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By Root 1198 0

with more water. In reality, the stay-at-home mother was never such a cartoon figure. She has always worn many hats, changing roles as circumstances demanded. When her husband was working steadily, she would forgo a paycheck to spend her days at home taking care of the children and keeping house, but if circumstances changed, so did she. If her husband was laid off, fired, or otherwise left without a paycheck, the stay-at-home mother didn’t simply stand helplessly on the sidelines as her family toppled off an economic cliff; she looked for a job to make up some of that lost income. Similarly, if her husband had a heart attack and was expected to stay home for a while, she could find work and add a new income source to help the family stay afloat financially. A stay-at-home mother served as the family’s ultimate insurance against unemployment or disability—insurance that had a very real economic value even when it wasn’t drawn on.

Consider Tom and Susan, the typical one-earner family from the 1970s we introduced in chapter 2. If Tom, who earned $38,700 a year (inflation-adjusted to 2000 dollars), was laid off from his job, he could dip into the public safety net and draw unemployment. But his unemployment check would cover only half of his previous salary, leaving a huge shortfall for basic expenses. Without half of his income, the family might face imminent disaster. But if Susan then entered the workforce to help her family through this rough patch, she could bring in much-needed income at just the right time. She wouldn’t earn nearly as much as Tom did, but on average she would bring in nearly $22,000 a year.2 Assuming it took Susan a couple of months to find work, the family would just about break even. If Tom could find another job within six months (the limit imposed by most states on how long someone can collect unemployment benefits),3 the family should be able to weather the storm without any serious injury to their financial health.

What if Tom never made it back to his original income? Susan’s new paycheck could still make the difference between their long-term survival and collapse. If Tom were able to return to work at a lower-paying job, or if he could find only a part-time job, even with his income cut in half, the now-two-earner family might approximate its earlier lifestyle—and its long-term economic prospects. Susan might need to remain in the workforce permanently, and the family would have no reserves to meet any future setbacks, but they could weather one hard economic blow—the permanent reduction of the primary breadwinner’s income—intact.

Of course, Tom and Susan are merely an illustration; the realities of a father losing his job are far more varied and complex.4 Researchers have found, for example, that a woman whose husband loses his job is more likely to enter the workforce if her children are older, perhaps because the higher cost of day care for small children can make a young mother’s return to work too costly.5 Some longtime stay-at-home mothers may find that they lack marketable skills; others may be frustrated that only low-wage jobs are available to them. In addition, a stay-at-home wife may have difficulty finding work when layoffs, such as the one that caught her husband, are making jobs scarce in their locale. 6 Notwithstanding these difficulties, there is considerable evidence that as a family’s economic position deteriorates, stay-at-home wives do exactly what one might predict: They look for a job. Sociologists have found that a woman is far more likely to enter the workforce if her husband takes a permanent wage reduction, if he faces an extended period of unemployment, or if he receives little or no unemployment compensation.7 This squares with common sense: If Tom found a well-paying job just a few weeks after being laid off, there would be little need for Susan to begin a job search. If, on the other hand, Tom couldn’t find a job, or if the only jobs he could find paid considerably less than his previous position, then there would be far more pressure on Susan to find a way to