That's the thing.
It's not the chivalry aspect, it's the fact that I
am an awkward scooter. You have to scoot scoot the
cheer in and a lot of times I'll like, not
pick my my butt up soon enough. And I'm gonna know.
I I was on a date and the guy pulled
my chair out, but I didn't know that's what he
(24:12):
was doing, and so I was like, oh, I guess
he's sitting there, and so I went around to the
other side of the table and he and the waiter
were just looking at me. That's why you should only
have dates at bars. You can just stay at the
bar not I'm not that in mind. Thank you all
over all? Right, Well with that again, our email address
is mom Stuff at Discovery dot com. We definitely want
to hear from you moms and dads out there, and
(24:34):
you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at
mom Stuff podcast and you can read the article are
working mothers Happier by all? That's by me christ and
Conger and find it at how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com brought to you by
(24:59):
the a reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we
(00:21):
are talking about and intentionally polarizing question are working mothers happier?
A because it's a relevant debate. Well, I don't even
want to say debate. Let's called a conversation because I
don't think this is necessarily a We're not looking for
a right or wrong. We just want to have a
conversation because this whole working mother versus at home mother
(00:45):
who is arguably doing just as much, if not more work.
Um is something that came up recently with and Romney,
wife of Mitt Mitt Romney and yes, his wife Anne Um. Yeah,
Bill Maher and a Democratic talking head Hillary Rose, Hillary Rose,
(01:10):
and thank you. We're both touching on the fact that
Anne Romney did not have a job outside of the home,
and they made some maybe not so sensitive comments about it,
and it basically started this huge flap. And now there
is an ad that's going to air on Mother's Day
by Restore Our Future, which is a superpack that supports Romney. Um,
(01:30):
that kind of slams those people on the left for
criticizing and who you know by saying she's never worked
a day in her life basically, And we should say
that as we're recording this podcast, Mother's Day has not
yet happened. Listeners out there will have already experienced Mother's
Day and perhaps listen future and we'll have seen this ad,
(01:53):
so it'll be uh, you know, I wish we could
go ahead and tell you current listeners out there what
the future is going to um respond to it thus
Lee wise, Now I'm just saying words so uh so, Yeah,
it's brought this question of the experiences of working and
non working mothers and whether or not one camp is
(02:16):
happier than the other. And it's gone on for so long.
And the term that is used often is the mommy wars.
And this what I considered kind of a deplorable phrase
because it seems kind of diminutive to call a bunch
of adult women mommy's Well, it's also pitting them against
each other. I mean there, yes, there is debate over
(02:37):
is one better than the other, But yeah, no, let's
not pit women against each other, right, but nevertheless, the
whole mommy Wars phrase comes up, and we have a
nineteen eighty article in Child magazine to thank for it
um And just to back up to add a couple
of milestones in working motherhood. In eighteen sixty the first
(03:01):
FDA approved birth control pill, in AVID, hit the market,
and in that year, surprisingly HyG percentage of moms were
already working outside the home. Twenty seven point six percent
of moms with kids under eighteen had jobs, so we
were not a nation of Betty Draper's. And then moving
(03:22):
forward a little bit, in nineteen sixty four, the Civil
Rights Act prohibited employment discrimination based on sex, and so
now you have more women in the workplace without threat
of discrimination. And you know, obviously around this time you
have second way feminism saying, hey, women, we don't need
to be chained to our stoves and bound by girdles.
Get out of the house, gets yourself a career, find
(03:43):
fulfillment that way. And now we're kind of in what
I consider a pretty interesting time where the choices are
so much and you know, they're wide open, because in
one sense, we're seeing a cultural shift back to very
invested motherhood and this culture of you know, nurturing woman
(04:04):
and in natural childbirth and raising your children in a
very dedicated kind of way. And at the same time,
we're seeing the rise of women in terms of out
earning men, earning more bachelor's degrees than they are. So
this mommy wars debate will never stop. Yeah, but is
it even that big of a deal to most people
(04:26):
or is it just something that keeps getting batted around
in the media. And a two thousand nine Pew Research
Center survey found that only nineteen percent of adults thought
that married women should stay home. Granted, nine is still
more than zero. Uh, they should stay home while the
husband acted as sole breadwinner. Granted this is down from
(04:47):
in and our perceptions about how spouses should contribute to
the household income has changed. This is still a little
bit dated, but between and two thousand two, for instance,
the percentage of American adults who thought both spouses should
contribute to the household accounts rose from forty percent to
(05:09):
and it would be interesting to see how that percentage
may have changed, probably on the upswing with the recession. Yeah, well,
did your mom did both of your parents work outside home?
