I found these fascinating statistics in FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?.

One Harvard and Cornell study found that

Women who were homemakers at the beginning of their three-year study and and then went to work full time reported a decrease in psychological distress.

A Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and Women’s eNews study found that

Women who were employed full time and then dropped out to stay home reported an increase in distress, regardless if they had children. Women who had a child but stayed in the work force showed no increase in distress. But women who had a child and dropped out of the work force experienced a major increase in stress.

Dan Baker, author of What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better, explains the

seemingly counter-intuitive decreased level of distress in working women by giving a high happiness priority to “a sense of freedom,” proactivity and security. A sense of working women feeling a measure of control over their own destinies.
Versus what he terms “the lesser life,” characterized by fear, a lack of options, a narrow focus, a sense of purposelessness, anxiety and depression. The emotional reality for many women who are economically dependent.

Other statistics report that working is physically healthier for mothers.

By the age of fifty-four, those who combined roles of employees, parents and parters were significantly less likely to report ill health than were those whose lives did not include all three roles. The women who had been homemakers for all or most of their lives were most likely to say that their health was poor, followed by single mothers and childless women. The study, which was reported in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, also found that 38 percent of the long-term housewives suffered from obesity, in comparison with 23 percent of the working mothers.

Another report by a Dr. Anna Fels in Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Livesreports,

Employed women are healthier than their homemaker peers, despite the pressure of their added responsibilities. They have lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels and lower weight. Psychologically, working women have less depression than their domestic counterparts, and they have, astonishingly been reported to have less anxiety.

Post from: Blisstree

Stress for SAHMs v. Working Moms

This is in response to the whopping $138,000 that Salary.com claims at-home-mothering is worth based on the many roles moms fill. Blumner writes, “stay-at-home moms need to understand the reality of their choice. They are handicapping their future financial security and that of their children by being economically dependent on a man.”

She is absolutely right. But, so what?

I tried to ignore my maternal instincts and work full-time with the kids in daycare. I tried to buy into the whole “have it all” career and kids feminist promise. Believe me, I desperately wanted it to work out. I wanted to be the ambitious professional, the wonderful mother who doled out the quality time to my kids, maintaining my financial independence and loving every second of it.

It SUCKED!

“The consequences of economic dependency are the subject of a new book, The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, who has raised two children along with her husband, while maintaining a professionally fulfilling and money-making career. Her blunt but honest thesis that stay-at-home moms have made a choice that “represents a fundamental abdication of responsibility for their own lives, ” has made the dependent class positively apoplectic,” writes Blumner.

Okay, so I’m pretty much financially dependent right now while I raise my little kids – four more years to go until Mr. Z trots off to kindergarten. I guess I’m “abdicating the responsibility for my own life.” Since abandoning my full-time career, I’ve seen my husband’s income rise and there is no doubt if I return to the corporate structure I might never get back to an equal salary.

I’m totally making the “feminine mistake.”  

Except that I don’t base my self-worth or the worthiness of my entire life on financial independence. Is financial independence the end all be all? Should all other aspects of life – spiritual, maternal, emotional, and physical be fundamentally based on my economic ability to walk away from my marriage?

Is that what feminism is really all about? Must we shut off the maternal desire we have to be the one who raises our own kids? I feel like it is my right, responsibility and privilege to be the one who spends the majority of their day with them. I feel like the first 5 years is when they develop a fundamental self, I insist that it’s my influence as their mother that is priceless. No amount of financial security can buy it or replace it.

It’s my maternal desire, my motherlove, such old-school feminist arguments ignore.

Feminism demanded the right to work, the right to equal compensation. But, maybe it’s time to expand the definition.

It is time for feminists to reject the completely masculine 40 hour, Monday through Friday, be in the office for every minute, work overtime if necessary to get ahead, paradigm of working.

Rather than adapt careers and professions to the women who were entering them in mass, the mass of women tried to adapt into a male paradigm that originated when there was a housewife at home managing children and home.

The result is that it’s too hard to pull off having a family. Kids, with two full-time working parents spend the majority of their waking hours in daycare. Literally. This is unfair to kids and my maternal desire just couldn’t make peace with that reality.

Those old-school feminists who insist I should “opt back in” to maintain my financial independence made some sacrifices I’m not willing to make. What they haven’t done, but what I would like to see them do, is make the working environment (in which they have struggled their way to the top) more inviting to the feminine.

Women make up nearly half of the working masses. Perhaps we’re now in a position to demand a work day consistent with school hours, real virtual work arrangements, less hostility to sick children or field trip excuses. Work environments that recognize my motherlove and maternal desire to be the biggest influence and spend actual time (rather than quality time) with my kids.

Post from: Blisstree

Motherhood – paid nothing, worth nothing?