Linda Hirshman Says (Tertiary Educated) Stay-At-Home Moms Are Wrong

This is an article I found in the American News website: ABCnews dot com. Raises some interesting points that I thought could be given a good ole BB analysis! As a tertiary educated mother of 3 I feel that Hirshman is specifically targeting her comments at me... but my opinion is basically "meh". Never-the-less it's an interesting discussion :)



An alarming number of college-educated women are leaving the work force to stay at home and raise their children, a trend that is a tragedy not only for the mothers, but ultimately their children and women as a whole.

Linda Hirshman says privileged, educated women who choose to stay at home to raise their children are hurting themselves and others.
(ABC NEWS)

So said law professor and working mom Linda Hirshman in a 2005 article for American Prospect magazine that has ignited an intense debate among mothers.

Census figures show 54 percent of mothers with a graduate or professional degree no longer work full time. In 2003 and 2004 Hirshman interviewed about 30 women whose wedding announcements had appeared in The New York Times in 1996 and who had had children. Five of the women were working full time, and 10 were working part time. The rest were not working at all.

"We care because what they do is bad for them, is certainly bad for society, and is widely imitated, even by people who never get their weddings in the Times," Hirshman wrote. "This last is called the 'regime effect,' and it means that even if women don't quit their jobs for their families, they think they should and feel guilty about not doing it."

Hirshman also said educated women choosing to stay home was bad for them as individuals.

"A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world," Hirshman wrote. "Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated, upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives."

The Other Side

Faith Fuhrman has a master's degree in nursing, but chooses to stay home with her children.

"The job I was in when I had, first had my child, I couldn't have done it," Fuhrman said. "I was working 14 hours a day. I was on call."

When Debbie Klett became a mother, she quit her job in ad sales and started a magazine called Total 180 so she could work from home and spend more time with her children.

"For me, I feel it is vital to be there for my children every day, to consistently tend to their needs, to grow their self-esteem, and to praise them when they're right, guide them when they're not, and to be a loving, caring mom every minute of the day," Klett said.

Klett acknowledged there were consequences to her choice to stay at home. To save money, her family has given up cable, does not go out to dinner, and does not go on vacations.

"We made tremendous financial sacrifices for me to be able to stay home with my children, and I wouldn't trade that for the world," Klett said.

What About the Children?

Hirshman argues that Klett's children would be fine if she worked outside the home. Statistically there is no difference in the happiness levels of the children whose mothers work and the children whose mothers stay at home, she said.

Deborah Skolnick agrees. She is a magazine editor who will not give up her job and feels working is a good example for her children, and helps them in other ways.

"I think my kids are as well-behaved and as well-socialized, if not better, than a lot of a fair number of at-home moms," Skolnick said. "I see at-home moms whose children won't separate from them, won't go to school, cry at the door. My children have learned, from an early age, that Mommy will be back. So they kiss me and they say goodbye."

Fuhrman asked her 13-year-old son what he thought was the benefit of having a stay-at-home mom.

"He said, 'Well, I really like to come home every day and finding you here,'" Fuhrman said.

"But on the other hand, my daughter says to me, 'Mommy, when I grow up, I'm gonna get a job at your magazine, and I'm gonna sit at the same desk as you and we're gonna be on the same magazine together until we die,'" Skolnick said. "And that makes me kind of happy."

Tune in to "Good Morning America" Thursday when the "Mommy Wars" continue.

(End of article)

The "Mommy Wars" thing is something I tune out as Media hype... just another example of how the media love to pit one demographic against another.

i wonder what the obsession is with trying to say that one is 'right' and the other is 'wrong'. i don't know why both can't be right - it depends on the individuals & their families.

and what about if you do both? my mum was a teacher who stayed home with me until i went to school, then she returned to work. i'm hoping to be in a position to do the same thing, although finances may dictate otherwise.

The only thing that struck me as worthy of my (tertiary educated) opinion in this article was this

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"A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world," Hirshman wrote. "Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated, upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives."

