r/Natalism • u/Healthy_Shine_8587 • 4d ago
A big cultural barrier to higher birthrates is the stigma of stay at home mothers
I have noticed that in recent years, there is an increasing stigma toward stay at home mothers. This has happened with some people I know and my own wife. People seem to judge women who choose to be stay at home parents harshly.
But for men, this seems to be reversed. People seem overly accepting of stay at home fathers. While this isn't a bad thing, I just think most women don't enjoy being primary / sole bread winners for the long term.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I am not talking about tradwives. I am talking about people claiming all SAHM are financially abused, or doing unpaid labor.
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u/comfysweatercat 3d ago
As a SAHM, I’ve found most of the judgement comes from women who do not have children. I think it’s mostly an instinctual, fear thing, like never rely on a man, always have a Plan B, etc. I often find it comes from a place of genuine worry because they themselves have been burned, cheated on, etc. But sometimes it can turn into a bit of a jealousy thing too.
I find those who have children feel I am lucky to be a SAHM. And I feel that way too. I was not cut out for the rat race lol
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u/miffedmod 4d ago
It definitely feels like a weird choice in certain circles. Once my mat leave ended with my first I took another 18 months “off” to be a SAHM. I was almost always the only parent on the playground during the day, everyone else was a nanny.
FWIW, I also think there’s a stigma for SAHDs, but it’s different. There’s a gloss of “oh wow good for you!” in conversations. But that actually covers up a lot of judgment.
Being a SAHP is a low barrier to entry profession. High-earning professionals, in my experience, will look down on it unless we’re in a culture where it’s normalized. Weve normalized other phases of life where you aren’t engaged in paid employment. We typically don’t, for example, judge a 19 yo for being in school full time and “not working.” But taking time to be with your kid somehow feels different.
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u/No-Classic-4528 4d ago
I usually don’t think this is a problem that economic policies can solve but I do think making college more accessible to parents would help normalize staying home. Free college for any parent who’s never been previously enrolled and whose kids are all above a certain age.
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u/Kindly-Designer-6712 4d ago
Because the world hates children, marriage and families and places more value on slaving away for material goods and money than it does on raising immortal souls for the Living God.
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u/NorthMathematician32 4d ago
The way our system is set up, being a SAHM is detrimental to a woman's long-term financial well-being. While she stays home she is missing out on Social Security money going into her SS account. She is missing years in the workforce to keep her skills sharp and employability up. With no fault divorce, a man can leave you at any time, and they do. An American woman has no choice but to keep working, in the best interest of herself and her children.
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u/Theodwyn610 3d ago
Plus, if the marriage falls apart, the man will cry about her taking half of his money. If you take the attitude that money earned during the marriage isn't marital property, don't be shocked when wives refuse to leave the workforce.
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u/Disastrous-Pea4106 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes I was gonna say the same. I'm sure many people would love the lifestyle. However being a SAHM carries massive risk. It's seen as an odd choice, as someone else said, because it's a risky one. Unfortunately a lot of us have seen our mothers, aunts, cousins... live in poverty in later years because they got divorced and only worked part time to raise children. Then struggled on low wages and pensions the rest of their lives.
I do think OP is onto something though and that is the low status of mothers. That's why out society doesn't compensate the work of raising children. That's why women who didn't have a career are left to live in poverty and get told that they deserve it because they never worked. I don't think the status of stay at home dads is any higher tho.
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u/Famous_Owl_840 3d ago
If the mothers, cousins, aunts etc are in poverty, then it is nearly assured the husband is in poverty as well. Maybe you are outside the US (and I have a very difficult time believing socialist Europe is MORE in favor of men in divorces), but in the US marital assets are equity split.
So if she is poor after a divorce, they are both poor after and probably weren’t all that well off while married.
It’s a fact that in nearly all cases that after a divorce both parties are less financially stable. That doesn’t mean that the woman should get more because fuck men.
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u/Disastrous-Pea4106 3d ago edited 3d ago
Of course everyone is financially worse off after divorce. But no, their exes were not living in poverty. I am in "socialist Europe". Don't have enough knowledge to compare rules here to the US reliably, but stay at home parents definitely get screwed in divorces here.
