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Decreasing Mothers in the Workplace

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A mother starts her usual "work" day at 6:30 a.m., when she gets out of bed. She takes a shower, does her hair and makeup, makes lunch for everyone and then begins to make breakfast for her husband and children. After a family breakfast, she passes out lunches before her husband heads off to work and then she drives the kids to school. When everyone is out of the house, she goes about her day: vacuuming and cleaning the house, going grocery shopping, doing the laundry, caring for any children not in school, picking up the kids from school, helping children with homework, carting kids to after school soccer practices and meetings, and making dinner just in time for the return of her husband. In the 1950s, many women followed a schedule like this, but today it is much less common, because most twenty-first century mothers are employed outside the home. However, the number of working mothers has decreased since 2000, showing that women are choosing to return to being stay at home moms. When a mother leaves the workforce by choice, it is assumed that she did to be with her children, when in reality, the workforce could actually be driving her out of working causing a decrease in women's employment.

The role of mothers drastically changed between the 1970s and the 1990s as more women moved into the workplace. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, data shows this change: in 1975, 47.4% of mothers with children under the age of 18 were a part of the work force. This percent figure grew to 56.6% in 1980, and then grew to 65.1% in 1985 and the percentage grew to 66.7% in 1990. This increase was steady between the '70s through '90s, but that all changed in the late 1990s when the rate of employment for women declined .5% for moth...

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United States. Dept. of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Women in the Labor Force: a Data-book. Sept. 2006.January 2012. http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-table7-2011.pdf

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