Deciding to stay home in the 1990s: A study of professionally-trained women who choose to be full-time mothers

This qualitative study adds insights and knowledge about the motivations and experience of professional women who choose, against current trends, to stay home and mother their children full-time in the 1990s. The self-selected purposive sample was composed of sixty middle-class full-time mothers who had been professionals in the Washington, D.C. area. The in-home interviews, ranging from sixty to ninety minutes, were transcribed, processed and analyzed in a rigorous comparative process. Results generated were reported under the headings of: the choice to stay home; examination of the decision-making experience and process; influences on the choice including background, religion and feminism; attitudes toward their children, working mothers, caregivers, former profession, domestic work, and husbands; image, both social and personal; support, including organizational and interpersonal; and strategies, including parent training, volunteering and scheduling. Major findings include: participants' primary motivation for staying home was an intense and surprising personal sense that only they could mother their own children. This strong feeling is undergirded by a concern for the social deterioration of society as perceived by the participants. Uniquely, all the husbands were good partners and fathers; supportive of wife's decision to stay home and respectful of her decision. The patriarchal model has been replaced by a new type of nuclear family for professional couples: father at work, mother at home with children based on an egalitarian partnership of mutual respect. In a clear image clarification, professional women at home describe themselves as "mothers at home." "Housewife" is rejected as meaningless and archaic. There is a significant grass roots growth of specific organizational support for mothers at home. There are distinct dividends to the community from professionally-trained mothers at home participating in volunteer work and informal support to others.