the potato chips and fries is bad news for people with PMS everywhere...

Sorry, but I tend to agree with the first article...although, honestly, I just skimmed it. Personally, I have a Mstrs in Plant Biol. and had a very nice career going in Plant Biol. research, but set it all aside once I got pregnant. It is very difficult to be a good mother and a good career woman. Everything gets stretched way too thin. I would have gone nuts if I tried to take on both...oh, and my son might have suffered also, but who knows. It's nice that I had the choice.

Bummer about the chips and fries, though.

They really seem obsessed with this topic at the Times, never mind that most women wouldn't have the financial situation to justify such a choice. It's annoying. They also never mention the longterm downsides, like the fact that the job market might not exactly welcome them with open arms when they want to return to work after their kids are older.

Yeah right - the way this economy is going, they won't have a choice to stay at home - it's a nice fantasy that women have to choose between "motherhood" and "careers" - but most of the women in my family worked - because we weren't rich and even in married couples often both partners need to work in order to sustain a family

Also - just wait til these type A girls stay home all day and listen to teletubbies - they will run SCREAMING to find a job - just so they can speak english to a grown-up instead of speaking gibberish 12 hours a day - oh, and don't expect hubby to be much help cause if they are gonna stay home all day he'll be workin 100+ hours a week trying to make partner

I stayed home because my kid was born early and I had to--I hadn't planned on it. And it was very tough to get back into living the life of an adult with a brain, after four years at home. It's really strange to be reading quotes from women in their late teens saying what they "plan" to do. In my experience, all the planning in the world can go right out the window in one heartbeat.

The Times is not the only place I've seen articles like this, which tout the "trend" of being a stay-at-home mom without looking at other sides of the issue, or why this trend is happening in the first place. And I'd really love to see them take a look at why, in the midst of this trend, there are shows like "Crash Test Mommy" and "Nanny 911." I think a lot of younger women have a very romantic view of staying at home with one's children, when the reality of the situation is quite different from what they imagine. The frustration of never speaking to other intelligent adults is palpable, after a while :-)

I also had to work at home, because no matter what one plans, one's husband can, say, lose a job...and it's brutal to handle a full-time job plus take care of a kid at home because daycare is too expensive and eats one's entire paycheck.

It seems like the Times only wants to report on the blissfully ignorant 18 year olds who "plan" to stay home, not the full story. I wonder what would happen if a rather large bunch of women wrote letters to the editor or the ombudsperson and complained...

Unfortunately the USA isn't the only place that women have Hobson's choice, the New York Times is not the only newspaper with "Times" in the title, that regularly raises this issue, although in this article http://women.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17909-1791439,00.html
the writer is commenting on the "having it all" male.

The entire time I was reading that first article it just drove me nuts thinking about all the taken-for-granted privilege in these women's perspectives. Just the fact that someone posed the alternative to staying at home as having your kids raised by a full-time nanny says it all. But also, the way they just uncritically accepted that they were going to stay home and raise kids and there didn't even seem to be much of a thought process around it. I mean, I get that kids are better off being taken care of by one of their parents than a nanny or a day-care center (though often kids can grow up in those situations and do great). I think if I ever have kids I will want them to be homeschooled, and that certainly involves a ton of responsibility. But that doesn't mean that if I have kids I have to quit working (who knows if I'll even ever have the opportunity to quit working!). I have a good friend who homeschools her kids during the day and works in the evenings, and while she's at work her kids either stay with their dad or with one of a group of other moms that she is in a close-knit childcare-sharing arrangement with, sort of like a surrogate extended family. Sometimes dads stay home! All kinds of things are possible. And sometimes you can find a way of having kids in your life--being an aunt/uncle, being friends with people with kids--but find that having kids of your own isn't for you. And there's all those other things you can't predict, like whether you'll find a life partner on the schedule you planned, or whether if you get married you'll stay with that person long enough to have kids, or whether your marriage might split up after you do have kids and force you to get some kind of job. The whole thing just really bugs me.

