Sharon Lerner looks at the emotional state of stay-at-home moms.
In the latest unfortunate news at the intersection of motherhood and politics, stay-at-home moms are doing worse emotionally than their working counterparts. According to a Gallup pollreleased last week, mothers who don’t work outside the home were far more likely to be depressed, with 28 percent reporting depression, compared with 17 percent of working mothers, and also 17 percent of working women who don’t have children. In fact, stay-at-home moms fare worse than these two groups by every emotional measure in the survey, reporting more anger, sadness, stress, and worry. They were more likely to describe themselves as struggling and suffering and less likely to see themselves as “thriving.”
She says that finances play a huge role in this depression. Also, she says that mothering work is low status and under appreciated. Mothers need longer parental leave policies, protection for part time workers, and affordable child care.
Apt. 11d 
Thanks for posting this… I think SAHMs are painfully isolated. I’m looking forward to going back to work- I feel I’m in the minority among my friends who work part or full time. My kids will be happy spending the day in a daycare with other kids to play with and different caregivers they can turn to; now, it’s just me with them from 8am-9pm and they wear down my cheeriness and I wear down their tolerance of me and all my quirks…
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It’s certainly not a venture meant to be undertaken solely within a nuclear family unit. That’s where you need the community of moms and kids to hang out together and provide support for each other.
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I wonder how this data interplays with studies that generally show very religious people and happier than other people, considering that a large category of SAHMs are women who are staying home with the kids on religious grounds.
Are religious SAHMs an exception to the general “religious people are happier” studies, or are the religious SAHMs just as over-happy, while the remaining non-religious SAHMs are even more disproportionate miserable?
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Yes to the “painfully isolated.” Many middle class SAHMs can keep themselves busy with volunteer activities, but the PTA isn’t for everybody. Some find the work boring. Others, like me, don’t have kids in the local elementary schools.
I have very high social needs, so I’ve found that the isolation part of SAHM-ing to be very difficult. I work very hard on creating intellectual stimulation (blogging and writing), structure (meticulously organized schedules), and social activity (lunch with sister, back to back events on the weekend, extended family get togethers, daily phone calls with the 2 best friends, volunteer stuff). I basically simulate the benefits of a full time job, but without the paycheck.
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“According to a Gallup pollreleased last week, mothers who don’t work outside the home were far more likely to be depressed, with 28 percent reporting depression, compared with 17 percent of working mothers, and also 17 percent of working women who don’t have children.”
Were we comparing mothers with kids the same age? If not, wouldn’t working mothers tend to have older children, as they may have been SAHMs at an earlier point in their own life cycle?
I think kids’ age makes a radical difference in maternal well-being.
Also, anecdotally, I’ve seen a lot of stories of men who work at home who start slowly transforming into anti-social cave trolls.
“Are religious SAHMs an exception to the general “religious people are happier” studies, or are the religious SAHMs just as over-happy, while the remaining non-religious SAHMs are even more disproportionate miserable?”
I’m interested in how attachment parenthood comes into this. I’ve lately seen a couple stories on forums involving mothers doing attachment parenting who seemed really depressed/non-functional. They don’t want to stop the stuff that is probably making them feel sad (poor quality sleep at night because of co-sleeping or low quality spousal relationships because husband is ticked off about getting kicked out of the marital bed because of ditto) because they’d feel guilty about stopping.
http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-34465-ask-the-advice-goddess.html
I’m sure that attachment parenting is amazing for some families, but I’m also sure that there’s a category of women that adopt it and then stick with it, no matter how much happier they’d feel if they stopped.
It’s not necessarily the fault of attachment parenting itself, but AP does offer a handy alibi for continuing with self-destructive behaviors.
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“I have very high social needs, so I’ve found that the isolation part of SAHM-ing to be very difficult…”
I have low-moderate social needs and I’d go nuts talk-talk-talking all day at work and then coming home to the same thing.
