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Dollars, Sense, and Motherhood
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18439 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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9 / 1990 |
2,729 Words |
| Author
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Arlene Rossen Cardozo
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Kay Arnold left her $25,000 retail sales position last fall to stay at home full-time with new baby. Ruth Willmar took a long-term leave without pay from her suburban Los Angeles nursing post for a similar reason. Joan Bomberg, once on a partnership track with a prestigious Boston law firm, is now at home mothering, as is Andrea Lewis, a former Minneapolis receptionist. These women and thousands like them from coast to coast have temporarily traded office and paycheck for home and playground, a trend for which I have coined the term sequencing.
Sequencing runs counter to the recent practice of a mother's working outside the home throughout her adult life to contribute to the family's support and/or to realize personal goals. Viewing one's life as a sequence of phases, a married woman's decision to leave her career for a period of years to raise a young family can make sense - both emotionally and financially. And with this option has come a widening of part-time work opportunities for sequencing women who want to resume career activity as their children grow but who wish to postpone full-time work until later.
To couples contemplating sequencing, the foremost question is, How can we afford it? When I began research for my sequencing I assumed that the higher the husband's salary, the easier it would be for the wife to leave her work for a period of time if she so desired. I couldn't have been more wrong! Instead, I found some families where the husband earned over six figures who said they could not afford the loss of the wife's salary. At the opposite pole, some wives had left their jobs to be at home with their children despite the very low level of the husbands' earnings.
In almost every case, sequencing is a values decision. If the couple really wants the mother to be at home with the children for a period of years, they find a way. The allocation of their financial resources becomes the implementation of their underlying values decision.
Decisions on sequencing occur at one of two main junctures: (1) months or years before the first child is born, in which case the sequencing is planned long in advance; or (2) after the first or second child's birth, in which case the sequencing is unplanned. Clearly, planning ahead makes the financial aspects of sequencing much easier to handle than waiting until a child arrives and a standard of living mandating two incomes has been established.
Planned Sequencing
Brian and Kay Arnold of Chicago knew from the time they were married - four years before their son, Chris, was born - that when they became parents she would leave her retain job for a few years. Brian, a computer specialist, would support them single-handedly on his $35,000 annual earnings. So from the beginning the Arnolds lived on his salary alone, investing hers in a bank savings program and in occasional large-ticket purchases.
“My salary covered most of the down payment on our home, our car, all of our appliances, and much of our furniture,” Kay says. “We have enough left over so that we have $18,000 earning interest in the bank. We occasionally tap these savings for emergencies - like when we had some heavy car-repair bills last year - and once in a while for a luxury like a baby-sitter or an anniversary dinner
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