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To me that is a series of giant assumptions - how is staying at home not using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way? Surely prudent is a value laden term with differing meanings.
How is staying at home an indication of not having autonomy? How is she defining autonomy? Is having to be at Flinders Street by 0900h autonomy?
I have no idea how doing more good than harm is related to paid or unpaid work. Unpaid volunteers pretty much keep our schools running. Most of them are SAHMs. Ladies who do good works contribute a whole heap of good to society.

IMO that whole paragraph is flawed from start to finish.

What drugs is the SAHM who is a caring, loving Mum every minute of the day on? I want some.

Meh indeed. I think being a SAHM is a huge privilege and I'm proud to do so. We have planned our lifestyle with that as a number one priority. And I'm using the time at home to complete a second degree :lol: Once my children are in school I intend to work though and I do see how role-modelling 'women in the workplace' can be a good thing for children to see.

Raising children is not important or worthwhile? Having to pay someone else to do it for you seems to defeat the purpose really...

To me education is about CHOICE. Having an education doesn't place an onus on that person to use that education in any particular way, it just provides the individual with more choices as to how they 'wish' to live their live.

I am a SAHM with a commerce degree and 98% of a law degree (have 2-3 subjects left to finish). I never intend to use either for professional purposes. I have never held a fulltime job and that has been a very conscious choice on my behalf. There is nothing wrong with mothers who choose to work or those who have to work not through choice, but rather nessecity: however I choose to be a SAHM because to me, there is nothing else I would rather do more and we don't need the extra income. Should I not seek out education for myself simply because I do not intend on using it in a professional capacity?? For me, on a personal level, education is simply a way of keeping myself informed, enjoying knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and maintaining my options in case I ever change my mind and do decide to enter the workforce.

So all the smart women are choosing to be SAHMs then?? Makes perfect sense to me :rofl:

I wonder why she feels other peoples choices on how to parent impact her so much, and why she thinks she's so wise as to have discovered the one and only right way to do things?

OMG who cares, really, I don't care if another mother works inside or outside of the home, it's up to them!!

I have a Master's degree and am a SAHM and plan to be for a long while yet *shock horror*. This is what makes me happy, way more fulfilling to me.

Funnily enough, once I completed my post-graduate diploma to become a chartered accountant, I realised that I didn't want to be an accountant. I wanted to be a wife & mother. I work part-time mainly for financial reasons and partly because I do like to go to work sometimes but I would work a lot less if I could. I would much rather be a SAHM. This article is completely flawed and entirely one woman's opinion. I can't see any solid evidence in that article to say otherwise. I think she's "wrong" to generalise to such a degree. I completely agree with Marcellus - what's the point of having kids if you spend all week in an office not seeing them?

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I completely agree with Marcellus - what's the point of having kids if you spend all week in an office not seeing them?

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To me it's about autonomy. I like to stay at home, not because I'm really maternal but more because I'm too lazy to want to rejoin the work force and because it would be pretty silly to work for someone else when I can work for my own company.

Spending all week in an office is just as valid as being a SAHM. I get that some women are really fullfilled by their career. It would be awful to be a SAHM if you would prefer to be working and too much time out can be pretty damaging to career and earnings potential.

I think that what bugs me about this article is the whole one size fits all approach - that just because her choices make the author happy she assumes that they will work for other women/families.

Riiiight, so smart women who married smart successful men and can probably afford to stay home with their children, shouldn't??????? :o

What a crock. How is a smart mother "bad" for society?

Should we get all the crackheads and alcoholics to raise the kids?? Would that make the next generation better??

How on earth can it be a "tradgedy" for the children, having smart mummies stay home with them??? Do they even care?? I can just imagine a bunch of three yr olds running around, stressed, anxious, pulling their hair out because mummy is smart.. I mean really..... :wall:

Anecdotally though she is right about the trend toward tertiary educated women choosing to be SAHMs. In my circle of T.Ed friends I certainly see that it is the case. Interesting.

