Stop Judging Parenting Paths — The Research Shows Why You Should

This is an area with a tremendous amount of associated tension and unhappiness. Women who work (some of them, anyway) tell me they feel guilty about not being with their child every minute. Those who do not work (some of them, anyway) tell me they feel isolated and resentful at times. And even when we are happy with our choices on a personal level, it can feel as though there's a lot of judgment coming from both directions.

And to start, the whole premise of the discussion is gendered in an unhelpful way. The choice of whether to have a parent stay home is one your family will need to make. But why does it have to be Mom? It doesn't. Framing this through the stay-at-home-mom lens makes it harder for people to think "stay-at-home dad" is a valid choice. But it should be. Never mind that sometimes a family has two moms. Or two dads. Or only one parent.

Second, this discussion ignores the fact that this really isn't a choice for some families. There are plenty of people in the U.S. who cannot get by—and by "get by," I mean have a place to live and put food on the table—without all the adults in the household working.

People often talk about 1 and 3, and I'll spend some time on those here. But I'd like to encourage you to also think about 2. That is, you should think about whether you want to work. It is common for people to say they work "because I have to" or stay home "because I have to." And in either case, that can sometimes be true. But I think it is not true as much as people say it.

And this is a problem. It should be OK to say you made this choice because you wanted to work or wanted to stay home.

I'll say it: I am lucky enough to not have to work, in the sense that Jesse [my husband] and I could change how we organize our life to live on one income. I work because I like to. I love my kids! They are amazing. But I wouldn't be happy staying home with them. I've figured out that my happiness-maximizing allocation is something like eight hours of work and three hours of kids a day.

It isn't that I like my job more than my kids overall—if I had to pick, the kids would win every time. But the "marginal value" of time with my kids declines fast. In part, this is because kids are exhausting. The first hour with them is amazing, the second less good, and by hour four I'm ready for a glass of wine or, even better, some time with my research.

My job doesn't have this feature. Yes, the eighth hour is less fun than the seventh, but the highs are not as high and the lows are not as low. The physical and emotional challenges of work pale in comparison to the physical and emotional challenges of being an on-scene parent. The eighth hour at my job is better than the fifth hour with the kids on a typical day. And that is why I have a job. Because I like it.

Whether to have all adults in the household work outside the home is not an easy choice for most people, and it is nearly impossible to give blanket advice. The data suggests that—putting aside early maternity leave, which has some significant benefits—there is not much evidence that having a stay-at-home parent positively or negatively affects child development.

This means it really comes down to what works for your family. This includes thinking about your budget but also thinking about what you want. Does one parent want to be home with the kid or not? In a sense, this is probably the main consideration, but it is also the most complex and hard to predict. Before you have a child, it's pretty difficult to tell if you'll want to be with them all the time.

Some people love being with their baby every minute and cannot imagine being away. Some people eagerly look forward to returning to work on Monday morning, even if they love their kids just as much.

By acknowledging that the choice to stay home or not is just that—a choice, with factors pushing you in various directions—we can perhaps start to move away from the judgmental attitude that seems to crop up on both sides of the aisle. I'd like to be able to say that I choose to have a job because that is what I want, and I'd like friends to be able to say they choose to stay home because that is what they want. And I'd like us to be able to say both these things without my being tempted to look down my nose at those friends and their being tempted to imply that my children will not have the best start in life.