My mom, growing up, it was sort of a all told,
mom was more of the breadwinner. To be honest, I
(05:30):
mean both of them were working. There was when I
was pretty young. Mom was home um and homeschooling and
all of that. But really for the majority of my upbringing,
she was always working. Yeah, my parents, both of them worked,
but I didn't have I mean, I wasn't a latch
key kid by any means my parents because they worked
for an airline. My mom is a flight attendant still
(05:52):
and my dad was a pilot. They would always fly
opposite schedules, so they pretty much worked equally, and my
mother is actually more senior in the airline my father.
I like to point that out. Hey Mom, congratulations Caroline's mother, Well,
don't sell it. And today, stay at home mothers are
more the exception than the rule. According to data from
(06:15):
the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, by more than
seventy of US moms with school age children worked outside
of the home, and the proportion of working moms is
the highest at among unmarried women who double as heads
of household. And on a personal note, and then we'll
get back to some statistics. Uh, I mean, I've I've
(06:39):
thought a lot about this, obviously, I am. I'm not
a mother, so this is not, you know, an immediately
relevant choice that I have to make. But when I'm
uh on a work day, if I'll see a mom
out with her kids, half of me says, oh, that
seems great. You know, I enjoy spending time with my
nieces and nephews. That seems like a really fun, full
time job. And then I come to work and I'm like, man,
(07:02):
I could never leave this. So I can only imagine
that for on an individual basis, this whole mommy wars
thing is, you know, it's it's gotta be tough, but
I think it's it's so much created from the outside,
not from within. Because one of my very best girlfriends
is a mom. Oh and he's just having his first
(07:23):
birthday next weekend. I'm very excited. Anyway, Um, she loves
her job as a teacher, loves it, loves it, loves it. However,
she said that if she were able to, she would
love to stay home with him instead of going to work. Now,
this is a woman who, because she teaches very small children,
used to assign herself essays to write on books because
(07:44):
she was not as mentally challenged as she had been
in college and grad school. So I'm wondering how successful
she would be and happy she would be at home.
But I mean it's it's really so much more of
a personal choice. Absolutely, And we are intentionally leaving men
largely out of his conversation. I mean, we can talk
about stay at home dad's guys. Uh, your participation at
(08:04):
home has skyrocketed since nineteen sixty five. Dad's participation with
childcare has increased threefold, um, and and men are also
struggling with their own kinds of work family balances. But
let's get back to this working mom debate, right, you
keep calling it a debate. I'm breaking my own rule
(08:25):
conversation conversation discussion. Yes, yes, well, briefcase or no. Moms
are doing most of the work at home still, and
according to a University of Wisconsin national survey of families
and households from two thousand eight, working full time moms
put in an average of twenty eight hours of housework
each week versus sixteen hours per week for working husbands.