Of course, it's really possible that this isn't even really a "trend." I mean, they're looking at a very small sample from a really specific population of people that is skewed in various ways, the results are from an email survey which was voluntary so women who do plan on putting aside careers to raise kids may have been more likely to respond, we don't have any data to compare this to from the past so the numbers might be the same as they would have been 10 years ago, etc. This could be one of those self-fulfilling prophesies of the media--they say x is a trend and it keeps getting repeated until it starts to happen for real.

One final thought--if you can't "think outside of the box" when it comes to gender and childrearing, how good of a parent are you going to be? I mean, in my experience the parents with the happiest kids are people who are blazing their own trail instead of just doing what their parents did because it "worked so well with me."

Salovey is great. I thought it was interesting that so many of the people interviewed wanted to go to law school.

i think it's nauseating that they always focus on the ivy league without problematizing it -- these women plan to be stay-at-home moms because they plan to be wealty and they plan to be supported!but maybe it's not surprising, since a lot of folks at the times likely came from elite institutions. (i make these statements as someone who got my m.a. at columbia and as a reporter with friends at the times.) it does sometimes feel like media outlets are trying to put extra pressure on women of child-bearing age. even in 2005, we can't seem to reconcile women's dual roles.

I have so much to say on this, I don't know where to begin, and I'm sure it won't sound organized or well-thought-out at all. But here goes anyway:

First, until I was about 8, me and my brother had a stay-at-home DAD, since he was first running his own business, then teaching night school, and finally going to grad school. Even after he got a full-time job, his hours were shorter than my mother's, and he's always earned about a third of her salary. While I admit that I think me and my brother got some benefit from having a parent around during the day in those early years, and I know my mom has felt some guilt that it wasn't her, I think the bigger benefit to us was actually that we got to see out parents not only thinking but *acting* "outside the box."

Second, I have attended some of these "privileged" institutions, and while I would say that there certainly are some (maybe even plenty) people there who expect to be rich and supported, there are also plenty of other students who don't fit that sterotype at all. I was raised pretty solidly middle class, and although my family's situation improved over time, in today's economy, I have no right whatsoever to assume I'll do better than (or even as well as) my parents. That's very different from most past generations. So I fully expect to have to work for most or all of my adult life, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the retirement age is much higher than it is now by the time I can start thinking about that.

Finally, of course "many people would rather not have to work," as someone says in the article. Duh! That's not to say that people wouldn't *want* to work. They just don't want to *have* to. If I had a steady income that didn't require me to work, I'd revel in the freedom to choose my job and hours based on my own interests, passions, and lifestyle. If that meant spending more time with my kids (assuming I had any), great. But I can tell you right now that if we had enough money that one of us didn't have to work at all, I would much rather both me and my mate work part time and have equal shares of time with the kids, rather than me (or him) being the only one with them all day long. That's more fair not only to our careers, but also to the kids. But I'm not holding my breath for that to happen. Not because my partner/potential baby-daddy is unenlightened, but rather because I doubt the economy will ever permit it.

All that said, I don't hold any grudges against women who have the choice to be homemakers and choose to do that. I just think that most of us don't have that choice, and even among those who do, not all would do the same thing.

Thanks for pointing out this article and making us all think!!

Grrrrr! I agree - I am absolutely tired of reading (especially in the NYT) these superficial articles pointing out, again and again, the existence of this purported trend.

This is a tremendously difficult issue that is very likely to affect me and my legal career. I think all interested parties would be far better served by, as you suggest, a critical analysis of the issue rather than this quarterly rehash. Reading the comments section of your post today is more illuminating and analytical than any of the articles I've read so far on this issue!

Whew - sorry to be so ranty - I'll calm down now.

