I am a Stay at Home Mom by choice. I have a Bachelor’s Degree and I enjoyed a career in the non-profit world before deciding to stay home. Staying home has required sacrifices for my family, primarily of space and things. I consider these sacrifices relatively minor compared to the challenges faced by some parents when it comes to education, careers, and childcare. My husband and I enjoyed a supportive extended family and maternity leave – luxuries many families don’t have while making the same choices. Last week, in a Rhode Island Speech, President Obama recognized the difficult choices many families make when it comes to work and childcare. He didn’t champion one choice over another. He championed workplace policies that make a scope of choices available to all.
We all want to make informed lifestyle choices based on the best options and outcomes. Last Friday, the President spoke up about championing workplace policies that prioritize families, provide fair wages, and don’t penalize workers for leaving the workplace to raise children. Unfortunately, Obama critics isolated one sentence from his speech and the news that the president is against Stay at Home Moms went viral. Out of context, this quote sounds like fuel for the mommy wars fires.
And sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want Americans to make.
Good thing we have the president’s entire Rhode Island speech to provide the necessary context. He spoke to women from all different backgrounds, with one important message for parents like me who choose to stay at home with our children: Our choice to stay at home with children or pursue a career or education should not be burdened by the high cost of quality childcare, wage gaps, or lacking family leave policies. Parents should not have to choose between staying home to care for our families and earning a fair wage if/when we return to the workplace.
Rather than deriding SAHMs and SAHDs, the preseident’s remarks called for improved policies to help families overall. As a SAHM, I felt encouraged by his comments. The one thing the president did not say was that staying at home is not a choice we want Americans to make.
Here’s what he did say:
1. People face many challenges as they pursue educational goals, including caring for young families and aging parents.
Too many people who are working too many hours and don’t have enough to show for it…And here in Rhode Island, my administration recently announced a grant to help more long-term unemployed folks get the training and mentoring they need to get back to work. (Applause.) And all across the country, we’re taking similar actions, community by community, to keep making progress.
2. We need to make sure the economy works for everyone.
I want to zero in on the choices we need to make to ensure that women are full and equal participants in the economy.
3. The president watched his own mother and grandmother struggle financially, while trying to gain an education, raise a family, and receive equal pay in the workplace.
I know what it was like for her to hit the glass ceiling, and to see herself passed over for promotions by people that she had trained. And so some of this is personal, but some of it is also what we know about our economy, which is it’s changing in profound ways, and in many ways for the better because of the participation of women more fully in our economy.
4. While meeting with female business owners, the president recognized that these struggles continue to exist for families, both mothers and fathers.
And as the catch-22 of working parents, we wanted to spend time with our kids, but we also wanted to make sure that we gave them the opportunities that our hard work was providing.
5. We all have a stake in choosing policies that help women and families succeed. When women do better, we all do better.
But here’s the challenge — that’s all good news — the challenge is, our economy and some of the laws and rules governing our workplaces haven’t caught up with that reality. A lot of workplaces haven’t caught up with that reality. So while many women are working hard to support themselves and their families, they’re still facing unfair choices, outdated workplace policies. That holds them back, but it also holds all of us back. We have to do better, because women deserve better. And, by the way, when women do well, everybody does well.
6. Laws that provide workers sick leave to care for children or aging parents and paid maternity and paternity leave benefit everyone. Improved family leave laws help workplaces recruit and retain outstanding employees.
Without paid leave, when a baby arrives or an aging parent needs help, workers have to make painful decisions about whether they can afford to be there when their families need them most. Many women can’t even get a paid day off to give birth to their child. I mean, there are a lot of companies that still don’t provide maternity leave. Of course, dads should be there, too. So let’s make this happen for women and for men, and make our economy stronger. (Applause.) We’ve got to broaden our laws for family leave.
7. The cost of quality daycare, compared to wages, makes it difficult for parents to afford childcare and support their families.
Moms and dads deserve a great place to drop their kids off every day that doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg. We need better childcare, daycare, early childhood education policies. (Applause.) In many states, sending your child to daycare costs more than sending them to a public university.
8. Poor or prohibitive childcare options make it so that some parents who would like to pursue educational or career opportunities opt to stay home instead. This is a default choice, made out of necessity. This is not the same as choosing to stay home because it feels right for you and your family. And I wholeheartedly agree – this is not a choice we want Americans to have to make.
And too often, parents have no choice but to put their kids in cheaper daycare that maybe doesn’t have the kinds of programming that makes a big difference in a child’s development. And sometimes there may just not be any slots, or the best programs may be too far away. And sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want Americans to make.
9. About 28 million Americans would benefit from a higher minimum wage – women foremost. No one should be raising their family below the poverty line.
But the truth is, the average worker who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage is 35 years old — 35. A majority of low-wage workers are women. A lot of them have kids. Right now, somebody working full-time on the minimum wage makes $14,500 a year — $14,500. If they’re a parent, that means they’re below the poverty line. Nobody who works full-time in America should be below the poverty line.
10. Women should be full and equal partners in our economy. Women deserve equal wages. Women should not be penalized for taking time off from the workplace to care for family members.
And if a woman is doing the same work as a man, she deserves to get paid just like the man does. Even though it’s 2014, there are women still earning less than men for doing the same work. And women of color face an even greater wage gap. And at a time when women are the primary breadwinners in more households than ever, that hurts the whole family if they’re not getting paid fairly.
Women often start their careers with lower pay, and then the gap grows over time — especially if they get passed over for promotions and then they get fewer raises, or they take time off to care for family members. So you get a situation where women are doing the same work as men, but the structure, the expectations somehow is, well, they’ll take time off for family, and once they take time off that means that it’s okay to pay them a little bit less. And that builds up over time.
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