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Working Mother Vs. Stay-At-Home Mother

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Working Mother Vs. Stay-At-Home Mother
Americans have now become less likely to marry. Contrary to what people believe, marriage is not declining because of individuals giving up on marriage. According to Professor David Popenoe, a sociology professor at Rutgers University, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, a lecturer on the well-being of families, part of this is the fact that couples are now making the choice of unmarried cohabitation. However, there has been a common belief amongst researchers that although less people have been getting married, those who do plan to do so end up having marriages of higher quality. Good marriages often lead to the start of families and therefore, women must make the difficult choice of entering the work force or caring for the young in their home. Mothers have reasons for their choices, whether it’d be staying at home or continuing to work following the birth of their child; the choices they make can have different effects on everything around them, from the development of her child to their very own mental health. In the United States, financial necessity has been the general reason in which women have decided to work (Siegel and Hass 523). Many of us know how expensive raising a child can be which is why many mothers decide to enter the work force for the first time or get back in to it. Assuming that the mother is married and that the husband is the leading provider of income, having a job allows for the woman to bring in an additional income to the household and therefore, by bringing in a supplemental income, a mother is able constitute an adequate or favorable living condition for her family (Siegel and Hass 523). Research has proven that married couples tend to make more money than other couples (Popedoe and Whitehead 372). Jayita Poduval and Murali Poduval, Assistant Professors in the Department of ENT and Orthopedics at the Manipal Teaching Hospital in Pokhara, Nepal, state that by working, a mother is also capable of fulfilling herself. This means that


Cited: Grywacz, Joseph, and Brenda L. Bass. “Work, Family, and Mental Health: Testing Different Models of Work-Family Fit.” Journal of Marriage and Family 65.1 (2003): 248-261. NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. “The NICHD Study of Early Child Care.” Psychiatric Times 15.3 (1998): 71-72 Nomaguchi, Kei M. “Maternal Employment, Nonparental Care, Mother-Child Interactions, and Child Outcomes During Pre-School Years.” Journal of Marriage and Family 68.5 (2006): 1341-1369 Poduval, Jayita, and Murali Poduval. “How Much Working, How Much Mothers, And Where Is The Womanhood?” Some Issues in Women’s studies, and Other Essays 7.1 (2009): 63-79. Web. 23 September 2013. Popenoe, David, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. “The State of Our Unions.” Research and Composition in the Disciplines. Laurence Behrens, and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman, 2011. 368-380. Print. Siegel, Alberta Engvall, and Miriam Bushkoff Hass Stone, Pamela, and Meg Lovejoy. “Fast-Track Women and the ‘Choice’ to Stay Home.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 596 (2004): 62-83. JSTOR. Web. 24 September 2013. Zimmerman, Toni. “Marital Equality and Satisfaction in Stay-At-Home Mother and Stay-At-Home Father Families.” Contemporary Family Therapy 22.3 (2000): 337-354. Web. 23 September 2013.

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