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One of the sad attachment parenthood cases I saw recently was a forum letter from a mother of a toddler and an older infant who was hell-bent on 1) doing attachment parenthood (up half a dozen times a night with the baby) 2) mothering each child as if they were an only child, because any less would be short-changing them. Of course, what the kids were probably getting short-changed by was that their mother was going out of her everloving mind. (There might have been some post-partum depression in there, too.)
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I wondered about spurious correlations myself. Several of you noted that you’d probably want to look at WHY women were staying home, and then look at the happiness levels of these various groups. I’m thinking that if, for example, a woman was being MADE to stay home by a controlling husband who didn’t support her career aspirations outside the home; if she was involuntarily unemployed because she couldn’t find a job in her field or afford daycare; if she was compelled by circumstances (husband deployed, special needs child) to stay home — all of these things would kind of suck and make you unhappy, but it wouldn’t actually be the SAHM’ing that was making you unhappy, it was the circumstances that led to the SAHM’ing.
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I can imagine that the religious involved moms are happier because they have an extended social network of other like minded families – not isolated.
Like Laura, I have recreated the perfect paid work position but in an unpaid, SAHM environment.
There are a lot of factors involved that also include temperament of the parent and the child. If you are more introverted, being f2f with an extroverted child all day long would be a challenge and draining. And vice versa.
And there is a piece of this too where we should recognize that the first few years of child rearing are challenging and tiring and hard. That’s just the way it is. It’s not an easy venture. Rewarding, yes, but not easy.
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And there is a piece of this too where we should recognize that the first few years of child rearing are challenging and tiring and hard.
Amen to this, and also to Amy’s point that the age of the kid matters. If SAHMs with 1 year olds are being compared against working moms with 11 year olds, you aren’t going to get a fair comparison. 1 year olds would make anyone miserable. (Other people’s 1 year olds, of course. Mine were perfect angels.)
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“I can imagine that the religious involved moms are happier because they have an extended social network of other like minded families – not isolated.”
Right. But it’s also important to have favorable geography. When my oldest was between 1 and 3 and we were living in a hotsy totsy DC neighborhood, I think I had literally no SAHM colleagues. At the parks during the week, it was all nannies with kids. Nannies are all very well (I nannied myself at time), but it’s not the same. (I remember once during that era a new mom acquaintance (a working mom) offering to send her twins over with their nanny for a playdate during the week. Thanks, but no thanks–I was looking for friends for me.) At 3, my oldest started preschool co-op and our social life bloomed, but there was a long dry spell where nothing seemed to work.
Fast forward to Texas. There are lots of graduate and faculty wife SAHMs about. My kids are big enough to dress themselves, make breakfast, lunch and snacks, clean their rooms, clean the living room, do most homework with minimal supervision, pack and unpack their backpacks, etc. This is a very good thing, as I am pregnant and while not on bedrest now, am on a regimen of very limited physical activity until further notice. There is potential for this situation to be rather depressing. However, I have a pregnancy buddy for the first time ever (she also can only do about 30 minutes a day of walking) and it’s actually very jolly to hang out at her apartment with her and her toddler, drink tea and make fun of obstetricians (she just fired one who stopped working weekends and whose only small talk was his hobby farm).
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This is a very good thing, as I am pregnant and while not on bedrest now, am on a regimen of very limited physical activity until further notice.
Mazel tov!
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Thank you!
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Hey, that’s great Amy.
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Congrats AmyP. 🙂
I was in the 28%. I had a pretty decent support network with my oldest son, which deepened and is even better with my second – a group of about 11 mums of various working capacities and parenting philosophies where we’re pretty tight buddies.
I still hated it. I think…well a lot of things.
But the number one thing that I think torpedoed my time at home with my eldest when I thought it might be permanent was that I, personally, felt an _immense_ pressure to make being home “worth it” and every time I failed at my own goals like having an off day or turning on a DVD in desperation, I felt like I had failed. I also was pretty anxious, not just about money, but because I had the time to ruminate.
The AP vibe did contribute to my sense that I could break the baby/toddler. Even though I still more or less like a lot of the core viewpoint, I no longer can recommend it as a way to think about parenting. A lot of the online discussion is just kind of extreme, like if your child cries in the carseat brain damage will occur and the elevated cortisol will cause obesity.
