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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Hurting young men put pen to rage
A writing teacher who works with juveniles sees familiar pain in the diary of Eric Harris.
By Jill Wolfson
[10/04/99]

From "Hey Faggot" to "Hey Daddy"
Savage Dan Savage softens up in fatherhood: Now he's a bitch with a burp rag.
By Daryl Lindsey
[10/01/99]

Get out of my bedroom!
The editor of Mothering magazine denounces a new warning against the family bed as the drivel of government terrorists.
By Peggy O'Mara
[09/30/99]

Home is where the revolution is
When they forsake the revolution to raise children at home, smart women fear they've made a stupid choice.
By Cecelie S. Berry
[09/29/99]

Wild Thing
How do I know I'm really me?
Children ask the big questions, and these dreamy books venture to answer.
By Polly Shulman
[09/28/99]

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Like me. My sister. My friends and distinguished colleagues. Working mothers of all kinds are so commonplace these days that the breadwinner moms among us go unnoticed. According to U.S. census figures, more than a million married-couple families with children under 18 are supported by the mother alone (though that number drops to fewer than 200,000 for families with children under 6). What's harder to quantify is the number of dual-earner families in which the mom has what my husband calls the "alpha job" -- the full-time job, the one with the significantly higher salary, the one with the medical and dental benefits.

As domestic arrangements go, this one looks great on paper. It even plays pretty well in real life. For starters, having a dad at home cuts down on the stress and guilt familiar to working mothers with young children. Political complexities on the subject of day care and nannies aside, it's a hell of a lot easier to get out of the house every morning when your child care is right there in his boxer shorts. Even when he works, this is a guy who usually works at home or part-time, providing the peace of mind that comes from having at least one parent on hand most of the time.

So there's a parent at home, mom's raking in the bucks -- everything's cool, right? Sort of. The breadwinner-mom family is more than just a '90s, cross-dressed version of "Leave It to Beaver." I have never pictured myself as the provider, and my husband (as far as I know) never coveted June Cleaver's oven mitts and pearls. We, like a lot of other breadwinner-mom families, live this way because the opportunity arose to have a parent at home with our young kids, and we think it's good for them. To call this move entirely intentional would be going too far.

"I didn't sign up for this when we met and married," one breadwinner mom writes. Yeah, me neither. We started out in equal-career couples and things just happened. Like, women got enough earning power for men to be able to make spontaneous career decisions. Men now have more freedom to drop off the corporate fast track, go freelance, start new careers. My husband was laid off; my job means he doesn't have to rush right back to work. Sometimes the choice is planned, and mutual. When the demands of two jobs and two kids added up to zero quality of life for the director of my daughter's school, she and her husband decided to put his work on hold. "Money's tight, real tight," she told me, but something had to give and she loved her job.

Sounds like a chance to feel incredibly empowered, an opportunity to enjoy the great strides women have made economically and professionally, right? Sometimes. But winning bread is not always what some of us expected it to be.

Next page | "I can't make a choice about whether to stay at home"