'Off-Ramping' Tries to Shore Up Two-Paycheck Lifestyle
The biggest difference in American daily life, between the way it was some decades ago and the way it is now, is the rise of the two-paycheck family.
When I was a boy, our fathers went to work while our mothers stayed home to raise the children and manage the household. That was the way it was done in America for centuries.
Now, it's more common for both parents to work full-time, with the kids in daycare, public school, or assorted after-school, weekend, and summer "programs." The results of absentee parenting--which is not parenting at all--do not include stronger families.
A new report from ABC News, "Working Women Move From the 'Off-Ramp,'" by Betsy Stark (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IndustryInfo/story?id=2518821&page=1), focuses on new tactics by the corporate world to keep women in business. Because so many women have been deciding to leave their jobs, usually to have children, and then have difficulty getting back into the business world when the children are a little older, companies have found a way to make it easier for them to return.
Rather than completely sever her connection with the work world, a business woman can now take an "off-ramp" which keeps her in the loop by means of refresher courses, mentoring, continuing to socialize with the gang at the office, etc. When she's ready to go back to work, she takes the "on-ramp." See the ABC article for details.
A report by the Center for Work-Life Policy, based on a survey by the Harvard Business Review (see http://www.worklifepolicy.org/pdfs/news-pr10.pdf), says the news media have exaggerated the movement of women out of the workforce. But it agrees with ABC on some of the numbers.
According to the Harvard study, 37% of women in business off-ramp "for some period of time," and 95% of them "want to return to work." Eventually 74% of them do rejoin the workforce, but only 40% to full-time jobs--a pattern which the Center for Work-Life Policy deplores as a "brain drain."
What we deplore is the weakening of the family, especially when it isn't necessary. Is it a question of the family not having a roof over its head unless Mom works--or is it a matter of not being able to afford a brace of new cars every year?
A disturbing finding of the Harvard survey is, "A husband's reaction to a woman's decision to off-ramp is often ambivalent or negative." So we can't blame absentee parenting on feminism alone. Greed and consumerism, status-seeking, and mere selfishness know no gender.
If we need the two paychecks to pay for a big house in an upscale neighborhood, trendy clothes, expensive cars, flat-screen TV, bragging rights over others, and whatnot, we have allowed materialism to usurp priority over our families--definitely not a Biblical course.
It's not as if a stay-at-home mother has nothing to do but stay home and watch soap operas. The Bible's model of a wife and mother is given in Proverbs 31. In modern terms, this model mother would be homeschooling her children, keeping the family finances in order, maintaining the house, and nourishing the family. She and her husband, the children's father, are a team: the one can't function properly without the other.
Women with young children, at least, ought to stay home. Motherhood, as a calling, is necessary, noble, and blessed by God. The payoff is a strong, well cared-for family. "The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her... Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her" (Proverbs 31: 11, 28).
When I was a boy, our fathers went to work while our mothers stayed home to raise the children and manage the household. That was the way it was done in America for centuries.
Now, it's more common for both parents to work full-time, with the kids in daycare, public school, or assorted after-school, weekend, and summer "programs." The results of absentee parenting--which is not parenting at all--do not include stronger families.
A new report from ABC News, "Working Women Move From the 'Off-Ramp,'" by Betsy Stark (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IndustryInfo/story?id=2518821&page=1), focuses on new tactics by the corporate world to keep women in business. Because so many women have been deciding to leave their jobs, usually to have children, and then have difficulty getting back into the business world when the children are a little older, companies have found a way to make it easier for them to return.
Rather than completely sever her connection with the work world, a business woman can now take an "off-ramp" which keeps her in the loop by means of refresher courses, mentoring, continuing to socialize with the gang at the office, etc. When she's ready to go back to work, she takes the "on-ramp." See the ABC article for details.
A report by the Center for Work-Life Policy, based on a survey by the Harvard Business Review (see http://www.worklifepolicy.org/pdfs/news-pr10.pdf), says the news media have exaggerated the movement of women out of the workforce. But it agrees with ABC on some of the numbers.
According to the Harvard study, 37% of women in business off-ramp "for some period of time," and 95% of them "want to return to work." Eventually 74% of them do rejoin the workforce, but only 40% to full-time jobs--a pattern which the Center for Work-Life Policy deplores as a "brain drain."
What we deplore is the weakening of the family, especially when it isn't necessary. Is it a question of the family not having a roof over its head unless Mom works--or is it a matter of not being able to afford a brace of new cars every year?
A disturbing finding of the Harvard survey is, "A husband's reaction to a woman's decision to off-ramp is often ambivalent or negative." So we can't blame absentee parenting on feminism alone. Greed and consumerism, status-seeking, and mere selfishness know no gender.
If we need the two paychecks to pay for a big house in an upscale neighborhood, trendy clothes, expensive cars, flat-screen TV, bragging rights over others, and whatnot, we have allowed materialism to usurp priority over our families--definitely not a Biblical course.
It's not as if a stay-at-home mother has nothing to do but stay home and watch soap operas. The Bible's model of a wife and mother is given in Proverbs 31. In modern terms, this model mother would be homeschooling her children, keeping the family finances in order, maintaining the house, and nourishing the family. She and her husband, the children's father, are a team: the one can't function properly without the other.
Women with young children, at least, ought to stay home. Motherhood, as a calling, is necessary, noble, and blessed by God. The payoff is a strong, well cared-for family. "The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her... Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her" (Proverbs 31: 11, 28).
