Parenting Blog

A mom asked me this week, "What can parents do to raise great kids, given that babies and even older kids need us so much, but we need to work?"

There’s no perfect solution, but many parents are navigating a way through the maze of options, putting together a life that works for them and for their children.

1. Choose professions that offer more flexibility, even if less money.

2. Arrange for both partners work part-time while children are under six so that both share in early child raising.  Later, more flexibility and fewer hours than most fulltime jobs.

3. Use technology as a servant, not a master.  Carve out protected family time.

4. Pay conscious attention to who does the work at home.  Share it.

5. Prioritize relationship and ritual. (Choose dinner with friends the first Friday night of each month over the latest movie opening.)

6. Space children three years or more apart to maximize individual parent-child relationships.

7. Consciously create home as a calm, safe, warm refuge. (Resist over-scheduling, over-stimulation and stress.)

8. Live stated values. (No grand theft auto or shoot-em-up computer/video games.)

9. Embrace individuality and nurture individual passions, which are protective for kids in the face of cultural and peer pressure.

10. Nurture the family as a whole (do things together as the default.)  READ POST

Ever wonder what that decision to get pregnant will cost you financially?
 
“Social-science research is often equivocal, but on the cost of parenthood to mothers in particular a truckload of research exists to establish how it limits economic options in every class. Mothers work less, earn less, and achieve less in the marketplace than fathers and than childless women. 

Child-rearing takes up enormous amounts of time—especially mothers' time. Taking into account child care, housework, and paid work, mothers work more hours than any other group. Even when both parents hold paid jobs, the mother usually takes primary responsibility for arranging child care, caring for the children during non-work hours and taking time off when children are sick or day-care arrangements fall through.

Mothers also shoulder the greater burden among single-parent families. More than 80 percent of single- parent households are headed by mothers, and more than two thirds of children of divorced parents live primarily with their mothers.

When mothers do remain in the work force, they earn less than other women. This gap persists even after controlling for age, education, work experience, and other attributes. Over a lifetime, mothers earn about five percent less per child than they would have earned otherwise. 

Mothers' economic disadvantage during their working years has repercussions into old age. Job interruptions and lower lifetime earnings reduce their private pensions and their Social Security benefits.

Although this situation reflects continuing gender discrimination, the economics of parenthood are not simply a byproduct of gender inequality. The fundamental problem is that child-rearing requires an irreducible minimum amount of work. Whatever the division of labor between mothers and fathers, continuity demands intensive time and energy from someone."

Wow!  This incisive analysis is from: What We Owe to Parents by Anne Alstott, Yale Law School.  Well worth reading.  READ POST