Stay-at-Home Parenting Trends

Stay-at-home parenting refers to a family arrangement where one parent stays home to care for children, while the other typically works outside the home. Traditionally, this role division has involved fathers as the primary breadwinners and mothers fulfilling domestic responsibilities. However, societal changes since the mid-20th century, including the rise of dual-income households and shifting gender roles, have transformed this dynamic. Economic pressures, such as stagnant wages and high childcare costs, have led some families to favor one parent staying home during crucial early years of child development.

Notably, trends like attachment parenting emphasize the importance of close, consistent caregiver relationships for children's emotional and cognitive growth, often necessitating a stay-at-home parent. While the majority of stay-at-home parents are mothers, the number of stay-at-home fathers has also increased in recent years. This evolving landscape of parenting is further influenced by economic factors, cultural shifts, and the rise of same-sex couples, who face distinct challenges and opportunities in navigating work and family life. Overall, the stay-at-home parenting trend reflects a complex interplay of societal expectations, economic realities, and individual family choices.

Published in: 2021

By: Zimmer, Scott

Subject Terms

Stay-at-Home Parenting Trends

Abstract

Stay-at-home parenting refers to a family structure in which one parent remains at home to take care of the children, either by not having to work, by working part-time, or by working from home. The most common configuration of stay-at-home parenting throughout history has been one in which a heterosexual couple divides family responsibilities so that the man works outside the home and the woman works inside the home, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. In the second half of the twentieth century, several trends began to change this traditional paradigm.

Overview

The family structure that most people think of as traditional consists of a father working outside the home (or on a farm) and the mother fulfilling the role of caretaker by staying at home. This division of responsibilities is based on a number of stereotypes that developed and were allowed to persist over many years: the father as the brave warrior/hunter who must venture out into the dangerous world in order to support his family; the mother, physically weak but emotionally strong and nurturing, able to care for others by sacrificing her own needs and so on. These stereotypes placed men and women into rigidly defined, gender-based roles that had their origins in primitive understandings of biological differences between the sexes and in archaic notions of property that tended to treat women as being more or less equivalent to household goods, such as furniture or tableware. While there have occasionally been men and women throughout history who defied these stereotypes, as well as isolated periods in which women enjoyed somewhat increased freedoms (e.g. the "roaring twenties" in the United States and elsewhere), for the most part the traditional family structure was the only option available.

By the 1960s and 1970s, the power relationships that had prevailed between men and women had begun to shift. The example of the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, in which African Americans and other underrepresented groups began to demand greater access to the resources enjoyed by the dominant culture, encouraged women to redefine the roles society had placed them in, by choosing to pursue their own education and develop independent careers. As women began entering the workforce, suddenly there was no one at home to care for the children, take them to school, clean the house, and perform all of the other tasks traditionally assigned to women. As a result, family structures and division of labor began to evolve. From the 1970s until the last few years of the twentieth century, it became the norm for both parents to work and for children to receive care from relatives, before-school programs, or after-school programs. One example of this is the "latchkey child," a phrase that referred to children who came home from school to an empty house because both parents were still at work. The child would use his or her key to get into the house and then wait there, unsupervised, until the parents returned at the end of their workday.

While the ability of both parents to work provided some benefits in the form of additional income for the family and additional independence and increased self-esteem for women, it also brought with it additional costs. Foremost among these, yet difficult to quantify and often controversial, are the effects of parental absence on children raised in households where both parents work. There are also widespread perceptions that children with both parents working are more likely to get into trouble, whether in the form of substance abuse or delinquent behavior such as gang membership, vandalism, petty crime, and the like. Parents with younger children have often lamented that the benefits of both parents working are somewhat illusory because those who are unable to find relatives or friends to help with childcare are forced to pay a childcare center to keep an eye on their children until one parent can pick them up in the evening. It is not unusual for the annual costs of such childcare to equal or even exceed the yearly salary of one parent, meaning that while the couple may experience gains in the sense of both partners feeling that they are contributing equally and are equally independent, there will be no financial advantage to speak of.