I love how the classification is that it's an 'alarming' number. Who, exactly, is alarmed? Is it the children? I doubt it. The mothers themselves? Seems unlikely. Other working mothers? Well hardly, since it will potentially mean more demand for their skills and possibly better pay. Employers? Possibly, but workforce shortages and retention are an issue across the board and not confined to those who are reproducing.

So I'm confused. Where is the problem here?

ETA: And how long is the SAH period for? Is she saying none of these mothers ever go back to the workforce? Because that doesn't sound like it is the case for all mothers who choose to spend some time at home with their children, particularly while they are young. I also this is quite US-centric. There's a very different social set up over there with regards to working and parenting.

Bath, could it be an ecomomic thing??
Women with higher education would generally have higher incomes, and probably much better access to maternity Leave ect??
And probably have married simular men, who earn decent money?? Many mums are forced back to work, where as these woman aren't??

I picked up on "alarming" too Jennifer and asked myself those exact questions! Maybe it's the prevailing government? Alarmed that they are missing out on all the income tax? Hmmmm

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Anecdotally though she is right about the trend toward tertiary educated women choosing to be SAHMs. In my circle of T.Ed friends I certainly see that it is the case. Interesting.

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My guess is that that is partly due the luxury of choice. On the whole people tend to marry people who have similar educational levels and a similar economic standing. As PB pointed out tertairy educated women are more likely to marry men who have the earning capacity to enable them to stay at home.

ETA - *snap* PB

ETA 2 - yep, it must be a US thing to be alarmed because here in Australia we would just be alert :p

And also where you live. The standard of education generally where I live is high, for both women and men. Of course they're more likely to have gone to uni, despite whether they subsequently became parents and then chose to stay at home or not. It'd be more unusual to find someone amongst the local mothers where I live who did NOT go to uni. Choosing to stay at home after having children is then a decision that she and her partner make, same as for any household.

PB: speaking for myself: I didn't have access to any paid Mat leave... but economic reasons did play a part. My DH earned too much for us to receive more than about $2 a week in child care relief... and we couldn't afford to pay $600 a week (to have two children in full time care) upfront. I know we would have got 50% back eventually... but I did the sums and it simply wasn't worth it to work outside the home. Also having worked in childcare I had a bit of an insiders perspective and good places were virtually impossible to get into anyhow. Staying at home just made so much more sense. And actually... being at home for my teenager after school has, in reality, been just as important as being home for my younger ones.

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"A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world," Hirshman wrote. "Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated, upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives."

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heaven forbid that an upper-class MOM be dragged down to a blue colar life :rolleyes: wonder if Linda actaully has children of her own, or a maternal bone at all.


I understand that many woman dont have a choice in having to go back to work and others I know have gone back to do it to get out of their 4 wall's and find their independance again as a person..but really do people think that woman stay at home and raise their children because hate it? Children do grown up and we can go back to our professions again when we can.

Sign....seem's that more and more people are becoming narrow minded :shakehead:

Jennifer, good point!! We are an uneducated town, and the closest uni is an hour away, the next, 3 hrs away... so parents have to be able to afford uni, and them living away from home.... so few actually go.....

Bath, my sister is in the same boat!! her DD is at my sons preschool, and her weekly fee is more than my monthly one, and Za goes more days then her DD! She couldn't earn enough to cover the cost if she returned to work and lost all of her CCB....

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"We care because what they do is bad for them, is certainly bad for society,

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I assumed that this meant that it was bad for the economy because these women are not in the workforce and no longer contributing to taxes. I guess also that the government feels hard done by as they have put a lot of money into educating these women and are getting shirty as they are not paying it back in the taxes they were hoping to get from them.

There are many studies that show that there are pros and cons to being a SAHM or a working mum (part-time or full-time) - basically you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I don't feel guilty about my choices and I refuse to let anyone make me feel like I am not doing a good job or the right thing by my girls. They know they are loved and they get plenty of time with mum and dad plus they also get time with friends, grandparents and carers.

