Where's mom? At home with the kids

Bronzeville, Beverly women part of U.S. trend

When their first daughter was born, Charmaine Nichols and her husband, David, made a big decision:

Charmaine would leave her marketing job to stay at home with little Camille.

Charmaine would leave her marketing job to stay at home with little Camille.

The Bronzeville couple decided they could afford it, particularly after figuring the cost of child care and work-related expenses would be "kind of a wash" with Charmaine's salary, she said.

The Bronzeville couple decided they could afford it, particularly after figuring the cost of child care and work-related expenses would be "kind of a wash" with Charmaine's salary, she said.

Now, with the arrival of daughter Danielle six months ago, Charmaine is firmly rooted as a stay-at-home mom. "I just felt it was important for me to take this time because you only have it once," she said.

More and more married women are making a similar decision, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Work-force participation rates of married mothers of infants fell to 51 percent in 2004, about 8 percentage points down from 1997, the stats show.

The first national analysis of new mothers dropping out of the work force also sheds new light on women's motives for staying at home.

The data show the seven-year trend has been broader than once thought, with women at all income levels taking job breaks, not just highly educated, prosperous moms. And they are staying out of the work force for shorter periods, suggesting parents are particularly intent on shepherding babies' crucial first year.

Cicely Glanton, also of Bronzeville, stayed home after the birth of her son, Jackson Oliver, 2½ years ago.

"That infant-to-about-toddler status is a huge leap in a short period of time," she said.

The labor analysis suggests new mothers' hiatus from the work force tends to be one to three years. Glanton made it back into the work force after about two years, with a job where she can work from home some days.

The decisions to stay home are still sparking radical changes in family life, reordering couples' work-home roles and bringing some households to a financial standstill, ending discretionary purchases, parents say.

Glanton and her husband, Timothy, found ways to save when she wasn't working.

"Shopping, we scaled way back," she said. "Vacation -- only with family, where we could go and stay with family."

While pregnant with her first child, Jennifer Freeman of Beverly had to quit her preschool teaching job after being put on bed rest. That left the family to rely on husband Marvin's salary.

"It's a sacrifice to stay at home," she said. "We just don't do all of the extra stuff. We don't get to travel a lot."

The study compared labor-force participation among mothers of infants by husbands' income level and mothers' education and ethnicity. The biggest percentage-point declines in work-force participation was among mothers with a bachelor's degree or more, followed by women with husbands in the top 20 percent of earners, economists Emy Sok and Sharon Cohany found.

But all other demographic categories had declines too.

WSJ

Contributing: Sun-Times Staff Reporter Shamus Toomey