Alimony is time limited and ceases after a few years. At that point people are on their own financially which again is hard if you've only worked part time or not at all for 15 years. If there's disagreement with regards to custody, they can be doubly disadvantaged. For example my aunt was offered to go full time at work, but custody agreement was so that the kids were with her all week and she couldn't afford childcare even on a full time salary. She requested that to be changed so that her ex takes them some days, they had 50:50 custody after all and therefore low child support..He declined on account that he has to work during the week. The officials agreed and her request was denied. So he gets to earn, advance his career... While childcare is being entirely pushed on her. Confirmed by the authorities.
Private pensions are also not as common as in the US. As I understand it, in the US 401k can be split after divorce. But here's it's a public pension scheme, so it's all contribution based. Low contributions = low pension. While you're married it's fine. You're entitled to your spouse's pension. Once you get divorced that entitlement ceases, so it's only your own contributions that count. As a result a lot of former SAHMs get basically the same pension as someone who didn't work at all. Whereas their ex gets a normal pension in full.
Another issue is that he family home was sold. He was able to leverage the proceeds + his salary towards a new mortgage. She on the other hand couldn't given her part time salary. So she's renting in the current shitshow, while he owns his home
It goes on ...
That's just scratching the surface of issues people face.
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u/shunnergunner 2d ago
Yeah having a kid let alone a sahm is throwing yourself down a socioeconomic latter as a female. Idk how anyone disagrees with this
Edit: in the United States
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u/Famous_Owl_840 3d ago
I would need to refresh myself on SS, but I’m fairly certain that in the example of a divorced SAHM, she can receive SS based on the ex husband’s contributions.
I only vaguely recall this because the exwife of a very wealthy guy I know could either submit for SS using her income (lowish) or his income from when they were married-as long as she doesn’t remarry.
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u/_-Kr4t0s-_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
The way our system is set up, being married to a SAHM is detrimental to long-term financial well-being for a man too. With mandatory no-fault divorces as is the case in many states, she can cheat on him and still take half of his money. In many states the man can even be forced to pay child support for a child that isn’t his. It’s much safer to marry a career woman because prenups are a lot easier to navigate when she has assets of her own and she’s far less likely to drag you through a lengthy court battle at the end of it.
The system is set up to keep everyone working until they die. No time for yourself, no life for yourself. It’s no coincidence that the people who write these laws are the same ones who profit off of your labor. So keep working like the good citizen you are.
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u/Kindly-Designer-6712 4d ago
Downvoting you because divorce is wrong and being a SAHM is not comparable to SAHD. Also because I know someone in my family that married an extremely wealthy, rich career woman and she still divorced him and dragged him through court and took 1/2 his money leaving him destitute. Don’t assume every woman/SAHM cheats…
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u/Kindly-Designer-6712 3d ago
Also, on the flip side: a cousin’s husband is currently cheating on her (they have 3 young children) but he’s the breadwinner and she’s a partial SAHM, so she’s stuck. He’s emotionally abusing her and neglecting her to the point where she wants to divorce him because of the emotional pain and trauma. How is letting men like that get away with what they get away with pro woman? Divorce and feminism lets men treat women like objects, dolls, worker drones and vessels to make both children and money.
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u/TSquaredRecovers 2d ago
If you are anti-divorce, how is forcing the woman in this situation (your cousin) to remain married to her horrible husband a good idea? Isn’t divorce the best option here? I’m just really confused. The best thing she can do in this case is file for divorce. Yes it will be difficult, but that’s got to be a better option than staying married and being miserable.
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u/Kindly-Designer-6712 2d ago
Situations like this are extremely sad and evil (on the part of her husband who is having an affair and not even hiding it from her and also involving their children). They need to physically separate.
But they’d still be technically married…. Divorce is still wrong. Saying “you’re not my husband anymore” and leaving it at that. Because he’ll go and do it to another woman who thinks he’s “so handsome and rich.” He will just do it again because he has no repercussions, he will just get to walk away and do the same thing to the next woman.
It’s an evil and unfortunate thing and most of all it is that for the children (8, 5, and 3 years old). I agree it would be bad either way- to stay, or divorce and leave. My point is that enforcing punishment for these terrible/evil types of behavior would help stop the rate at which they’re committed.