I have a tertiary education, and then some, and right now I am a full time sahm, and plan to be for some time. Sometimes I feel like I am wasting my education, and feel bad as my mum and dad paid for me to go to uni. Going from a double income no kids family, to one income has been incredibly difficult, and we have had to make a lot of sacrifices so that I can stay home. I got no paid leave and in my profession, paid maternity leave is rare. It would be a hell of a lot easier if I went back to work, but then I would miss out on so much of my DD's life. She is only going to be young once, and I do not want to miss a thing. My DH works hard to support us and he wants me to be home with our DD. One day, when I am finished having babies, and they are in school, I will return to the workforce, and again use my education.

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I assumed that this meant that it was bad for the economy because these women are not in the workforce and no longer contributing to taxes. I guess also that the government feels hard done by as they have put a lot of money into educating these women and are getting shirty as they are not paying it back in the taxes they were hoping to get from them.

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Yeah, but wouldn't this be less of an issue in the US, where the education system is mostly user-pays (particularly tertiary)? And I can see your point on taxes, but the inference here is that the family income is probably still high and if the women go back to work at some point, they'll still be tax payers. Given the lack of social welfare in the US and the constant cry for tax cuts I'd think that this is minimised anyway. Plus, over her lifetime, even if a woman does stay at home for an extended period, she will pay more tax than her non-tertiary educated sister because her wages while she is working are usually higher. There have been studies on this and the tax return rate for a tertiary education overall is very high, irrespective of individual choices.

And then there's the fact that women with a tertiary education are more likely to have healthier children (less demand on health resources) and also more likely to send their children to uni, which would again have a positive impact on society and taxes.

Hence my confusion as to where the problem lies.

Personally I think the US system where alot of people are only entitled to 12 weeks leave from time of leaving work (not talking about paid leave many companies over there will only hold your job for 12 weeks from time of leaving meaning if you leave at 38 weeks then you could have as little as 8 after born) makes more people choose to be a full time Sahm because they simply can not bring themselves to go back that early and then finding a new job later on is more difficult. Tertiary educated women are also more likely to have partners who can support a Sahm and children so they have that option. Bit of a dumb article and if she really cares should look at addressing issues to support those who want to work full time, part time flexible time whatever, and get women a decent amount of maternity leave in first place.

The only legitimate concern I feel is one that she never even raised - with a finite limit on places in tertiary education, a person who gains tertiary qualifications and then does not utilise those qualifications in the workforce (whether on a temporary or permanent basis) may leave a shortfall. I could see this being of particular impact on, for example, the already stretched medical industry, where educational places are not sufficient to stock the demand in the workforce.

In general, it would be interesting to see the total number of university graduates who do not utilise their qualifications in the workforce, compared to the number of women who do so in order to raise a family.

I think that is a legitimate concern - but it's the only one. But a lot of medical professionals work shifts or part-time, so maybe they all repay the investment in the long run.

I will return to work at some stage. I chose this life. We are making financial sacrifices too (boohoo no cable, poor me).

I dislike the media trying to create some sort of divide between our choices. I hope we can all see through it and be confident with our own decisions.

I should add that my concern would apply to anyone attaining a qualification for which there is much demand but limited training places and then not utilising that qualification, not just potential mothers. Otherwise, I think the entire article is an elitist and divisive crock of poo.

Jen, that's what I was thinking too - that she seems to be assuming that these mothers will never return to the workforce, when in reality, most of them probably do once their kids are old enough to be self sufficient. Plus another thing she neglects to mention is that Uni education women are more likely to be able to walk back into the same career area with a great salary after several years away, but a non-Uni education woman may find it harder to pick up where she left off ITMS.

I think this woman is either totally career driven with no desire to ever become a SAHM or she is reacting in a rather negative way to not having the luxury to do it herself, so she is lashing out with a touch of jealousy.