When you added that to the fact that I missed the fun parts of my job (by that time I was working from home part time at the lower-level parts of the job) and was stressed about money, for me I really did get depressed.
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Surely expectations about women’s possible roles in society plays into the happiness and contentment levels of SAHMs. Who bothered measuring the discontent and depression of single women living alone when society told them their best contribution would be to be a wife and mother?
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Congrats Amy!
I hear you on the nanny thing. When the girl was a baby I envied the nannies in the ‘hood who had this lovely network. They hung out together every day with the kids they were caring for. They had each other’s backs and really knew all of the kids. I am still friendly with a few I’d them – they knew the girl much better than any of the moms in the ‘hood.
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So when’s amy’s baby shower?
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“When the girl was a baby I envied the nannies in the ‘hood who had this lovely network.”
Oh, yeah. The Filipina nannies in DC seemed to be having a really good time at the park–which made them better nannies, too.
Thanks, everybody!
“so when’s amy’s baby shower?”
I’ve somehow never had a baby shower before, but my pregnancy buddy has mentioned doing one for me. If that goes off, I might just ask for boxes of tea or maybe new baby bottles, as the invitees would be largely grads and grad wives. We don’t really need anything, but I dearly love baby shower food and frippery.
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I’m thinking a virtual one but with real gifts. Need anything?
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Not really–but thanks for asking! I squirreled away the kids’ stuff and have practically everything (although if we successfully have a real, live baby, I am going to buy a financially irresponsible big city stroller to celebrate). Oh, and we’re going to have two moves in a 12 month span (with a year in a smaller apartment), which dampens my acquisitive impulses quite a bit. In the next month, we’re going to be giving away or loaning out a bunch of larger items–a dryer, a lawn mower, kids’ outdoor toys, etc.
Due date is in Oct.
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Congrats, Amy P!!!!!
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MothersFamilies need longer parental leave policies, protection for part time workers, and affordable child care.Fixt.
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Many thoughts on this as I was a SAHM for 11 years (4 children) and have now been working full time for 5 years, but time will not allow….later.
Amy! Again. Please start a blog. Please.
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Heather,
I’m at xantippesblog.blogspot.com. I’m kind of an impersonal/boring blogger there (several in-laws read it, which is somewhat inhibiting), but I plug away at it.
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A Big Yes to what @Sandra said: “There are a lot of factors involved that also include temperament of the parent and the child. If you are more introverted, being f2f with an extroverted child all day long would be a challenge and draining. And vice versa.” AMEN!
I’m an introvert and (I’m pretty certain) so is my eldest child, with whom I used to be a happy 72%-er SAHM for a season. However, my second child is almost certainly an extrovert and I know I would have had a very hard time SAHMing DC2 well for the exact reasons @Sandra has articulated – personality/energy mismatch. Thankfully, we have a wonderful extroverted babysitter who meshes beautifully with my youngest so I can be a WAHM, which I’m loving.
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Congratulations, Amy P!
I think the Gallup poll categories are too broad to draw conclusions. “Stay-at-home moms” are defined as women who are not currently employed and have a child younger than 18 at home. Gallup looked separately at non-employed moms who are looking for work and those who are not looking — to distinguish between those who may not be employed because of circumstance rather than by choice — and both groups are more likely to report anger, sadness, and depression than are employed moms.
I think of a Stay at Home Mother as someone who chooses not to enter the job market, not someone who is unemployable. As far as I can tell, Gallup doesn’t report the anger/sadness/depression of the different categories of at-home mothers, i.e., unemployed by choice vs. unemployable. At a minimum, someone suffering from clinical depression will find it hard to secure a job. Someone suffering from clinical depression is likely to give up the job search more easily than a natural optimist.
The U4 unemployment rate is 8.7%. That’s depressing. http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u4.jsp
I also agree with Amy P’s point. As kids hit middle school in our town, most of the mothers take on at least part time work. That would bias the sample towards mothers of younger children.
