Stay at Home Parents...Grim Statistics & Additional Context on my Views...Part 1

A few posts ago I shared a high level view about our decision to have my wife be a stay at home mommy while our children are young and not in school.  I also indicated that my beliefs regarding the importance of a stay at home parent run pretty deep, and that I would expand on them in a future post.  This will be one of several posts that attempts to provide my point of view and opinions on how the decision of how a stay at home parent is ultimately the best possible outcome, not only for the parents and children, but also how stay at home parents contribute to the economic stability of our nation.

First and foremost, I want to clarify some things about my position on this topic.  I am an advocate for there being a stay at home PARENT.  While in the case of my family it happens to be the mommy, I am in no way against or not advocating for all those stay at home dads out there.  My hat goes off to them, it is the toughest job you will ever love. Dad or mom, the important thing is that the parents of the child are making a decision to have one of them (whom it ends up being is a personal decision) stay at home with their children.  

Second, I do not equate a stay a home parent and permanent homemaker as one in the same.  What I mean here is that once the children are in school full time, I think that it then becomes optional regarding whether or not the stay at home parent continues to choose to stay at home during the day.  The one caveat here is that if the parent does choose to return to work, there needs to be an appropriate accommodation made such that one of the parents has the flexibility to be home when the kids leave for school and when they return home from school.  In fact, it probably becomes even more crucial (for a variety of reasons), as the children get older, for there to be a parent home when they return from school.  So, given this, the timeframe to be a "full time" stay at home parent is about 5 years (the time between the birth of a child and when that same child goes to school full time).  Thus, a five year commitment (obviously longer if you have successive children) for couples to plan for one or the other to be home with their child. 

 Finally,  as I discussed during my prior post, the decision to have children and the decision of whether or not to have a parent stay home with those children is not, and should never be considered mutually exclusive.  I am pretty black and white about this one.  If there is a decision to start a family, one of the parents stays home with the children...end of story.  If the belief is that you cannot afford to, or are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to allow for one parent to stay home, then you should not start a family at that point in time...period.  A bit harsh, perhaps...but part of the responsibility of having a family is to raise your own children, and make a plan, prior to having children, to allow this to happen.  This does not mean you pay someone to watch / raise your children so you can go to work.  It means that you make the required sacrifices so one parent stays home to care for the children.  Mother nature is even kind enough to give you about 9 months to prepare (or in the case of adoption, couples can often have longer) or from another viewpoint, time to adjust to living on one income prior to that bundle of joy coming home.  

Now, there is likely great debate about the factors that contribute to the lack of stay at home parents in today's society.   But, before I tackle those factors (I will do so in my next post), let's review some of the statistics...

There are, per the most recent 2010 census data:
120 million households in the U.S.
34 million households with children
23 million married couple households with children
18 million married households with both parents working
10 million married households with children under the age of 5
11 million households with children, single parents
5 million married couple households with a stay a home parent

Regarding the children under the age of 5:
20 million children under the age of 5
10 million children in the care of either their mother or father
10 million children in non parental or organized daycare.

Out of all the households in America with children, less than 15% have a stay at home parent.  If we look at just the married households with children, that jumps up to about 22%.  Looking purely at the data, and assuming that all the married households with a stay at home parent have children under 5 (likely a gross over estimation), about 50% of the married households with children under 5 have a stay at home parent.  That translates to roughly 5 million married households with children under 5 where both parents are working.  Framed up another way, 50% of all children under the age of 5, or 10 million children, are in some form of organized daycare or non parental care.  

That is 10 million too many in my view...

A Daddy and His Bed Rite...

You see it all the time on TV shows or in the movies, a married couple is fighting and inevitably, the husband ends up sleeping on the couch.  However, this is not the case in my house.  It does not matter how angry my wife and I might be at each other, it does not matter how at odds we are, nothing, and I mean NOTHING will keep me out of my bed at night.  There are probably two fundamental reasons why I am a stickler about this...

1.  I value a good nights sleep...I get about 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night, on average, which is probably less than I need if I were to listen to all the "experts" out there.  So, when it is time to sleep, I want to have the best conditions possible, and that begins with my bed.  

2.  In my opinion, the bedroom needs to be neutral ground...the demilitarized zone.  It should never become a place that is associated with anger or resentment.  It is the place where the promise of "...for richer or poorer, in sickeness and in health, till death do us part" is always meaningful and sacred.  I have always felt that if the bedroom becomes anything but that, if two people who are married cannot maintain that, major trouble is on the horizon.

So, my rule is that I will not give up my bed for anything...however, that was until the other night.  

My 3 month old daughter still sleeps in our master bedroom in a  co-sleeper next to my wife's side of the bed.  Usually, Evie (our daughter) will wake up to eat at 4:00 AM and I will typically get up, feed her a bottle and she will almost always go right back to sleep once she is fed.  The other night she jumped the gun and woke up fussing at 3:00 AM.  She was acting as though she was hungry, so I got up with her (I take the overnight feedings usually) and went ahead and mixed up a bottle.  Upon trying to feed her, she bucked, kicked, screamed, cried...basically she had no interest, no desire to eat, and she was telling me in no uncertain terms that this was the case.  So, figuring that she just needed a diaper change and then be re-swaddled (several of our babies have loved to be swaddled at night) maybe she would just drift back to sleep.  I awoke Tiffany to change  Evie (read my post about diaper changes) and then I swaddled her (my wife and I are swaddle masters thanks to a nurse in Maine who taught us the best technique imaginable) and laid her down to sleep.  For a moment, Evie was quiet...but just for a moment. 

We tried everything to get her to settle down and get her back to sleep, we tried to feed her again (got the same result as the last attempt), hold her, rock her, etc...  Finally, out of desperation, I knelt down along side of the bed (in "prayer" position) and laid Evie down, on her side (since birth, she has always been a "back to sleep" baby), on my side of the bed.  Two things then happened, first, she pulled my hand up to her face, and was lightly  "mouthing" my index finger.  Second, she quieted down almost immediately, closed her eyes, and went to sleep.  It was 4:00 AM.  There I was, kneeling along side the bed, dog tired, my hand held hostage by my daughter, with her sleeping soundly in my spot on the bed.  

At 5:00 AM my alarm went off to wake me up for the start of my work day.  As I got up from my makeshift bed on the floor (a pillow) I looked over and saw our angel Evie sleeping soundly, and I could do nothing but smile.  My daughter did something that my wife could never do, displace me from my bed.