(08:47):
And this leads us to talking about the second shift. Yes,
the second shift is a term coined by sociologists are
Ye home child in nineteen nine. UM and she came
up with this idea because she was working um as
a professor and there wasn't enough child care for so
(09:08):
she'd take her kid with her to work sometimes and
was basically pulling her hair out out of the two
full time jobs that she had. So there's this whole
notion that when women go to work, they're completing their
first ship. They get off the clock, they come home,
and they enter the second shift, right, And something that
slightly contradicts with that idea is this is more data
(09:31):
from the Bureau of Labor and statistics from that showed
that the total amount of work that women and men
do each day, combining work at a job and work
at home, it's pretty much the same. They found that
men work about eight hours and eleven minutes a day,
whereas women work about eight hours and three minutes, So
very very small difference there, but nevertheless, we are putting
(09:53):
in a lot of time with childcare, household duties, all
of that off the clock. And I thought it was
interesting that sociologist Suzanne Bianci's analysis of couples time diary
data from two thousand three to two thousand five found
only a ten hour difference in the amount of household
(10:14):
and childcare work that non working mothers did compared to
women employed outside of the home. Yeah, and part of this,
you know, it seems surprising you would think that a
mother staying home would be spending more time. But this
is part of a trend of upper middle class moms
being part of this intensive parenting idea, or, as sociologist
(10:37):
Annette LaRue calls it, concerted cultivation, which basically means that
the parents, in this case, the upper middle class mother
is aggressively grooming kids for social success and kind of
teasing out their talents by putting them in lots of
classes taekwondo, piano, ballet, whatever. And on the extrem and
of that, we might, uh, you know, think of Amy Chiwa,
(10:58):
a k a. The Tiger Mom, who is that huge
kerfuffle with her book talking about how she you know,
so rigorously raised her daughters who are now headed for
Ivy League schools. Um. And yeah, that's the question, Like
career moms are incredibly stressed out. We're all stressed out, frankly. Um.
But there's also the question of whether or not, to
(11:19):
some extent, are we doing this to ourselves? Are we
trying to mold these unrealistically perfect, imperfect in quotes, lives,
bring home exorbitant amounts of money, feeling fulfilled in that way,
keeping our bodies fit and healthy and you know, pleasing
our partners, and also raising these like blue ribbon children.
(11:42):
It sounds like a lot of word blue ribbon children.
I like that um Well article in New York Magazine
touched on this. It was was it was more focused
on does parenting make you had dis parenting itself make
you happy or not? And they pointed out that children
of women with bachelor's degrees spent almost five hours on
organized activities per week, as opposed to children of high
(12:05):
school dropouts, who spend two. That might not seem like
a huge division, but when you think about women with
super duper high power jobs and then coming home to
spend even more time with their kids, you know, waiting
for them in a waiting room of a dance studio
or whatever, that's a lot of time taken out. And maybe,
you know, I'm sure that you could also say, well,
it's completely worth it when you are totally in love
(12:28):
with your child, because it's your child. But nevertheless, we're
talking statistics here, and not surprisingly a two thousand five
per Research Center survey found that working moms feel a
lot more rushed throughout their day than non working moms.
But the thing is, it seems like if we're talking
about our working mothers happier than non working mothers statistically
(12:54):
full time not necessarily like forty hours a week, no,
but a little bit of work, goldilocks. Work just the
right amount of work, just enough work does a mother good. Yeah.
U n C. Greensborough study found that those with part
time jobs are subjectively happier than those without jobs or
(13:15):
with full time jobs. And this is sort of in
line with the January Rutgers University study that agreed that
flexible work options do allow that work life balance. So
if you work part time a couple of days a
week or a couple of hours a day, you still
get to go home, have dinner on the table for
your child, you know, play games with them or whatever.
But then you get to go and have mommy time
(13:36):
at work. Frankly, yeah, yeah, And then it allows for
individuation that some full time moms feel robbed of because
a lot of their you know, all of their time
is absorbed by kids. But you know, at the same time,
women who are not working outside of the home can
still have plenty of other you know, non I guess
(13:57):
paying ways to cultivate their interest and give back to communities.
And so we're not saying that stay at home moms
are just sitting on their hands all day. But I
do think it says something that a little bit of
time outside of the home, doing some work, earning some
money makes us feel good. It just I think it
does make a lot of people feel good. Not to
mention you get to talk to adults, it's true. But well,
(14:20):
depending on where you work, I don't know, I don't know,
unless you work maybe at a preschool. Yeah, exactly. Well,
uh Bianchi, who we mentioned earlier and to other sociologists
John Robinson and Melissa Milky wrote Changing Rhythms of American
Family Life, which that New York Magazine article refers to
as data porn because it's just so many statistics found
(14:41):
that all parents today do spend more time with their
children than they did in nine including mothers, in spite
of the rush of women into the American workforce back
when the study started. And that's something that we need
to remember. I think we all often put and I
say we as though I'm part of the parental collect
out there, But it seems like there is a lot
(15:02):
of societal pressure placed on parents today to focused on
their kids all the time, when hey, we're actually doing
a pretty good job of that. Don't beat yourself up.
