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Overtime Helps Create "Breadwinner-Homemaker" Families
Daily Policy Digest

Economic Issues / Women in the Economy

Tuesday, August 19, 2003
What does it mean that the number of mothers who stay home full time has risen nearly 13 percent in less than a decade? Are an increasing number of women choosing families over careers? Not really, says Joan C. Williams, a law professor at American University.

A closer look at the relevant Census data reveals that the number of stay-at-home fathers has also jumped -- by 18 percent since 1994. So what is going on here?

As usual, it's the economy. The rise in breadwinner/homemaker families stems, quite simply, from high levels of overtime work:

  • Overwork in the United States is particularly common among male managers and professionals, over one in three of whom work 50 or more hours a week.
  • In contrast, few mothers work overtime: 95 percent of mothers work less than 50 hours per week year-round during the key career-building years -- because those are also the key child-rearing years.
Where one spouse is unavailable to help with the children, the other may have to limit or eliminate work outside the home. Overtime is largely masculine, and homemakers are overwhelmingly women.

As for the relatively large jump in stay-at-home fathers, it reflects their small numbers:

  • Children under 15 are 56 times more likely to live with a stay-at-home mother than with a stay-at-home father.
  • Roughly one in three U.S. kids under 15 has a mom at home full time and the equivalent figure for fathers is under 1 percent.
Corporate policies need to address the stigma that often attaches to use of flexible work arrangements to accommodate parenting. And the issue of work hours -- of overtime gone wild and of the need for quality reduced-hours jobs -- should be placed on the public policy agenda at both the state and national levels, explains Williams.

Source: Joan C. Williams, "Why Moms Stay Home," Washington Post, July 17, 2003.

For text
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3472-2003Jul16

For more on Women in the Economy
http://www.womenintheeconomy.org

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