Staying Home Instead: Alternatives to the Two-Paycheck Family

The first edition of Staying Home Instead has been called the "bible for every mother who has wondered if she could afford to stay home and care for her children while maintaining her sanity and a decent balance in her checkbook."
Many of the issues examined in the first edition have moved to the forefront of today's national agenda. Recent polls show that nearly two-thirds of married mothers either work part-time or stay home full-time with children and more than 50% of women who work full-time would prefer not to. Further, while in the late 1970s researchers believed it was probably "not harmful" to the infant-parent bond to place the children in institutional daycare, those same researchers now caution parents against it. As a result, an increasing number of working couples are having second thoughts about whether they want to raise their children in a two-paycheck family.
This revised edition examines the issues faced by the "parent" or "parents," rather than just the "mother." Christine Davidson, herself a former beleaguered working mother, urges parents to attend to their emotions and reasserts the value, excitement, and sheer joy of caring for children. She also recognizes the modern mother's need to earn a living and use her education, and to that end she has expanded chapters on resume writing, computerized home businesses, and flex-time professional work. Appendices have been updated to include more practical resources to help parents economize, find part-time work, or start an entrepreneurial home business. They also include profiles of parents who have created full- or part-time businesses that enable them to care for their children with minimal or no outside daycare.
Staying Home Instead offers alternatives to the dilemma of modern American families with young children. It is filled with practical information on how to develop new interests and skills at home, how to avoid becoming a household drudge, and how - when it becomes necessary or desirable - to reenter the workforce. Davidson celebrates the stimulation and delight and the challenge of caring for children and asserts that staying home should never be regarded as a retreat from work or life.