And with the recession, though, this whole to work or
not to work issue might just be a completely moot point,
because hey, you know what, you gotta put food on
(15:24):
the table somehow. So the question is if you bring
extra money in at least, does that buy you some happiness?
Surely it does, Surely it does, right, I don't know, well,
not so much. A two thousand three meta analysis by W.
Keith Campbell and Jean Twins found that married couples overall
marriage satisfaction went down if they had kids, and each
(15:48):
successive generation since the seventies leading up to us now
Kristen has been more put out, they say, by having
kids than the last. And part of this has to
do with as we go along down the decades, we
are waiting longer to have kids, so we're more secure
in our employment. Maybe we've been at our jobs longer,
or we have higher paying jobs, and so Twins frames
(16:10):
that are not so nice. Away, go ahead, and go ahead,
she said, now you know what you're giving up. So basically,
with the whole money aspect Campbell and twins, you're arguing
that if you quote unquote do things the right way.
You know, you set up your nice little nest egg,
you get yourself your sweet job, and you and your
(16:34):
whoever go on some sweet vey case because you're waiting
to have a kid until you've got that nice nest
egg tucked away. And then Junior comes along and three
am feedings and you're like, I missed that sweet vec Yeah,
because I missed three am being when I was awake drinking.
Now again, two parents out there, let us continue to
(16:57):
reiterate the fact that we are speaking in words of
that sociologist data porn. This doesn't take into account the
nuance of and and value and fulfillment of parenthood. Well,
I think, I mean, I think my brother and his
wife are a very good example of that exact thing.
My brother loves his children, loves his children, those little
bundles of joy. Um. But right after my nephew was born,
(17:20):
we we went out to lunch and Dad gets up
and goes to the counter and my brother and I
are sitting there with the baby and the little baby
carrier thing, and he looks at me. He goes, Caroline,
if you ever decide to have children and get married,
enjoy your spouse for a long time, go out to
parties with your friends, drink wine, go to movies that
(17:43):
aren't children's movies, because all of a sudden, that's all
going to be gone. And I was terrified, terrified, I
tell you. I just think I was like nineteen, still
no kids or husbands. I know, I like wine and movies. Um,
it was just a great Cathy come image in my head.
But the question is, you're talking about the bundles of joy. Hey,
(18:04):
you know who we have not talked about really in
this whole conversation. We're just like me, me, me, what
about the kids? Oh yeah, what about the kids? You know? Mom?
Mom stressed out, dad's stressed out? Are the kids going
to fare? Okay? If we are working, if we are
not home doing whatever, what have you, are the kid's
(18:28):
gonna be all right? Well? Yeah, I mean it seems
like except for a basic, tiny little gap at the
very beginning where they're not not that they're doing terribly.
They eventually turn out fine, that's the end of the story.
That was a shakyus. Yes, well, it's the same thing.
And we talked about something like this in our Only
Child podcast that you know, only children, they have that
(18:48):
little gap when they first get to school, but then
they get socialized in their fine. It's really the same
thing with with kids of of who have working parents.
Meta analysis of child development litterally you're from the American
Psychological Association found no long term adverse effects of mom's employment. Yeah,
and like you said, I mean, aside from you know,
(19:09):
some developmental gaps at the beginning by adolescents, you know,
I mean, kids will be kids anyway. That adolescent brain
is gonna go crazy on its own, whether mom is
working or not, because the prefrontal cortex has yet to
fully develop. But that's another podcast. So as moms and
dads are completely stressing themselves out over making enough money,
(19:31):
enjoying live, drinking that wine when they can grab a glass,
the kids are gonna be okay. Yeah, So I mean,
just don't leave them alone. I spent a lot of
time alone as a child. I guess I did too.
At at some point I was old enough to it.
Didn't matter, I guess, not as a child, not as
a baby. They didn't like leave me alone next to
(19:52):
a stove that was turned on. I mean that said,
I don't know that I am the poster child of
like normal adult development, not because I make all those
weird voices. At least you don't say if you will
anymore right on the podcast anyway, I watch out, We'll try.
Uh so the whole question get back to our original question.
