Since early 2024, I have been co-directing a project on stay-at-home parents with my colleague, Elliot Haspel, through an organization called Capita. Among other things, we conducted a survey on almost 1,500 stay-at-home parents to ask them about who they were, what challenges they faced, and what help they wanted and needed. We also ran four focus groups: one with rural stay-at-home parents in North Carolina, one with Hispanic stay-at-home moms (conducted in Spanish with the help of a translator), and two groups with parents whose religion plays a foundational role in their lives.
It's interesting how you chose to focus on improving the welfare of parents who choose to stay at home regardless. A different angle from which to approach this topic would be to figure out how to tip the scales to help parents who say they want to stay at home, but don't currently find it feasible, achieve their ambition. Another angle would be to investigate what childcare arrangements are best for the welfare of children, both on average and in more specific circumstances. Those might be more challenging directions to explore, partly due to diverging opinions and partly due to limited research on such complex realities.
I do think the approach you chose was the lowest hanging fruit on this underrepresented topic, and the right sized scope for a report.
My main criticism is that the decisions and desires of parents, and the welfare of children, regarding parental care vs other childcare arrangements, are hugely and predictably different based on the age of their youngest child. The care needs of a child and the care arrangement desires of their parents are on average much different for a 5 month old than for a 5 year old. Yet they are all grouped together in your analysis of families with children under 12 years old. Only one sentence I can recall in your report alluded to this. I think your argument would be much stronger with numerical data showing how many parents of children under 6 months, under 12 months, and under kindergarten age would prefer to stay home. A sidebar on babies' special situation, and a sentence on paid maternity leave, would have been great additions.
Julia thank you so much for these thoughtful comments. I agree with them all! I particularly agree that it would be useful to divide parents up by the age of the child … such a wise observation. I will be taking all of these comments to my co-lead as we consider and discuss the next phase of this project. THANK YOU AGAIN!!!!!!
I read the whole thing. It was great!
It's interesting how you chose to focus on improving the welfare of parents who choose to stay at home regardless. A different angle from which to approach this topic would be to figure out how to tip the scales to help parents who say they want to stay at home, but don't currently find it feasible, achieve their ambition. Another angle would be to investigate what childcare arrangements are best for the welfare of children, both on average and in more specific circumstances. Those might be more challenging directions to explore, partly due to diverging opinions and partly due to limited research on such complex realities.
I do think the approach you chose was the lowest hanging fruit on this underrepresented topic, and the right sized scope for a report.
My main criticism is that the decisions and desires of parents, and the welfare of children, regarding parental care vs other childcare arrangements, are hugely and predictably different based on the age of their youngest child. The care needs of a child and the care arrangement desires of their parents are on average much different for a 5 month old than for a 5 year old. Yet they are all grouped together in your analysis of families with children under 12 years old. Only one sentence I can recall in your report alluded to this. I think your argument would be much stronger with numerical data showing how many parents of children under 6 months, under 12 months, and under kindergarten age would prefer to stay home. A sidebar on babies' special situation, and a sentence on paid maternity leave, would have been great additions.
Julia thank you so much for these thoughtful comments. I agree with them all! I particularly agree that it would be useful to divide parents up by the age of the child … such a wise observation. I will be taking all of these comments to my co-lead as we consider and discuss the next phase of this project. THANK YOU AGAIN!!!!!!