Correcting for the vulnerability of Stay-at-Home Moms
I work with caregivers, breadwinners, employees, and leaders to make “staying at home” a less vulnerable option for moms.
From my conversations with proponents of the stay-at-home-mom structure, I know they deeply believe that men should be the ones to provide financially. They have zero tolerance for “deadbeat dads,” or men who otherwise mistreat their wives or children. They support policies that give preferential treatment to this system because they want to encourage men to step up and take care of their families.
They believe women are more vulnerable by nature, and that this system relieves that vulnerability.
Their intentions are admirable.
And they are right: Those of us who use our bodies to literally grow more humans are more vulnerable.
Yet, this system leaves us completely dependent on our children’s father being the kind of man who both:
A) Chooses to provide financially, and
B) Can handle having more access to the family’s resources—without using that power to control and have his way.
While we all know men like this, we don’t need to consult the statistics around financial control and domestic abuse to know this is not a safe thing to bet on.
What’s often missed is just how vast this power differential really is. Two reasons for this miss are hidden in the story we tell about stay-at-home-moms:
They’re not really working.
All they’re giving up is a second income.
“My wife doesn’t work.”
How many times I heard this phrase casually thrown around by my male colleagues! Once, not kidding, it came out over a breakroom lunch, after an hour of Xbox with coworkers. Meanwhile, their “non-working” wives were frantically caring for their multiple children and preparing dinner.
The truth is, their wives just aren’t getting paid for their work.
We can’t say a system relieves women’s vulnerability by making it so they “don’t have to work” if they have responsibilities that keep them from even being able to.
Which brings us to the second reason for the power differential that enables so much domestic abuse: It’s not just income women are giving up.
It’s access to health insurance.
It’s an employer-subsidized retirement plan.
It’s paid-time-off days, which accumulate with each year of employment.
It’s years of work experience that counts on a resume.
The stay-at-home-partner system actively reinforces a woman’s vulnerability by not recognizing her work, not compensating her for it, and giving unchecked power to her provider. My work supporting moms building independence shows many women are stuck between living with a man who feels no obligation to meet her needs, and being able to care for her children.
You might think the state has built-in protections against this sort of thing, but the reality is a lot of women and children face destitution precisely because this system does not value caregiving work.
Fixing this system means:
Advocating for family-friendly policies in the workplace, including flexibility in work times and location wherever possible, and counting caregiving work for the management and leadership experience it is when qualifying job candidates and considering compensation.
Addressing the power differential in families by acknowledging—structurally and contractually—the value (read: cost) of the work being done at home.
I help people do both.
*I want to acknowledge it’s not just women who are disadvantaged by giving preferential treatment to this system. In order to address the specific question I keep getting about women’s vulnerability, I’ve set completely aside the gigantic factor that this “breadwinner dad/stay-at-home-mom” framework doesn’t account for the full spectrum of humans we sharing a planet with. Many of them don’t naturally conform to your gendered expectations.