Im working towards getting an ecudation to get a job to support my family...but more importantly give me some adult time...

I think it's a bloody awful article. Sweeping statements with nothing to back up what she actually means. Maybe she has some interesting arguments but the article doesn't explain them so I'm left wondering. If I was going to be sarcastic, I'd say her tertiary education has been wasted if that's the best she can come up with.

I have two degrees and am a SAHM. Don't know for how long. Why did I choose this? Partly because I want to spend a lot of time with DDs and partly because of the absolute lack of challenging part-time work for a professional like me. I returned to work 12 months after DD1 was born for five days a fortnight. The company, which has 36,000 employees, claimed they could not find me any work at my previous level so demoted me two levels to a job that I could have done straight out of uni. But still paid me my old wage so $20-30K more than they should have been. Waste of money for the company and a waste of my skills. I did more work in my five days than the full-timers did because the only challenge for me was to work against the clock and challenge myself.

I will have the same dilemma when my current 12 months maternity leave is up except now the decision will be easier to make because we rejigged our lifestyle and moved to the country so that we have more financial flexibility. I did not want to have to go back to a crappy (in my eyes) job in order to pay a mortgage.

In my circle there are many, many women in the same boat. In an ideal world they would work part-time but can't find decent part-time work that uses their skills. So rather than under-utilising their brain, they opt out and stay home instead until the kids are school-aged.

Fionas - I absolutely agree - companies are very narrow minded in terms of part-time work - so many jobs can easily be factored into part time hours (or approaching full time if allowing work in evenings from home) but companies are very narrow in their mindset I find and still think that a body present in office 9-5 equals the most work completed which is far from true. Sometimes if you have worked full time for a company you can work out a flexible arrangement but even then is difficult, and with a new employer seems virtually impossible.

Extremely narrow-minded wysiwyg.

I wish researchers would put some time and energy into studying the relative productiveness of women returning part-time versus full-time employees so that we could mount a case for part-time work options/job-sharing being a great financial option for companies. At the moment they think they are doing us a favour if they entertain it.

I agree it's tough to find part-time work when you're qualified, depending on who you're working for. Which is one reason I work for myself. I was looking ahead at my career path before kids and watching those ahead of me trying to juggle young families and highly-paid professional full-time jobs. It looked very stressful! (FWIW for both men and women, but especially women with children).

It took years to get myself established and a lot of luck, support and the right connections. Lucky I started well before DD came along. I had something to build back up without taking too much time out. And I'm well aware my area of expertise is an exception. Many women I see putting off having children to get their careers to a certain point. They are then in a better position to come back to the same job with only 12 mths off, but usually have to resort to full-time childcare. Which is not necessarily what they want to do.

Even when they do manage to negotiate part-time, it's usually part-time in the office and then more hours at home. Because full-time above a certain level does not mean 9-5. It means whatever time it takes you to get the job done (whenever, too, especially if you're working for a company with overseas connections). So part-time isn't half (or whatever) of full-time hours. It's handing off a few tasks/KPIs, but still getting what's left done, however you can. If some jobs have taken 60 hrs or thereabouts a week to finish (maybe not all the time, but definitely when it's busy), then even dropping back half of that is still leaving you a hectic week, especially when you have a child!

From what I can see, when you're paid well, the company expects you to be devoted to your job.

Hmm. I'm tertiary educated (Bachelors degree plus a graduate diploma) and I'm a SAHM.

So... it's better for my son for me to be working? Excuse me while I cry complete BS to that one! I know that I'm dealing with health issues that generally don't come into the equation for most people, but seriously? Teaching is such a demanding occupation and even if I was completely well, I wouldn't have had much time left for Sam once I do my job properly.

What's alarming about me staying at home? Apart from the fact that my non-tertiary educated husband is the main income earner and can't earn as much as I did... but I can only see how that would alarm us, not others.

I honestly can't see the point behind the article!

BW