In 2025, roughly 25% of mothers are considered “stay at home moms.” This number has increased since 2022, where the number was down to 15%, according to a survey done by Motherly, an advocacy group. It’s no surprise that this number is at odds with the 84% of stay-at-home moms in the 1950s, and the staggeringly small 16% of women who worked outside the home. There are many factors for the current increase in more moms staying at home, but I’m confident in saying that countless American families are experiencing the myriad challenges of balancing a professional working life and child rearing in a hostile economy and society.
What I’ve concluded: there is no “best” way to get the job done. Many string together wild and unstable childcare plans, teetering on the edge of collapse, changing plans day to day. Some friends work part time, others plan to be home for two years, a few are home indefinitely, and some work full time. We represent the full spectrum of modern mothers and every choice comes at a cost. Each mother, and each family faces uncertain leave, unsteady and expensive care, and overall, incredibly stressful choices that are, most often, beyond personal control.
Growing up in the 90s, my mom was effectively able to work part time, and my dad watched us three kids. My dad was a pioneer of the now popular “stay at home dad” terminology but it was just the way my family did it then. Despite the rise, of all my friends, only one dad stayed home. When I was growing up, we didn’t go to daycare. Most of my peers had one parent who was at home or had a flexible schedule. The model of one stay at home parent is becoming more and more difficult to achieve, even with one partner earning a decent salary. Of course this raises the question: what is a decent salary in 2025? For those who choose to drop down to one salary, sacrifices are often involved ranging from financial to mental. Recently someone told me he and his wife accrued 20k in debt for every year his wife stayed home with their daughters.
In the same survey done by Motherly, the number one cited reason women stayed home: wanting to spend more time with their children. It’s alarmingly simple when you read the data: many women want more time to watch their children grow up. The rising cost of childcare has also impacted these statistics as it can be more cost effective for one parent to stay home. Although the number of stay-at-home dads is increasing, (According to the Pew Research Center, In 2021, 18% of stay-at-home parents in the United States were dads, this is a 7% increase from 1989) women routinely continue to be the caregiver who puts their career on pause or reduces her hours and responsibilities. I’m becoming familiar with the wild juggling act that defines working motherhood. Many of the women who answered the survey want to spend time at home with children. This also doesn’t mean that mothers want to give up their careers indefinitely.
As I faced my return to work, I found myself squarely in the middle of the issue. I didn’t want to give up my career forever, but leaving my three-month-old son for the entire day also felt like an exquisite type of torture. Even if my husband and I could swing living temporarily on one salary, the question of health insurance looms large. Working in public education, I carry our insurance. Going through birth and then having a child to care for made the need for affordable health care critical. For us, my return to work wasn’t a conversation. I had to go back.
Prior to becoming a mother, I hadn’t given much thought to the idea of staying at home. I was raised by a mom who encouraged my sister and I to find meaning in our work, and to ensure that we could stand on our own, financially speaking. Before becoming a mother, I marveled that women were content to pass a large portion of their adult lives tending to children, in extreme cases, never having a career at all.
This entire viewpoint changed when I had my son. Seemingly overnight, I wanted to stay at home, at the very minimum, for one year. I became greedy for time. I became obsessed with asking women how much time they’d taken after birth. I became spiteful. Many people had warned me that maternity leave is not a vacation, but my experience was incredibly blissful, sweet and fulfilling. It was the longest I’d gone without working in my adult life and despite endless diaper changes and broken sleep, I felt privileged, overjoyed, and at ease. I liked running with the baby in the middle of the day, reading, baking, and staring adoringly at my son. No part of me felt bored or longed to “rejoin society.” In what felt like the blink of an eye, three months of maternity leave flew by and I sullenly found myself back at work, sleep deprived, missing my son desperately and, above all other emotions, angry.
Despite the twelve week leave that I felt was meagre and insubstantial, my time off was above the average of 10 weeks offered in the average American workplace. Many people know there is no guarantee of paid leave, and no equity. Time off depends entirely on where you work. I received short term disability and 60% of my regular pay – much better than many situations where you’re allowed uncompensated time, but don’t receive any payment. Even more outlandish, educator friends of mine are forced to pay the premium on their health insurance when on leave. It’s hard not to see having a child mutate into punishment from society.
As I returned to work and acclimatized to pausing my day every two hours to hook up to my breast pump (it never becomes normal to have your nipple exposed in the workplace) while staring longingly at photos my son, I resented the fact that the rhythm of the day my child and I had established had been grossly and unjustly interrupted by the industrial complex and consumerist world of America. I dreamed of living in a society where my main purpose and duty was to rear my son, a world in which my care for my child was supported and encouraged, perhaps even valued and appreciated.
I’d never been someone to think what if, but becoming a mother and returning to work unearthed deep questions, longing and feelings of disenfranchisement and abject jealousy. The circus of organizing care for my son left me feeling depleted and exhausted. Even as I felt deeply grateful to have our extended family watching our child, I wanted to be doing it myself.
Above all, despite feelings of anger and confusion, it’s vital to acknowledge the deeply privileged position my husband and I are in. When our baby is one year old, he’ll be enrolled in a lovely Montessori program that we can afford. The money we make ensures our son interacts with soft lighting, plush carpets, wooden blocks, plants and sunlight. We certainly don’t live in a fair world.
After one month back to work, my husband, baby and I have established a new routine, each of us adjusting to the second large scale switch after becoming parents. We’ve dealt with schedule changes and bottle strikes and I’ve become reacquainted with my professional self while also waking up every several hours between the hours of 12 pm and 7am to feed my child. I find myself more efficient, more thoughtful, more emotional, and simultaneously exhausted and electrified.
In talking to women about their experiences as mothers, I’ve realized one thing: there is no perfect model for being a working mother, and no perfect model for being a stay-at-home mother. As fruitless as this all might sound in the current political climate, I’m hopeful a better version of society exists, somewhere, somehow.
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