Glass Ceilings and 100-Hour Couples: What the Opt-Out Phenomenon Can Teach Us About Work and Family

Over the past 15 years, many highly educated, middle-class women have—whether by inclination or necessity—traded their 50-plus–hour workweeks and considerable paychecks to stay home with their children and enjoy a “saner, less hectic life.” Economist Moe and anthropologist Shandy, both of Macalester College, dispassionately dissect the statistics and motivations behind “opting out” to determine whether this recent, still narrow trend denotes a “bellwether,” a “fin-de-siècle folly” or just a blip on the cultural radar. The authors also demonstrate how these women differ from the 1950s housewife stereotype. Liberally used economic statistics describe financial sacrifices, potential marital shifts in power and ways to avoid the automatic social invisibility conferred on stay-at-home mothers, while well-placed anecdotes from study subjects weigh flexibility and quality of life for family members. There's no discussion of how recession-proof this trend will be, but this objective analysis provides a calmly informative, readable tool, useful for any couple considering children. (Oct.)