Census: More children have mothers who stay at home

WASHINGTON — Nearly 10.6 million children were being raised by full-time, stay-at-home moms last year, up 12.7 percent in a little less than a decade.

Experts credit the economic boom, the cultural influence of America's growing Hispanic population and the entry into parenthood of a generation of latchkey kids.

Of the 41.8 million children under 15 who lived with two parents last year, more than one-fourth had mothers who stayed home, according to a Census Bureau report. That was up from 22 percent, or 9.4 million children, in 1994.

Full-time, stay-at-home dads took care of 189,000 kids in 2002, up 18 percent.

Heather Stergos, 29, of St. Louis, quit her job as a child-care worker six months ago so she could stay home with her own newborn. She brought her infant son to work for four months before deciding she wanted to spend more time with him.

While her family's budget is a little tighter, Stergos says she is happy with the decision and plans to stay home until her son, Charlie, is in grade school.

"There was a lot of 'Oh, my God, why would you want to do that?' " Stergos said yesterday. "I got a lot more negative responses from friends, though my family was very supportive."

Both she and her husband were raised by stay-at-home moms. "It was more beneficial than having someone else take care of your kids," she said.

Kelly Miller, a stay-at-home mother of a 4-year-old daughter and 16-month-old son, decided to quit her full-time job as a marketing director after giving birth to her second child. Miller, 38, of Fairfax, Va., said the cultural perception that raising kids full time doesn't equate to work still exists, though not as widely as a decade ago.

With unemployment low in the late 1990s, many companies offered more work-from-home options or extended leaves as enticements to retain qualified female workers, said Joanne Brundage, executive director of Mothers & More, an organization for mothers who have adjusted their careers to raise children.

But Brundage said the flailing economy of recent years could have forced more women back into the work force, either because their spouse has been laid off or companies have cut back on benefits.

Children with married mothers who stayed home tended to be less well-off economically than those in families where both parents are employed, according to an analysis of the March 2002 census data by William O'Hare, a researcher with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a children's advocacy group.

For instance, about 16 percent of children with stay-at-home moms lived in poverty, quadruple the rate of those with moms in the work force, O'Hare found. And 14 percent of children with married, stay-at-home mothers lacked health insurance, compared with 8 percent of those with employed moms.

High birthrates and increased immigration helped the Hispanic population more than double in the United States during the 1990s.

That also could have influenced the trend, as some Hispanic cultures place more emphasis on women staying home to raise children, O'Hare said.

Many younger women who now have kids grew up when placing a child in day care was the norm, said Susan De Ritis, spokeswoman for the Fairfax, Va.-based Family and Home Network, which represents stay-at-home parents.

"Those children that were in day care growing up are now becoming mothers themselves, and now they don't want their kids to become day-care children," she said.

"Their mom may not have been home when they got home from school, so perhaps they want something different for their family."

The Census Bureau also reported that 55 percent of women who gave birth between July 1999 and July 2000 returned to the labor force within a year of having their babies.

That was down from a record high of 59 percent in 1998, the last time the survey was conducted.