The stay-at-home mom vs. the working mom： A useless divide？
Episode Stats
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Summary
Being a stay-at-home parent can be a luxury only afforded to upper-class women who don't have to work because their husband's income is enough to support the household. But what does it mean to be a working mom?
Transcript
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if you are a parent who consumes a lot of parenthood related content it's very likely
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you've come across at least one article that focuses on the divide between the working mom
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and the stay-at-home mom so they might ask questions like who has it harder the working
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mom or the stay-at-home mom which is better for the children which is better for you and after
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having my son I found that I didn't fit neatly into either category I am a stay-at-home mom
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because I am the full-time nine-to-five caregiver of my son we don't have daycare or a nanny or
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anything of the sort but obviously here I am recording a video for true north where I work
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on a part-time basis alas I consider myself more of a working stay-at-home mom how would I define
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this a working stay-at-home mom is a mother who is the primary caregiver of her children but who also
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performs paid work either outside the home or remotely and earns an income on the side the
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nature of this work could be part-time weekend casual overnight contract short-term or running
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a small business from home so picture a mom that might take care of her children from the minute
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they wake up until the evening for example and then trades off her kids with her partner so that she
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can take an evening shift as a waitress or you know make a cup of coffee and answer work emails
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until midnight or take photos of products for her e-commerce business and I did look into this so in
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order to research this topic a little more I made an online survey in the fall of 2019 and I received
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154 responses between October and December 2019 from people who identified as working stay-at-home moms
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and I found that many people had a similar experience where they did not fit neatly into the category of
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a working mom or a stay-at-home mom and you know the survey participants they did all sorts of things
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they were tutors artists piano teachers school crossing guards they ran daycares they operated
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airbnbs so sometimes people might think of a working stay-at-home mom is someone who just does multi-level
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marketing or pyramid scheme kind of stuff and I'm not even talking about that here legend has it that
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being a stay-at-home mom is a luxury only afforded to upper-class women who don't have to work because
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their husband's income is enough to support the household but you know the economic reality is really
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different now housing costs are rising many are still burdened with large student loans and child
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care costs are sometimes equivalent to paying a second rent or a second mortgage so being a stay-at-home
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parent can be an economically motivated decision more and more moms are realizing that they're going to
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work they're putting their kid in daycare but for what because the majority of their earnings are going
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to pay for the daycare anyways and they're kind of thinking it might not be worth it and of course
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i'm not making any kind of proclamation that being a working stay-at-home mom is the solution for
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everyone it's just more of a third way and of course if you are a single mother for example this lifestyle
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likely would not work for you and of course the more children you have the more logistically difficult
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it becomes so there are other circumstances to consider but our shifting cultural norms around
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the role of dads is actually really important for enabling the working stay-at-home mom lifestyle
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studies are showing that dads are more involved than ever in child care i was listening to i was just
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overhearing a conversation the other day between a 30 something mom and then probably like a 60 70 year old
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woman and the older woman was commenting how dads today are just so involved and back in her time
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when she was raising her children that just wasn't the case you know you wouldn't really see dads
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being so involved with the child care and while the focus of my video today is about mothers it is
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definitely worth pointing out that more dads are staying home than ever before so in 1976 out of all
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canadian families who had a stay-at-home parent homes with stay-at-home fathers accounted for one in
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70 of those homes but by 2015 that proportion had risen to about one in ten so now out of all canadian
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families that have a stay-at-home parent in one in ten cases that parent is a dad all right let's step
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back and examine all of this so dads are doing more care work part-time child care is becoming more
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popular there's more of an expectation now that mothers will also earn an income debt levels are
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growing and the internet and social media are presenting women with more opportunities to work
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from home with all of these factors present the stark dichotomy of the working mom and the stay-at-home
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mom may well be on its way to obsolescence i am lindsay shepherd with true north this video was based on an
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article i wrote so if you want to look more into this topic and read the article it will be linked
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in the description thanks so much for watching and i will see you next week