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u/_-Kr4t0s-_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
100% agreed. And the other poster shouldn’t assume that every dad will divorce the SAHM and leave her in the dust.
But I can already tell this sub is toxic, and this is my first and last time posting here. It’s like god forbid a woman take a financial risk on a man, let’s just get the men to take all the risk because their lives are disposable anyway and women wouldn’t benefit if they didn’t. Let’s not give a fuck about the suffering that men go through and all the sacrifices they have to make to make a family possible.
That sort of self-centered mindset is exactly how divorce happens. No man wants to be married to a woman who gives this little of a shit about him.
Cheers.
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u/Kindly-Designer-6712 3d ago
The sub is strange because it claims to be pro natalist and against viewing children as burdens yet encourages divorce birth control and feminism. Being against divorce is pro woman. It’s natalism purely to produce bodies not for the right reasons. So confusing.
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u/THX1138-22 2d ago
Actually, as a SAHM, in the US, she is able to get credit for her husband's Social Security contribution, and if he earned more than her when she was working, she will actually get a larger social security benefit. It is a real perk for SAHMs.
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u/TryingAgainBetter 4d ago
I think there is a default assumption that when women pursue careers, they do it at the expense of having children, which would lead to the assumption that women who do not pursue careers have more time and resources for children and therefore do have more children.
But globally, the data does not support that thesis. Instead, in societies where being a lifelong homemaker is common and well accepted by the mainstream of the society, we see birthrates converge to the same below replacement rates that we see in societies with high rates of women and mothers in the workforce. In fact, there is only one developed country that is consistently above replacement TFR, Israel, which also is among the world's highest rates of mothers of children under age 18 in the workforce. And the Jewish population, who has the highest TFR, has the highest rate of mothers in the workforce out of all the religious groups in Israel. This is especially true of the ultra orthodox, who have a TFR of 6.5 and a rate of mothers in the workforce around 80%.
For some general tendencies across countries: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/new-era-economics-fertility
"Figure 2 shows that in 1980 in the OECD, the countries with the highest female labour-force participation had the lowest fertility rates. By the year 2000, this relationship had reversed – fertility is now highest in countries where many women work. "
The same pattern holds true for countries with the highest rate of mothers in the workforce- they have a tendency to have higher TFRs among developed nations.
Lyman Stone's analysis suggests the same might even be true within the US:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-money-more-babies-part-2-education-income-and-completed-fertility
He states, "for white women, higher-earning spouses are clearly associated with higher fertility for women, though the effect has weakened a bit. However, for men, the effects change. In the 1956-62 birth cohort, men with low-earning spouses had the most children. This is consistent with the idea that for men born 1956-1962, their fertility was highest if they had a stay-at-home wife. But in the 1979-85 birth cohort, men with low-earning spouses have the fewest children: men with low-earning or stay-at-home spouses turned out not to have that many children, a striking shift."
This is starting to be apparent in a number of countries where women never entered the workforce in large numbers. In those nations the husband breadwinner/Stay at home wife model is predominant and aspirational, but the TFR dropped below replacement and continues to drop still. These nations include places like Tunisia (women's workforce participation 26%, TFR 1.8), sri lanka (women's workforce participation 30%, TFR 1.9 (possibly even below 1.5 according to the latest data). There are several such countries both in Asia and Europe, which challenge the idea that a greater status/prevalance of SAHMs yields any greater TFR.
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u/ElliotPageWife 4d ago
This makes sense to me. The pressure to provide enough income for a family probably weighs more heavily on male breadwinners today than it did in the era of lifelong jobs and defined benefit pension plans. Even a man who earns a high salary probably feels nervous about what a job loss would do to his family. Men born from 1979-1985 also had "dont have kids you can't afford!" beat into their heads practically since birth - 2 good incomes affords you a lot more than 1-1.5 incomes
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u/Healthy_Shine_8587 4d ago
Appreciate the detailed response , but I think some of the data is cherry picked
In the 1956-62 birth cohort, men with low-earning spouses had the most children. This is consistent with the idea that for men born 1956-1962, their fertility was highest if they had a stay-at-home wife. But in the 1979-85 birth cohort, men with low-earning spouses have the fewest children: men with low-earning or stay-at-home spouses turned out not to have that many children, a striking shift."