I also wonder if it might not correlate with TV consumption. I find TV depressing. When I was breast feeding, I watched tv at all hours of the night. During the day, and late at night, there were an awful lot of ads for personal injury lawyers and drugs for unhappiness.
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“I also wonder if it might not correlate with TV consumption. I find TV depressing.”
Just being indoors too much is depressing by itself and it’s really hard to pack up and get out of the house with two or more small children.
(I will have to remember to get my husband to set me up on our front yard with an easy chair, footstool and my Kindle so I can get some cheery daylight.)
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I like your plan, Amy! Here’s hoping you have a smooth road to October and a safe delivery.
I know that a few SAHMs of my acquaintance have found it a double whammy of isolation due to the financial crunch. No money for even a drive out to the park can really add to the isolation for suburban parents at home.
Being a SAHM was never an option for me: I’ve been the chief breadwinner since before the kids came along due to moving for my job prospects while sacrificing Mike’s. However, I know that maternity leaves were isolating enough to imagine that staying home with kids for more than three months would be enough to send me into a spiral of depression.
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Speaking of correlation, I am mistrustful of this conversation in that it’s implying that being a SAHM *causes* depression, when in fact they are only correlated.
* It may be the case that depressed folks’ problems in finding/retaining work may predispose them to being a stay-home parent.
* And IIRC, there are two large groups of SAH parents: pretty high-end ones who made a somewhat conscious choice to stay home, and a large lower-end group for whom working outside the home would not cover the cost of child care. If you’re in the second group I would argue the economic difficulties predated the kids.
Don’t get me wrong – I still think we need better support for families. (To me this means we need to enforce the 40-hour work week for everyone, not just hourly employees.) But we haven’t found any causation here.
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Amy P, how exciting! I’m rooting for you. Congratulations!
SAHMing doesn’t always come naturally. Sometimes you have to patiently work at finding your tribe, getting good at the domestic stuff, coming up with fun ideas, figuring out the parenting style and amount of structure that works for you, and adjusting to the loss of income. A lot of your sense of success or failure as a SAHM is shaped by things you don’t have much control over — like how precocious, cute, talented, compliant, or even healthy your child is. I’d guess some of the depressed SAHM’s are staying home because their child has special needs, and we know that can be sad and tough. I know quite a few SAHM’s who lost their job and just decided not to look for another, and that’s depressing, too. Also, major life changes are stressful and depressing, and a new SAHM’s life has changed a lot more than that of a new mom who’s kept the same job and hours.
I do think working part-time has helped me avoid depression. SOMETHING at home or work is always going well, so a bad day at one place or the other doesn’t turn into feeling like I have a bad life.
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@MrsEwer – “SAHMing doesn’t always come naturally. Sometimes you have to patiently work at finding your tribe, getting good at the domestic stuff, coming up with fun ideas, figuring out the parenting style and amount of structure that works for you, and adjusting to the loss of income” Very, very true.
This reminds me, that’s why one’s experience on short-term ma/paternity leave is not always a perfect analog for what it would be like to be a long-term SAHP beyond the newborn phase. I believe people when they say things like “I could never be a SAHP because I hated it when I was on leave” – yes, some just know it, and those who aren’t quite as sure about it could maybe also consider that when one knows one is choosing to SAHP as a longer-term gig they perhaps start to work and act differently at the things like making personal connections and actively trying to make the lifestyle fit, etc.
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Mrs. Ewer and hush,
And that’s why it’s not a good idea to assume that you can get your parenting philosophy off the rack or without doing some road-testing to see what works for each specific child. There needs to be some room for improvisation. I worry about people who seem to have the next 18 years planned out before their kids are even born.
The most gung-ho natural childbirth convert I know had a terrible labor with her baby, followed by a C-section. She’s obviously VERY disappointed and wants to do better next time. It’s like she screwed up her GREs and needs to take them over.
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Congratulations, Amy P. I hope your pregnancy is uneventful and everything goes well for you.
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Thanks!
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