Jobs for Homemaker Parents

This is not an oxymoron! Exploring "Serial Careers."

I am currently reading Claudia Goldin’s excellent book, Career and Family. The book (among other things) explores the many different ways mothers have approached the paid workforce over the past hundred years. I was particularly interested in her description of women born in the 1930s, and their career and family choices. Specifically, many of these women had “serial careers.” Unlike the relatively straightforward career arc many young women plan for today (i.e., graduate college; get a job; work until retirement), these women commonly graduated college, worked for a short period of time, dropped out of the workforce when their children were young, and then returned to paid work once their children were in elementary school.

Professor Goldin points out that many of these women planned family-centric careers. Women in this generation often deliberately pursued jobs that were flexible enough to allow them to combine work, marriage, and children.

She writes:

[M]ore than half of all female graduates in the 1950s left college prepared to enter low-risk jobs in high-demand fields with hours and days consistent with taking care of one’s home and children. Teaching, nursing, social work, and other occupations that attracted so many college women were, and still are, typically female jobs with scant room for advancement and often lower pay relative to other positions requiring a college degree. But they had amenities that made them highly attractive occupations.

A hallmark of these jobs is that there was very little penalty associated with stopping work while having young children, and then re-entering the workforce after the kids were in elementary school. Per Goldin, a survey of the June 1957 class of graduating women found that the majority worked immediately after college. Most stopped working after they had their first baby, and remained out of the workforce while their children were preschool-aged. Most, however, planned to work outside the home as their kids got bigger. Goldin says of these women: “[t]hey had mapped out a serial life of family then job (with the small subset who eventually achieved family then career).”

Today, it is common to categorize parents in one of two categories: a person is either a stay-at-home mom or dad or a working parent. It is relatively rare that a young woman or man plans out a career with a deliberate goal of stepping out of the workforce to take care of young children, and then re-enter it once her or his children are older. However, such a career path is a remarkably practical solution to the perennial puzzle of caring for babies and toddlers.

How might we better allow young women—or young men—to plan for a career that also involves a period of time spent at home taking care of young children? Obviously, answering the question begins with indicating to teenagers and young adults that these issues are relevant to them. Often, young adults are told they can “have it all” in terms of work and family, and then only discover after having kids that “having it all” is never easy and often is not feasible either. As Anne-Marie Slaughter’s fantastic article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” indicates: even tremendously intelligent, organized, well-educated, and wealthy parents struggle to combine family and career. Our elites have trouble with work-life balance, and so does everyone else (but with less money to smooth the bumps!) Planning to take time out of the workforce may be a pragmatic and reasonable solution for some parents.

For those who intend to have a serial career, there are serious practical problems to be solved. Today, a serial career is likely to come with a significant job penalty: dropping in and out of the workforce based on family needs will almost inevitably come with negative consequences for pay and job seniority. How might we make life easier for those in serial careers? There are two obvious issues: (1) maintaining relevant professional certifications and (2) addressing student loan issues.

1. Maintaining Professional Licenses: In a series of interviews conducted last year, I talked to women who had dropped out of the workforce to become homemakers. Almost all of them had some amount of college education, and many had completed a degree. One woman had been a teacher before she left the workforce to become a stay-at-home mom. She wanted to maintain her teaching license so that she could go back to work once her kids were older (much like the graduating women in the 1950s). However, she was struggling to do so, because it requires taking specific courses at a cost of many hundreds of dollars. One way our society might better protect homemakers is to make it easier to keep their professional licenses current; either by making it free or low cost to maintain licenses, or by eliminating such requirements for women and men who step out of the workforce for a few years to raise children. This would enable parents to more easily return to work when they have older children (and also make it easier for young women and men to plan for serial careers; knowing their professional licenses will stay current while they are home with their babies).

2. Addressing Student Loan Issues: I also spoke with women who had not been able to become stay-at-home moms—even though they very much wanted to. Often, the biggest obstacle was outstanding student loans. Unlike the 1950s, many college graduates today have very significant student loans to repay. Clearly, a good first step for young people who plan to have a serial career is to make every effort to minimize the amount of student debt burden they take on. But both the federal government and private universities could play a role here as well. The federal government “paused” certain student loan repayments during COVID—policy makers could certainly consider doing the same for parents of very young children. Some private universities also offer loan forgiveness to students engaging in “public interest” careers. None,¹ however, offer loan forgiveness to graduates who drop out of the workforce for a few years to raise children, even though raising children is beneficial to the larger society.

Readers, I would love to hear from you about your thoughts on serial careers (including their benefits and drawbacks), as well as whether society should affirmatively support women and men who plan to drop out of the workforce to take care of little kids and then re-enter it once their children are older.

1. None that I am aware of, anyway! Some offer loan forgiveness for a brief period of “parental leave,” but do not offer the same benefits to their graduates who choose to become homemakers.