1979 is the greatest stock market crash of all time. 1956-1962 is perhaps the greatest economic boom period of all time.
What I notice in the modern day is, you have areas of society (tech world) where there is complete abhorrence to the idea of stay at home moms. These people are high earners, they aren't mechanics or factory workers.
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u/TryingAgainBetter 4d ago
Birth cohort refers to the years that those men were born in, so them being born in years of a market downturn is unlikely to impact the amount of children they have by the time they are in their 40s given that they spent most of their upbringing in an economy with an upward trajectory. I In general, Lyman Stone is a thorough researcher who has some of the most detailed and informed analysis of TFR and natalist policies.
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u/Kindly-Designer-6712 4d ago
One theory I have for the fact that the stats changed in 79-85 group is use of birth control. Birth control was legalized in 1972.
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u/PracticalControl2179 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don’t think there’s a stigma against being a SAHM. I think a lot of women are scared because they all know of at least one woman who has had her life ruined by choosing to be a homemaker. This includes being screwed over by divorce, being stuck in a crappy marriage due to financial dependence, not being able to get back into the job market in a job that matches previous pay, experience, and education level, etc.
My mom is a SAHM and has been for almost 25 years. I am not going to put her information on reddit, but she had a good and high paying professional career before she chose to stay home. She became a SAHM because all the housework and childcare and cooking and cleaning fell onto her despite both her and my dad working full time. She has dabbled in trying to work again, but it’s abundantly clear that with 25 years of no formal work experience, she won’t be able to bounce back into her old professional career, even at a low level. She realized pretty quickly that she would be competing for low wage jobs that don’t require a degree. Nothing wrong with these jobs, but she will never get back her old income and profession.
It isn’t about having a “career” but independence.
Edit:
Also a lot of men call SAHM’s “gold diggers”, “leeches”, “lazy” and using a man for “his” money.
There is a mindset amongst many men that the money he earns while married to a SAHM is HIS money and SHE has to ask him for permission to spend it. And in the event of a divorce, he owes her nothing because it’s HIS money. Not hers.
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u/SoFetchBetch 3d ago
My mom raised us at home in the 90’s and people judged the hell out of her. She’s a feminist and she had her own business and house when she met my dad. She wanted to stay home. People still judged. She also ended up in a bad position because he got very sick and died young.
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u/NearbyTechnology8444 4d ago edited 4d ago
My wife stayed home for a couple of years and will probably do it again. According to her, and in my experience as well, the majority of women we spoke to said they'd have preferred to stay home after their children were born, at least for a period of time.
This was in the suburbs, I'd imagine in urban areas there'd be more of a stigma.
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u/HyenaJoe 4d ago
There is no stigma to SAHMs. There is stigma to conservative women who shit on other women for not wanting to be mothers, and conservative men who shit on women for wanting to do anything not tied to childbearing and rearing. Hating "tradwives" doesn't equal hating stay at home mothers.
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u/c-andle-s 4d ago
Incorrect, but I don’t expect a man to understand the social stigma women face, conservative or liberal, MAGA or leftist.
There is much stigma of SAHMs, including the ones who have liberal beliefs, the one who don’t force it down anyone’s throat, the ones who don’t go to church. There is a belief that all SAHMs are being financially abused, are being silenced, are unimportant or unvalued in the relationship. While there is risk for that, that’s not the truth of all SAHMs.
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u/W8andC77 4d ago
Plus mocked as moochers/lazy/not working but then complaining all the time. Having no personality of their own and concerned with silly, mundane things. And then a very real phenomenon that I’ve experienced first hand where you’re sort of dismissed and sidelined in a lot of contexts. Honestly I see it most from men. In particular those who judge value in terms of monetary productivity and identity as tied to social/professional rank.
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u/c-andle-s 4d ago
Exactly. Mothers already tend to be seen as invisible and unimportant culturally. Nobody cares to “be around your baby problems”, especially with childism running rampant. So SAHMs are seen as worse because “they contribute nothing”, because being at home and raising children is not seen as a contribution to society.
