We Need Cultural Change for Caregivers, Not Just Better Policy

What comes to mind when you hear the term “stay-at-home mom”? Though some may think of dedication and family values, there are many negative ideas in our culture about women who spend their time caring for their children and home. Uneducated, boring, and not ambitious are a few, and more recently, the term “tradwife”. Though this word technically describes women promoting a “traditional” lifestyle on social media, “tradwife” has become—in practice—a disparaging label broadly used for any woman engaged in full-time homemaking. 

A book released earlier this month, The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids—and Come Back Stronger Than Ever by Neha Ruch, addresses these dynamics head on. It challenges the clichés of a mother “at home” and explores the simplistic thinking that stubbornly persists around motherhood and career. 

This is important. As Ivana Greco has noted here so well, the work of a parent at home is valuable both for families and society as a whole, and the majority of Americans see having one parent home when children are small as ideal. There’s a lot of discussion about policy and what the government should or should not do to support parents with caregiving, and this is good and necessary. But there’s something else that’s desperately needed alongside it: cultural advocacy, a shifting of the ideas and stories we hold about care, motherhood, and work. Ruch’s book does just that.

Ruch is the founder of an online community called Mother Untitled, which highlights cultural attitudes about motherhood and career, in particular the reality that many women feel small and embarrassed to embrace the work of children and home, even if just for a season. In Chapter 1 of The Power Pause, Ruch shares that she knew she wanted to be home with her first child. “But there was one wrinkle in my plan,” she writes. “Leaving my career would make me a stay-at-home mother—and I knew just what my friends, colleagues, family, and corporate America thought of those.” As an educated, ambitious woman who also felt a soul-pull to care for her children in their early years, I too have felt the cultural attitudes Ruch describes in her book. It’s made an already difficult job even harder. 

When I discuss this need for advocacy for caregiving with others, people sometimes respond, “there is so much advocacy for that already!” However, they are referring to what might be characterized as Christian pro-family rhetoric, which typically centers on the idea that once a woman becomes a mother, her role is to be at home. This simplistic and moralizing advocacy isn’t what’s needed, nor is it the advocacy many women want. Instead, we need advocacy that shifts the rigid ways we think about motherhood and career by challenging the stereotypes of the “stay-at-home mom,” challenging the binary of “stay at home” and “working,” and challenging the perceived permanence of either or any choice.

First, we need advocacy that challenges simple, stereotypical notions of what “kind” of woman chooses to care for her own children. In the book, Ruch describes other mothers she got to know during her early motherhood years, who were, for various reasons, home with their kids. “Just like me, every woman I met had been on the receiving end of some unwelcome commentary about her ambition, mental health, productivity, and contribution to the world,” she writes. “We all felt mislabeled and limited by the stereotype of a ‘stay-at-home mom.’” 

We need to dismantle the idea of the binary choice—that after you become a mother, you must choose between motherhood and career. 

Ruch fascinatingly lays out how this role came to be perceived the way that it is, a mix of post-WWII politics, second-wave feminism, and media. Regardless of the reasons for their existence, the antiquated and simplistic ideas the label “stay-at-home mom” implies lead many women to feel that the role of an at-home parent is incongruent with who they are as intelligent, capable, whole women. 

We also need to dismantle the idea of the binary choice—that after you become a mother, you must choose between motherhood and career. Indeed, it feels this way to many modern women. Ruch writes,

Women planning their families [seem] to have two options: obsess over their careers and embrace full-fledged boss mode, or subject themselves to a selfless, dull existence as a stay-at-home mother. 

Apart from the stereotypes of the two labels, this either/or framework is itself increasingly false. Part-time, freelance, and flexible work are becoming more common and available, as people advocate for it and as technology increasingly enables it. Many women—myself included—fit paid work into their role as primary caretaker and find it very fulfilling to do so.

Finally, we need to challenge the widely-accepted implication that the choice to be home is permanent. (This is a big focus of Ruch’s book, hence the word “pause” in the title.) It seems difficult for many people today to access this perspective of caring for children in their early years as just one season of their lives. In the first year of motherhood, I explicitly remember having the thought that “this is my life now,” as if the intense needs of babies would last for (much) longer than they do. Because I hadn’t been around many babies or small children, I had no real sense of child development. The choice a mother makes about work—no matter what it is—often feels like one that is made once and for all. However, the reality is that the needs of children shift dramatically over the years, and work situations can shift and grow as the family does. This is a truth that needs amplifying.

Policy to support parents to stay home in the early years is important, and so, of course, is advocacy for paid leave. But if choosing to care for your own children continues to be seen as an unskilled, anti-feminist choice that means leaving paid work forever, many women will continue to think it’s not for them, and the policies simply won’t be as impactful. As Ruch argues, it’s important we work to expand our stories around motherhood and career, both for the sake of future parents and for those who are currently struggling to navigate these waters. 

The work of women (and men!) “at home” adds immense value to the stability and health of our communities, as well as holding the possibility of deep enrichment for those engaged in it. We would be wise to lend cultural support to caretaking in addition to supportive policies, and Ruch’s work, with the message that a season “at home” can be a personal and professional power move, is moving the needle.

Amber Adrian is a writer and homeschooling mom, who formerly served as an English teacher. She lives with her husband and three daughters in South Dakota.