(20:14):
Are working mother's happier? Not really? I mean, we're all
kind of stressed out. We all spend a lot of
time with our kids, which is great. And again by we,
I don't include myself because that's impossible right now. Um,
And it seems like a little bit of work outside
the home does give us a little bit of a
little bit of a boost. But since neither you nor
(20:37):
I can speak directly to this issue, working moms, non
working moms. Dad's anybody kids who are left home alone?
Right now? Yeah? Kids? Yeah, kids with working moms. I
know you're listening. We've heard from you. Let us know.
I mean, do you think that it is your life
better for working moms? Other is your life better by
(20:59):
your job? You wish that you could stay home. Do
you have that guilt? You know? I think that that
this is a very relevant topic that could use a
lot of levelhead of discussion outside of the whole media
mommy wars. I mean, because it's all it's all value judgments,
it's it's all what works for you and your family,
and so we do we want to know what works
for you, So let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff
(21:20):
at Discovery dot com is where you can send them,
and you can also post a comment on Facebook or
tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast. In the meantime, we
got a couple of letters here to read. I've got
an email here from Jessica in response to our episode
on age gaps and relationships, and she writes, I'm in
(21:41):
a relationship with a man twenty years older than me.
We're definitely on the outer edge of the statistics. We've
been together for four years and it has been absolutely fantastic.
It took me a while to decide if the backlash
would be worth it, but it has turned out just peachy.
I still agree with your point on generation gaps and
looking for different things in life, but from my experience,
(22:02):
as long as what you're looking for compliments the other person.
It's not much of an issue. He's not quite in
the December of life yet. But I do worry sometimes
about the point when our age difference will become a
true challenge. We were at Best Buy and I made
a comment about him not wanting to buy things online,
and the employee said, yeah, well, you know how parents
can be. I literally fell on the floor laughing. The
(22:24):
employee looked like a deer in the headlights and apologize
multiple times. I'm not easily embarrassed and try not to
take myself too seriously, so I just laugh about it. Overall,
we just meshed so well. The issues caused by age
are worth it because I'm spending my life with someone
I can't imagine living without. That does not quite peachy, Jessica, Okay,
I have an email here from Daniel about Chivalry. He
(22:46):
says that he loved the episode, but and there's always
a butt, isn't there. I see chivalry a little differently.
I believe that the chivalrous or courteous actions from men
toward women can be decidedly harmful. I'm sure you're aware
of the ejection against chivalry and even general courtesy, that
when men open doors for women or pay for dinner,
that it is oftentimes the extent of the male's involvement
(23:08):
in the relationship. It's not that these actions are wrong
in and of themselves. Feminists have an issue with the
action if a man opens a door to help a
woman but is absent and child rearing or house cleaning,
or if a man will pick up a check but
not be emotionally or spiritually present in the relationship. As
a male feminist, I still do the courteous actions for
my wife or other women and men in public, but
(23:29):
as I do them, I am reminded that this needs
to not be the extent of my involvement and effort,
especially in my marriage. Thanks Daniel, and I think it's
nice to open the door for people. I open the
door for men if they're behind me or you know whatever. Um,
but I do not like it when men pull my
chair out at dinner because then I don't know how
to sit down without, you know, I'm like, oh, when
(23:51):
are they going to scoot it in? Am I gonna
It's like a trust fall for dinner. That's the thing.
It's not the chivalry aspect, it's the fact that I
am an awkward scooter. You have to scoot scoot the
cheer in and a lot of times I'll like, not
pick my my butt up soon enough. And I'm gonna know.
I I was on a date and the guy pulled
my chair out, but I didn't know that's what he
(24:12):
was doing, and so I was like, oh, I guess
he's sitting there, and so I went around to the
other side of the table and he and the waiter
were just looking at me. That's why you should only
have dates at bars. You can just stay at the
bar not I'm not that in mind. Thank you all
over all? Right, Well with that again, our email address
is mom Stuff at Discovery dot com. We definitely want
to hear from you moms and dads out there, and
(24:34):
you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at
mom Stuff podcast and you can read the article are
working mothers Happier by all? That's by me christ and
Conger and find it at how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com brought to you by
(24:59):
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