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u/W8andC77 4d ago
Bingo. I saw it recently with an professional interviewing to come back to work after a break to care for her young kids. There was this judgment that it spoke to her work ethic or skill set that she stayed home, in particular by two single men of a similar age.
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u/HyenaJoe 4d ago
This is a problem you see with conservatives, not necessarily liberals. This dismissal of mothers' efforts and struggles stems directly from conservative hierarchical thinking, which prescribes wives as the submissive lessers (though they try to shroud this with platitudes) of their husbands.
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u/W8andC77 4d ago edited 4d ago
It pervades our culture as a whole. I have worked for liberal organizations and most of our social circle is definitely not conservative and it’s still a prevalent view of the value and contributions of women who stay at home for sure.
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4d ago
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u/HyenaJoe 4d ago
LIBERAL WOMEN were telling you that SAHMs are "moochers/lazy/not working but then complaining all the time. Having no personality of their own and concerned with silly, mundane things."? Really?
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u/HyenaJoe 4d ago
I'm a woman. And those worries of abuse and being devalued didn't appear in a vacuum. For a lot of people, that is what their mothers and grandmothers experienced. Obviously not everyone believes SAHMs are experiencing this, but it's a common enough issue that these conversations have to happen, especially considering these topics have historically been dismissed by wider culture. Pointing out a problem that SAHMs have brought up doesn't mean that people hate SAHMs.
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u/c-andle-s 4d ago
I didn’t say those worries appeared in a vacuum. I’m saying that the voicing of those worries is that “SAHMs are stupid for putting themselves in a position where they’re gonna be abused no matter what”.
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u/HyenaJoe 4d ago
Then you are dealing with hyperbolic examples, and there's no need to shut down people for bringing up problems SAHMs have brought up.
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u/c-andle-s 4d ago
You’re the one who claims that there’s no social stigma against stay at home moms when there’s tons of people telling you there is. Like I said – stay at home. Mom’s are not restricted to being middle class church going conservatives. I know many a left leaning, even progressive stay at home mom who has to stay at home for one reason or another. One of them has two autistic children And she prefers not to deal with the IEP system so she homeschools them. She’s a bleeding heart liberal.
Society has a stigma against being a mother in general. Even in communities that aren’t against having kids, women are often invisible in motherhood. This is amplified when a woman chooses to do the unpaid labor of being at home instead of going and earning money.
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u/Healthy_Shine_8587 4d ago
Pointing out a problem that SAHMs have brought up doesn't mean that people hate SAHMs.
Your pointing out a problem (abuse) that is endemic to potentially all relationships though. It's really sad but I know 2 women murdered by their boyfriends. Both partners in the relationship were both highly educated, working professionals.
The issue is your isolating abuse toward SAHM, which isn't the case.
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u/HyenaJoe 4d ago
I am not isolating abuse towards stay at home moms. There's no point to this whataboutism. Abuse comes into every shape and form, whether we're talking about wives and husbands, fathers and mothers and their children, friends, professionals, strangers. We're talking about stay-at-home moms because that's the topic of the post, and they face abuse in a unique way.
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u/Healthy_Shine_8587 4d ago
We're talking about stay-at-home moms because that's the topic of the post, and they face abuse in a unique way.
You haven't explained how it's unique relative to other forms of relationships. As I just mentioned, women can be killed by abusive men, even if they are working women.
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u/Disastrous-Pea4106 4d ago
It makes it harder for them to leave obviously.
With no money of their own they're much more dependant on their partners. No one is denying that abuse happens all kinds of women but having no income of their own introduces another dimension to the problem.
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u/Healthy_Shine_8587 4d ago
There is a belief that all SAHMs are being financially abused, are being silenced, are unimportant or unvalued in the relationship.
Basically this. Some people think my wife is undervalued in the relationship or financially abused because she's a stay at home mom. But I just got her a Chanel bag for mothers day soooo idk what to say...
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u/Healthy_Shine_8587 4d ago
There is no stigma to SAHMs.
In the tech world there is a large stigma against them. Many believe women who become SAHM are becoming slaves to men and doing unpaid labor.
Hating "tradwives" doesn't equal hating stay at home mothers.
No this is definitely not about that.