I didn't read the article, but I did see a report similar to this on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago. As I reflect, I think this was a pretty well-rounded presentation of the topic (from reading comments it sounds like the nytimes article wasn't). One issue that stuck out for me was one "career" woman said that all women should choose to have a career, and that women who chose stay at home instead of a career were wrong. This is obviously BS. Women seem to feel like they HAVE to be successful, or they're doing some diservice to the movement. There's really no "trend" here its just women realizing they don't have to do anything for the sake of the "movement" except do what it is they truly want to do.
That's what women's liberation is to me: the choice. Work, raise children, or both? Decades ago, we didn't have the choice. Now we do. We need to celebrate it. Not everyone wants a "career".
For example: my husband stays at home and takes care of the house (while persuing writing) and I work full-time. I have no children, but even with the two of us we've had to make sacrifices. Or rather, we've just had to prioritize aspects of our lives. We have only one car, we don't have cable, neither of us have cell phones, we don't eat out everyday. We both want the writing thing to work out. When we do have kids it's our goal to have at least one of us at home. I'm not saying this would work for every couple that wants one to be home, but I'm saying that there IS a way. And there's no right or wrong as long as your doing what's best for you and your family.

Thanks for the link to the article. For me, it was never an option. My mother told me that I needed to support myself first. This philosophy had nothing to do with feminism; it was about survival.

Thank you for your comments on the article.

It is very difficult to be a good mother and a good career woman.

Frankly, these statements make my head explode. My mother was a lawyer and she had 7 kids, she worked full time, and she's was superb at both.

I am a lawyer and I have two kids, and I am a good mother and a good career woman.

I remember reading Backlash by Susan Faludi, which didn't address this issue specifically, but debunked these ridiculous articles which make it sounds like everyone in America is doing what is portrayed by their select group of people.

I don't have a husband. I defy anyone to tell me that I am not as good of a mother as a woman who does have a husband and the option to stay home. My reality is of no interest to the New York Times, unless I fit into some ludicrous stereotype, WHICH I DO NOT.

Me again! I really am ejoying reading everyone's responses. The whole stay-at-home Mom thing vs career woman is a tough one that we all seem to have to face these days.

I just wanted to clear some things up to all those who read my first post. I'm not saying that it is impossible to be a wonderful mom and a fabulous career woman, it's just really hard...on the woman. Not everyone can do it. I'm really impressed by those who can pull it off (seriously!). It would just be too much for me to handle.

Also, we aren't rich or anything close to that. While I was home full-time, we just made it work. I'm not saying that it was easy, it was just what we decided to do - our personal priorities, you know? Now, my son is 5, my husband has cut back on work and I help manage a small company during school hours (nothing at all related to my schooling). We are basically trying to manage what Sneaksleep talked about: equally sharing (more like juggling) work and family. The goal is to make enough money to pay the bills, but still have time to spend doing the things we want to. Nice...if we can get it to work that way. It's a challange getting the balance right.

I kept thinking about this after I logged off and had to come back. All that I have posted takes into account that I have a very helpful partner to help me make choices about work vs staying at home. Frankly, I am amazed at how wonderfully women handle everything when they don't have a partner to help with everything - like AJ...like my sister. I'm also impressed by women who choose to work full-time and have a family and do it so effortlessly. I just wouldn't be able to handle the stress, personally.

I just want women to understand that if they have choices, to think about them. It's not a stay at home vs career thing. It's a how to live your life in the most satisfying way for you thing.

So, any men hiding out there? Curious as to what y'all think about this, if anything ...

i hope these little ninnies don't fall in love with a teacher or social worker. or should we just assume that, for them, a non-6-figure salary is a deal-breaker?

...should we just assume that, for them, a non-6-figure salary is a deal-breaker?

It certainly seems that way doesn't it. I have to wonder why they go to Ivy League schools if not to throw themselves into the path of a future wallet. It reminds me of my mom's college days when people talked about women going to school to get their MRS degree.

I've got a ready and willing househusband at home, and I ain't changing my tune for all the tea in china.

Kids, sure, give up a job I love and supporting my family. No way.

Amen, sister. Amen.