Rise in Percentage of Stay at Home Moms

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/04/10/percentage-of-stay-at-home-moms-on-the-rise-after-decades-of-decline/

I came across this article on a survey of the U.S. population that found that the percentage of women who choose to be stay at home moms rather than enter the formal labor market has increased significantly over the past decade, despite multiple previous decades of decline. This raises many points that feminism needs to be concerned with. First, the article points out that women from poorer families are significantly more likely to stay at home, and that because of the recession, the number of poorer families is increasing. As we discovered in our simulated single mother experience in class, child care is one of the biggest expenses on a family, so by no providing enough public assistance as a society, we are in effect forcing these women to stay home.

The article also addressed the idea that children are better off when a parent stays home, finding that 60% of Americans agree with this claim. This leads directly back to the lack of public care in our country. The fact that the majority of people agree is a clear sign that our child care system is not designed in a way that provides proper care for children who's mother chooses to work. This continues to force women out of the formal labor market through concern for their children, as well as to avoid social stigma.

One last point that needs to be addressed is the statistic that while women from poorer families make up most of the percentage of women who choose to stay at home, evangelical protestants are among the most likely to say that children are better off when the mother stays home. This ties back to the idea that the bible tells us that a woman's role is as a mother, which we saw in the documentary on opinions of feminism at the beginning of the semester. This idea seems to be on the rise again in the U.S., and is a clear and direct threat to the equality of women.