Juno News - The stay-at-home mom vs. the working mom： A useless divide？

00:00:00.000 if you are a parent who consumes a lot of parenthood related content it's very likely

00:00:09.760 you've come across at least one article that focuses on the divide between the working mom

00:00:14.340 and the stay-at-home mom so they might ask questions like who has it harder the working 1.00

00:00:18.840 mom or the stay-at-home mom which is better for the children which is better for you and after 0.92

00:00:23.880 having my son I found that I didn't fit neatly into either category I am a stay-at-home mom

00:00:29.940 because I am the full-time nine-to-five caregiver of my son we don't have daycare or a nanny or

00:00:35.760 anything of the sort but obviously here I am recording a video for true north where I work

00:00:40.860 on a part-time basis alas I consider myself more of a working stay-at-home mom how would I define

00:00:47.040 this a working stay-at-home mom is a mother who is the primary caregiver of her children but who also 1.00

00:00:53.040 performs paid work either outside the home or remotely and earns an income on the side the

00:00:59.760 nature of this work could be part-time weekend casual overnight contract short-term or running

00:01:04.800 a small business from home so picture a mom that might take care of her children from the minute 1.00

00:01:09.960 they wake up until the evening for example and then trades off her kids with her partner so that she 1.00

00:01:15.540 can take an evening shift as a waitress or you know make a cup of coffee and answer work emails

00:01:21.060 until midnight or take photos of products for her e-commerce business and I did look into this so in

00:01:27.720 order to research this topic a little more I made an online survey in the fall of 2019 and I received

00:01:34.340 154 responses between October and December 2019 from people who identified as working stay-at-home moms

00:01:42.240 and I found that many people had a similar experience where they did not fit neatly into the category of

00:01:48.880 a working mom or a stay-at-home mom and you know the survey participants they did all sorts of things

00:01:54.540 they were tutors artists piano teachers school crossing guards they ran daycares they operated

00:02:00.540 airbnbs so sometimes people might think of a working stay-at-home mom is someone who just does multi-level 1.00

00:02:06.420 marketing or pyramid scheme kind of stuff and I'm not even talking about that here legend has it that

00:02:12.180 being a stay-at-home mom is a luxury only afforded to upper-class women who don't have to work because 1.00

00:02:17.700 their husband's income is enough to support the household but you know the economic reality is really

00:02:22.260 different now housing costs are rising many are still burdened with large student loans and child

00:02:28.420 care costs are sometimes equivalent to paying a second rent or a second mortgage so being a stay-at-home

00:02:35.060 parent can be an economically motivated decision more and more moms are realizing that they're going to 1.00

00:02:42.500 work they're putting their kid in daycare but for what because the majority of their earnings are going

00:02:47.940 to pay for the daycare anyways and they're kind of thinking it might not be worth it and of course

00:02:52.900 i'm not making any kind of proclamation that being a working stay-at-home mom is the solution for

00:02:58.660 everyone it's just more of a third way and of course if you are a single mother for example this lifestyle

00:03:05.700 likely would not work for you and of course the more children you have the more logistically difficult

00:03:11.540 it becomes so there are other circumstances to consider but our shifting cultural norms around

00:03:17.780 the role of dads is actually really important for enabling the working stay-at-home mom lifestyle

00:03:23.940 studies are showing that dads are more involved than ever in child care i was listening to i was just

00:03:31.380 overhearing a conversation the other day between a 30 something mom and then probably like a 60 70 year old

00:03:38.020 woman and the older woman was commenting how dads today are just so involved and back in her time

00:03:46.100 when she was raising her children that just wasn't the case you know you wouldn't really see dads

00:03:51.940 being so involved with the child care and while the focus of my video today is about mothers it is

00:03:58.580 definitely worth pointing out that more dads are staying home than ever before so in 1976 out of all

00:04:06.100 canadian families who had a stay-at-home parent homes with stay-at-home fathers accounted for one in

00:04:12.020 70 of those homes but by 2015 that proportion had risen to about one in ten so now out of all canadian

00:04:19.700 families that have a stay-at-home parent in one in ten cases that parent is a dad all right let's step

00:04:26.100 back and examine all of this so dads are doing more care work part-time child care is becoming more

00:04:32.420 popular there's more of an expectation now that mothers will also earn an income debt levels are

00:04:37.620 growing and the internet and social media are presenting women with more opportunities to work

00:04:42.660 from home with all of these factors present the stark dichotomy of the working mom and the stay-at-home

00:04:50.020 mom may well be on its way to obsolescence i am lindsay shepherd with true north this video was based on an

00:04:57.700 article i wrote so if you want to look more into this topic and read the article it will be linked

00:05:03.620 in the description thanks so much for watching and i will see you next week

Juno News - March 15, 2020

The stay-at-home mom vs. the working mom： A useless divide？

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