My husband and I were fresh out of college when we got married, and a few months later I became pregnant. As we planned for the arrival of our daughter, my husband told me that he did not trust anyone else taking care of her and so thought it would be a good idea for me to stay home with her. I was completely floored as the idea of being a stay-at-home mom had never once occurred to me. I viewed myself as an ambitious go-getter just at the point of jump-starting my career and graduate school. My mother had worked part-time at home, and although I loved that she was able to dedicate that special time to her family, it had never registered with me that I might do the same. My husband is a highly educated and genuinely sweet man, so he had no bad intentions in saying this—in fact, the young me on the one hand was flattered that he thought so highly of my caretaking skills and that he was willing to sacrifice half the family income, but the other half wrestled with what I had perceived as a life-altering decision for me, and why it should be me and not him. I did end up staying home with my daughter for the first 2.5 years of her life, and I will never regret that precious time that I had with her. But I definitely had to put my own career and educational goals aside and felt like I played catch up for quite a long time afterwards in order to make up for it.
Childcare is often a dilemma for couples who want to start a family, and although the number of men staying at home has increased in the past few decades (Livingston, 2018), the norm is still for women to be the ones expected to take time away from work as 27% of moms stayed home with their baby in comparison to only 7% of dads in 2016.
Gender disparities like this feed into the gender inequality in the workplace. Anecdotally, my sister and her fiancé both had the same job at the same design firm, yet her fiancé made $13,000 more than her per year. And this happens to women across the United States. Moran, Abramson, and Moran (2014) reported that not only is there a significant salary gender gap, but that women are more likely to be “pigeonholed” into career paths that are not bound for upper-management. This aligns with their reporting that women only comprise three percent of the top corporate wage earners.
Luckily, industries are finally recognizing these disparities, and the untapped potential of many women workers. Efforts such as mentoring programing have been made to help women reach and break the proverbial glass ceiling. But although much progress has been made with gender inequality, there is still much work that needs to be done.
References
Livingston, G. (2018). Stay-at-home moms and dads account for about one-in-five U.S. parents. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-home-moms-and-dads-account-for-about-one-in-five-u-s-parents/
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences: Ninth Edition. New York, NY; Routledge.