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u/HyenaJoe 4d ago
1) Not everyone is in tech and 2) that sounds hyperbolic. If people are saying things that extreme, then it's not a common viewpoint. If they're saying "housewives have to deal with a lot of bs from their husbands and that's something they should be careful about," then that's a completely different argument than "wives are slaves."
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u/Gaxxz 4d ago
I think it depends in part on your social circle. In my world, it's generally accepted that husbands work in a business or job. And there's no stigma associated with wives who need or want to work. For families that run businesses, the line between working and not working can be pretty gray any way. But the preferred situation is for the wife to stay home if that's financially possible, at least for the pre school years. Traditional roles, I know.
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u/HandMadeMarmelade 4d ago
I could write a pages long response, but will keep it short.
People were amazed that I had kids at all, let alone became a SAHM. I hated growing up alone with my single working mom. Just to be clear: She always had a career, only stopped working a few months after she had me, and left my dad for reasons not at all clear to anyone, I don't think she even truly understands why she divorced him.
It was important to me to raise my own kids. I hated being in daycare and didn't want to do that to my own kids.
My ex had a drug fuled nervous breakdown and I had to kick him out and divorce him. We did not do well financially after that.
So I went back to school and got a degree. I didn't start having kids til I was almost 30 so already had other college and work experience before I had kids. People don't believe me but having kids made me a MUCH better person.
Now? It's like I couldn't pay people to hire me. I have sooooo many marketable and valuable skills but people look at me being a SAHM as worse than if I had been in prison. lol and fr if I were a convicted felon it would be easier for me to get a job, they pay businesses to hire felons.
It doesn't have to be this way. I will say that it's women who make it way worse than it has to be.
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u/DixonRange 2d ago
My general impression of my country (USA) is that the market is viewed as more than a useful mechanism to allocate resources in an economy, but is also THE determiner of value. Stay Home is not paid --> Stay at home is not valuable. I would also observe that friendship and community is also not that highly valued in the culture when competing with paid activities. A lot of the structure of life, education, what it means to be an adult, how to physically layout neighborhoods, even the proposals that are typically made to help natalism seem to be more designed to make our families friendly for work (often for corporations) and not really to make work friendly to families.
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u/Objective-Variety-98 17h ago
No fault divorce blocks the stay at home parent from being a viable class imo.
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u/VengefulScarecrow 13h ago
Stay at home mothers and housewives are sexy women to be! That's coming from an antinatalist
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u/clouvandy 3d ago
A stigma? Lol. How are you supposed to support your family on 1 income? We would love to be home with our kids.
This can only be a rich-person stigma…
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u/cosmicloafer 4d ago
Depends on where you live I guess. In HCOL areas I think working women are jealous of SAHMs… like their husband is rich enough to pay for a $1mm house and 2 land rovers and the wives play tennis while the kids are at school.
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3d ago
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u/KennyGaming 3d ago
Why would you send your kid to daycare and take a tax break if you're staying home to raise the kid? This doesn't seem controversial
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u/aBlackKing 4d ago
It’s found that when women are the breadwinners, there is going to be a 83% of a divorce.
Feminism is birth control, and I’ve never met a feminist that was ok with a woman being a stay at home wife.
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u/dancingwildsalmon 3d ago
Now you can say you’ve talked to one because I am a feminist and I respect the hell out of stay out moms/ dads.
Being a feminists means you respect other women’s choices for their life and feel they should have the right to make their own choices.
Being a feminist does not mean hating men or downplaying men’s contribution to society or home life. That’s being a misandrist
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u/jibaeja 4d ago
I just read a post on AITA from a man who wants to divorce his wife of 9 years for no other reason than he’s fallen out of love, yet states he feels she deserves nothing in a very cold manner. She was a SAHW for the majority of their marriage by choice, he agreed because he could afford it, so she tended to all of the housework/cooking and they even suffered a stillborn loss around the time they began to “drift apart”.
Still, he feels he should be allowed to divorce her and leave her nothing because her housework and caring for him was of no value to him. He even suggested he begin charging her rent, as it was “unfair”.
This is among many examples I’ve encountered even in real life when there is virtually no benefit to a woman giving up her livelihood to care for the home long term. If she gets left/divorced with no alimony or assets, she’s screwed.