Because of these factors, a new trend developed in the early twenty-first century, as more and more families chose to have one parent stay at home with the children, at least during the stages of infancy and toddlerhood, when children are most in need of parental affection, attention, and support. In a sometimes cruel twist of fate, now that there is greater interest in stay-at-home parenting, fewer families are able to take advantage of it, thanks to changes in the economy. Real wages have fallen or remained stagnant in most sectors of the market for the last several decades, so most families now require two incomes in order to make ends meet. Very few careers are lucrative enough to permit one spouse to support the other and the children. This means that those parents who feel that the best arrangement for their children is for one parent to stay at home must make some difficult choices, deciding who will set aside their career and who will continue to work. There is often a significant degree of financial sacrifice involved, as many luxuries that would be available to a family with two incomes must be given up, or at least deferred, until the children are older and the stay-at-home parent can return to work. By 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that about one in five parents in the United States stayed at home, a number that had stayed relatively stable since the turn of the twenty-first century, with some fluctuations in the numbers of mothers and fathers staying home (Livingston, 2018).

Further Insights

One factor driving the increase in stay-at-home parenting has been the growing popularity of an approach to childrearing known as attachment parenting. Attachment parenting is based on theories of attachment developed in the fields of psychology and child development. Attachment theory asserts that it is important for children's later emotional and cognitive development for them to be able to form attachments to "objects," meaning significant people in their lives. In order for these attachments to form, children must have the opportunity to form attachments that are secure, which means that the person the child is attached to can leave for a time and the child will not become upset, because the child will understand that the person will come back. Children with insecure attachment patterns become highly anxious in these situations because they do not understand that their attachment object will return.

Insecure attachment patterns have been associated with emotional and relationship problems later in life, as well as a higher propensity for other psychological conditions. Parents wishing to help their children avoid such difficulties follow the advice of advocates such as William Sears (2001) by using the attachment parenting approach. This parenting style is implemented in a variety of ways but in general emphasizes one or both parents remaining physically available to the child for most of the day, and—in some approaches—sleeping with the child as well. This degree of closeness is needed, so that the parent may provide children with attention and understanding of their needs, and makes it difficult if not impossible for both parents to work. As attachment parenting has been more widely adopted, more families have opted to have one parent stay at home to implement it.

Stay-at-home parenting has gone in and out of fashion over the years, but in its current manifestation there is a new factor influencing how it is practiced: the rising number of same-sex couples raising children. Most of the issues faced by these couples are the same as those that opposite-sex couples contend with, with the possible exception of some lesbian relationships. Lesbian couples who wish to implement stay-at-home parenting sometimes find that it is not economically feasible for them to do so, owing to the wage gap that often exists between the salaries earned by men and those earned by women. Data from the US government show that on average, women earn only seventy-seven cents for every dollar earned by men, despite putting in the same amount of work. While these figures are averages and thus not accurate in every particular case, they can produce situations in which a lesbian couple seeking to try stay-at-home parenting would have to do so while living off of the salary of the higher earner even though that salary is only three-fourths the size of what a man would earn for the same labor.

Another aspect of stay-at-home parenting that is related to gender is the relatively new phenomenon of the stay-at-home dad. In the past, when stay-at-home parenting was discussed, the assumption was almost always that the couple consisted of a man and a woman, and that the parent who would be staying at home would be the woman. This was due primarily to cultural stereotypes about the roles of men and women, as discussed above. More recently, there has been an increase in the number of fathers who remain at home to care for the children while their wives or partners work outside the home. Comparing figures from 1989 to data from 2012, the number of stay-at-home fathers almost doubled, to about two million. The National At-Home Dad Network argues that number was slightly lower in 2021, reporting that approximately 1.75 million fathers stayed at home that year. Interestingly, the proportion of stay-at-home fathers who state that their main reason for being at home is to care for children and the family is much lower than the number of stay-at-home mothers who give this as their primary motivation. In 2018, for example, 24 percent of stay-at-home fathers cited caring for family as their main reason for staying home, while 78 percent of stay-at-home mothers reported that reason (Livingston, 2018). Some fathers indicate that their reasons for staying at home have more to do with illness, disability, or unemployment than with providing an affirmative benefit for the family's well-being. These findings agree with the general opinion of society about stay-at-home parents, which tends to show more approval of mothers who stay at home with their children than it does of fathers who do the same thing.

