This group accounted for 5% of married stay-at-home mothers with working husbands. married stay-at-home mothers (with working husbands) had at least a master’s degree and family income exceeding $75,000. This group is sometimes called “opt-out mothers,” although some researchers say they may have been pushed out of the workforce due to work-family conflicts. The increase in both number and share eventually resumed: From 2010 to 2012, the share of stay-at-home mothers (29%) was three percentage points higher than in 2008 (26%), at the height of the recession.Īlthough they are often in the media spotlight, relatively few married stay-at-home mothers (with working husbands) would qualify as highly educated and affluent. The share of mothers staying home with their children rose from 2000 to 2004, but the rise stopped in 2005, amid economic uncertainty that foreshadowed the official start of the Great Recession in 2007. The economic ups and downs of the past decade likely influenced mothers’ decisions on whether to stay home or go to work. In addition to this group, some stay-at-home mothers are single, cohabiting or married with a husband who does not work. They made up roughly two-thirds of the nation’s 10.4 million stay-at-home mothers in 2012. The largest share consists of “traditional” married stay-at-home mothers with working husbands. The broad category of “stay-at-home” mothers includes not only mothers who say they are at home in order to care for their families, but also those who are at home because they are unable to find work, are disabled or are enrolled in school. 2 The recent turnaround appears to be driven by a mix of demographic, economic and societal factors, including rising immigration as well as a downturn in women’s labor force participation, and is set against a backdrop of continued public ambivalence about the impact of working mothers on young children. 1 This rise over the past dozen years represents the reversal of a long-term decline in “stay-at-home” mothers that had persisted for the last three decades of the 20th century. The share of mothers who do not work outside the home rose to 29% in 2012, up from a modern-era low of 23% in 1999, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

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