Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 25, 1995 TAG: 9511270008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOYCE A. ARDITTI
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I am volunteering one more expert opinion regarding the choice for one spouse to stay home. Although it might appear financially feasible at a certain point in time for some families, choosing to opt out of the paid labor force is financially risky, especially for women.
And as Poff so rightly pointed out, it's wives who are far more likely to consider staying home. After all, is a woman's measly ``second'' salary worth working for? Theoretically, according to her article, a family could receive - for free - from the stay-at-home wife the same domestic services and child care it would have to pay someone else to provide.
In my opinion, this type of logic does much to undermine the value of women's paid labor-force participation. Why are family expenses like domestic work (the majority of which is done by the woman ``for free'' anyway, even if she works outside the home) and child care compared against the wife's salary to determine whether her salary is ``worth it''? These are family expenses and should be treated as such.
The ability to build human capital has much to do with later earning power, even though, unfortunately, women's earnings are still affected by wage discrimination. Human capital includes education, training and, most important, consistent labor-force participation. Given current poverty rates among children (about 22.7 percent), the more socially responsible advice would be to encourage mothers to develop human capital.
Erratic labor-force participation forces women to forego current earnings and future earnings. The longer she stays out, the more negative the impact on her future earnings should she attempt to return to the paid labor force. This relationship is even more dramatic for women in higher-paying, more specialized professions. So first, individuals should consider how long they might stay out of the labor force, and what the impact might be on their future earning ability. Are they then willing to take the risk?
Depending on one breadwinner is economically risky, not only because it negatively impacts the ability of the spouse who is staying home to earn in the future, but because it creates a dependency that may ultimately be linked to dramatic economic decline should there be cutoff from the breadwinner's earnings due to unemployment, disability, death or divorce. My own research in Southwestern Virginia uncovered the following facts:
In 1993, out of 212 divorced, custodial mothers (surveyed randomly from public court records), 42 percent of mothers reported income below $15,000 a year. Mothers in the higher income brackets during marriage reported the most dramatic plunges in income due to divorce. On the other hand, noncustodial fathers reported modest drops in income after divorce. And out of 225 respondents (surveyed randomly from public court records), less than 16 percent reported annual incomes postdivorce of less than $15,000. Keep in mind that all mothers surveyed had custody of their children.
Until radical shifts occur regarding who cares for children and the value attached to domestic work, women who choose not to or who are unable to steadily participate in the paid labor force put themselves and their children at great economic risk.
For families affected by divorce, generous child-support payments can in part minimize children's economic risk, but cannot entirely solve the problem. National statistics suggest 7.5 million children live in single-mother families and in poverty.
No family is safe considering itself insulated from this trend. Rather than figure out ways for women to exit the labor force, we should inform families of the risk this might pose to children in the future, as well as develop quality resources and supports for working families and their children.
The best insurance a child has against poverty is a mother who can financially provide for him or her. Voluntarily leaving the paid labor force in a time of economic uncertainty and social change is a decision that must be carefully planned, as Poff emphasizes, but one that must be carefully considered in terms of its long-term implications.
Joyce A. Arditti is an associate professor in the Department of Family and Child Development at Virginia Tech.
by CNB