There appears to be some connection between stay-at-home parenting and trends in immigration. This is not, as some have suggested, because immigrants arriving in the United States have taken jobs previously held by Americans, forcing them to remain at home due to unemployment. Instead, the influence is more of a statistical effect which makes it appear that more families in the United States are opting for stay-at-home parenting, when in fact part of this is due to the arrival of immigrants who tend to practice stay-at-home parenting at higher levels. In some cases immigrants may use stay-at-home parenting because it is already part of their cultural traditions, while in other cases one or more parents in an immigrant family may be staying at home because they are unable to work, as their immigration status does not permit them to.

Viewpoints

Stay-at-home parenting can be thought of as one side of a coin, with the other side symbolizing employment issues, because the two issues are intricately connected to each other. A family cannot consider the option of stay-at-home parenting without thinking about the employment consequences of the decision, such as whether the parent who still works will be able to earn enough to support the whole family.

Another concern that must be taken into account is the potential effect of a resume gap on the future career prospects of the parent who stays home. Some careers are highly competitive and operate on the presumption that employees will be continually working hard in order to advance to positions of greater responsibility, and that those who do not do so, or who take time off for personal reasons such as family illness or childcare, lack dedication to the profession and cannot be trusted to remain committed to their work. In situations like this, a parent may fear that taking a few years off from work to stay at home will mean that his or her colleagues continue to make progress at work, receive promotions and raises and new assignments, while the parent feels that he or she stagnates at home. As if this were not daunting enough, it sometimes happens that when a stay-at-home parent is ready to return to his or her former job, he or she will be working alongside people several years younger, since the stay-at-home parent's former colleagues have moved on to other work due to their seniority. This exposes the stay-at-home parent to potential difficulties such as problems relating to coworkers or even age discrimination. Given potential consequences such as these, and the economic difficulties that go along with stay-at-home parenting for many people, it is all the more surprising that so many families decide to try it.

Social scientists and statisticians continue to be eager to see where the stay-at-home parenting trends lead next. There is general agreement that the recession caused by the collapse of the mortgage-backed securities market in 2008 tended to increase the number of stay-at-home parents due to the many layoffs the recession produced. Likewise, the record high numbers of unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 created a rise in the number of stay-at-home parents. At the same time, more and more people are finding that it is possible for them to work from home either part-time or full-time, as became abundantly clear during the pandemic when offices and other workplaces shut down and people were forced to work remotely. More and more companies are expected to continue to offer the option of telecommuting, even after the pandemic has ended, as workers have come to enjoy the flexibility of remote work and companies have benefited from the cost savings in having fewer people in offices. Even before the pandemic, increasingly jobs were defined as remote from the outset, like technical support positions in which all of the duties are conducted via phone and internet. Still other workers have been able to find freelance work for various organizations. All of these opportunities make it more economically viable for stay-at-home parents to earn a living or supplement their spouse's salary, but this begs the question of whether working from home really fits the definition of stay-at-home parenting, since the time being spent at home is not being devoted to childcare or looking after the family. Time will tell whether the definition of stay-at-home parenting evolves to meet the demands of the new economy, or if families seek alternatives to provide financial and relational support while fulfilling the duties of their professional lives.

Terms & Concepts

Attachment parenting: A parenting style that emphasizes physical and emotional closeness between one or more parents and the child, in order to support healthy child development.

Dual career couple: A couple who have agreed to share childcare duties rather than follow traditional division of labor approaches which make childcare the domain of the woman.

Childcare time gap: This calculation shows the difference between the amount of time spent caring for children by a working parent and by a stay-at-home parent.

Cosleeping: The practice of parents sleeping in the same room or in the same bed with one or more of their children, usually to help the child feel more secure and sleep through the night.

Latchkey child: A child who is unsupervised during the hours after school, until his or her caregivers return home from work in the evening.

Opt-out mothers: A subset of stay-at-home parents, opt-out mothers are usually defined as both affluent and as highly educated. The term refers to the fact that mothers in this situation choose to stay at home, opting out of participation in the paid workforce in order to provide a higher level of care for the family.

Resume gap: A time period on a person's resume that is unaccounted for by other employment or education. Some prospective employers are suspicious of resume gaps because they assume they represent periods of unemployment attributable to negative qualities on the part of the applicant.

Bibliography

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Stay-at-Home Parenting Trends

On this Page

Subject Terms

Stay-at-Home Parenting Trends

Abstract

Overview

Further Insights

Viewpoints

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading