Why A Mom Should Stay Home With The Kids

I originally had a version of this post as a section in this related post about values to look for in a future husband, but I thought the original version of it was too meaty to have as a mereside note, so I turned into its own thing.

Shortly after my husband and I started dating/courting, I felt God was calling me to give up the high-power career life I thought I wanted for the sake of becoming a homemaker and, later, a stay-at-home mom. This wasn’t a difficult decision like I know many of God’s callings can be. One day I simply realized, with the help of the Holy Spirit, that I needed to be the kind of good woman my then-future-husband deserved–someone who’d care for him, our future children, and our home, and who’d be the safe haven he’d look forward to come home to. I couldn’t picture giving him or being any less because he doesn’t deserve any less. He’s someone I admire and consider a role model in many respects, so it was natural for me to promise to myself back then that I’d nurture him for the rest of my life.

Maternal care is a great form of obedience and worship to the Lord because mothers are stewards of souls. –Elaine Sinott @ CatholicMom.com

His reaction took me by surprise: He was actually very happy! And I was ecstatic, too, because I no longer had the pressure to apply to this program or to that position (I had a well-paying job at the time that I left about a year after we got married), or to climb the ladder. I now could focus on excelling at said job so I could save as much as possible for a future nest egg without worrying about my next step professionally.

Corporate America isn’t for the faint of heart: After a while, shortly before my departure (we were married by then), I wasn’t thriving, and I was tired and stressed out a lot AT HOME. Coming home was the moment I looked forward to the most every day but I somehow didn’t act like it. So when I finally left that position it was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders because now I was free to do what I had been yearning for: Caring for my family by way of caring for my husband and our home.

Although some physical challenges made my first year exclusively as a homemaker very difficult (I guess God’s callings aren’t always a walk in the park? Especially when I wasn’t even able to walk.. yikes), I received treatment, and within months I was back to my old self. And actually thriving.

I love being at home with my family. It’s such a beautiful calling and I’m honored I get to glorify God this way. I don’t love doing what I do for the sake of the activity, but rather for the sake of the person who’ll benefit from the activity, which is a sentiment echoed by most SAHMs. Most of us don’t need worldly accolades to feel valued: seeing our families and the fruits of our labor bloom every day and every year is the greatest reward. (Being away from social media and keeping your circle of friends small helps A LOT with this.)

Photo by Elina Fairytale

But not everyone’s built like me or knows soon after meeting their spouses that they’d like to stay home with their children.

If that’s you, I’d like to offer you this post.

I want to offer some encouragement, share some stats, and discuss what the Catholic Church says on the matter (spoiler: previous Popes have argued that the best place for Mom is at home). If you’re adamant your place ISN’T at home, I hope I’m able to help you discern otherwise.

And if you’re not Catholic, I think you’ll still find these Popes’ arguments extremely convincing and common-sense.

What could be a better example to our kids than putting them before us?

Maria Baer, Maybe Women Can Have It All-But Can Their Kids?

How many moms actually stay home?

Let’s say you’ve already decided you wanted to stay home with your future children. This seems to be a rarity in today’s world, with only ~25% of moms choosing to not have a typical job, but it’s not impossible. I had heard of that 25% number a while back so I asked Perplexity (AI) to dive deeper into the number of moms who work outside of the home. These numbers are more chilling: (Find my sources at the end of this post.)

  • “In the United States, roughly two-thirds of mothers of young children are in the labor force, meaning they are working or actively looking for work.” (BLS)

Mothers with young children

  • “In 2024, about 68% of mothers whose youngest child was under age 6 were in the labor force.” (bls​)
  • “For comparison, about 78% of mothers whose youngest child was 6 to 17 years old were in the labor force in 2024.” (BLS)​

Broader group of mothers

  • “Looking at all mothers with children under 18, about 74% were in the labor force in 2024.” (BLS+1)​
  • “These figures reflect both mothers who are employed and those who are unemployed but actively seeking work, which is the standard labor force definition.” (BLS​)

How much worse can it get?!

A “woman who works”

Keep those numbers in mind: Remember, almost three-quarters of all moms earn an income and only one in four moms to two in three moms do not.

You’ll find that many men want a woman “who works.” Either they were raised by working moms so they don’t know otherwise, or they were raised by lazy and selfish stay-at-home moms.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

For both situations, I’ll be fair and propose that the man is doing what he’s supposed to do: Look out for his (future) family’s wellbeing.

He seems to want someone who “earns her keep” and lets the family afford things they wouldn’t without her salary and/or doesn’t put herself and her hobbies above the kids’ wellbeing.

Not to mention, by growing up watching her “work,” he may also think, the kids will learn how money’s earned and see what a good example she is. (He’s mistaken, of course, but go along with me here.)

However, what many ignore is that homemaking and raising a family ARE themselves 24/7 “jobs” that save the family thousands of dollars each year .. and that no working mom can actually or physically be a full-time mom (or even a good homemaker because she’s always tired and stressed) at the same time.

As Suzanne Venker put it in a recent post,

[There] is a way to make a one-income family work with frugality and advanced planning. A couple who’s dating and who knows the girlfriend is going to stay home down the line will handle their respective finances differently from a couple who assumes the opposite. –Suzanne Venker

So with due respect to that man, YOU know better.

You’ve seen the research and listened to Dr. Laura nag on working moms while praising stay-at-home moms, and you’ve come to the conclusion that kids raised by a parent at home (AT LEAST during those key first years!) are better off.

Some examples you’ll find useful:

1. Dr. Laura Schlessinger on prioritizing the family:

… I also came across other countless examples of the media’s relentless push to eradicate all judgment stigma based on individual choice and behavior. In short, one choice is as good as the other. Again, this agenda is particularly egregious when innocent children pay the price, and nowhere is the indifference to children more evident than in the media’s treatment of marriage and motherhood. Stories and reports say the following: marriage is not necessary for children, divorce is not much of a problem for children, shacking up is okay for children, moving children is okay too, putting children in institutionalized settings for 10-12 hours a day, that’s fine. What really matters is that the mothers of these children are happy and fulfilled. These obviously absurd stories get replayed and repeated with no critical analysis, even though most of the so-called research used to support them is unscientific and tainted by ideology. -Dr. Laura Schlessinger, “The Crisis of The American Family” (Emphasis my own.)

2. Dr. Erica Komisar on daycare:

Plus, can you imagine letting a stranger raise, get attached, and do who-knows-what to your kids while you’re not watching? (And God forbid the only way you have of keeping tabs on your child’s to-dos are via cameras and Daycare Report Cards, yuck.) Why can’t more parents think like that for their kids’ sakes?

3. More from Dr. Erica Komisar:

Whatever happened to gallantry and doing the honorable thing? Why do so many men nowadays lack the spine to provide for their families? Why can’t THEY (as the “providers”) look for another way to bring home the bacon that doesn’t sacrifice the kids’ wellbeing?

In previous generations, it was unheard of for a husband to encourage his wife to return to work after having a baby…. If anything, husbands didn’t want their wives to work because they felt it reflected poorly on them and their ability to provide. –Suzanne Venker

So please do everything in your power to stick to your guns on that one.

You don’t want to marry a gigolo (for lack of a better word?) who just cares for your money and what you’re like in bed. (In fairness and because I’m not attuned to many worldly things, do they even care what a woman’s like in bed? No? Just her money? Do you really want to be with someone like that for the rest of your life? Someone who considers your worth to be tied to your paycheck?)

Marry someone who instead prefers that YOU care for, watch, and love on for his future kids.

Catholic Social Teaching on Motherhood

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

Judging by how they referred to moms who work outside the home, previous Popes have practically come close to condemning the practice and even the forces that make families think that’s their only option.

According to a Catholic Culture article by writer Thomas Mirus, while “Pope St. John Paul II approved of women taking a legitimate place in the world of work,” he also “taught … that women and men do not have the same relationships with work, public life, and the home. Wives and mothers must prioritize their domestic role above all else”:

… [the] true advancement of women requires that clear recognition be given to the value of their maternal and family role, by comparison with all other public roles and all other professions…. Furthermore, the mentality which honors women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome. This requires that men should truly esteem and love women with total respect for their personal dignity, and that society should create and develop conditions favoring work in the home. (Familiaris consortio 23) –Thomas V. Mirus, Catholic Culture (Emphasis my own.)

In sum, St. John Paul II argued that society should favor “work in the home” for women.

Mirus adds that this position puts Saint JPII “in continuity with Leo XIII, who wrote in Rerum novarum: ‘Women…are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the well-being of the family’.” (42) (Emphasis my own.)

This is the consistent line of the popes in between Leo XIII and John Paul II, … [who] continued to stress the woman as the heart of the home and the home as the heart of the woman. –Thomas V. Mirus, Catholic Culture

Mirus then explores what Catholic social teaching argues regarding the economy as well, and yes, it relates to the unique structure of the family: “The teaching that employers ought to pay a “family wage” is predicated on the father, the head of the family, receiving this wage—this is seen in Rerum novarum (46) and in Pius XI’s Quadragesimo anno (71).”

FYI here’s Rerum Novarum #46:

46. If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.

(Side note: Isn’t it interesting how that’s also significantly opposing advocates of “owning nothing”?)

As well as Quadragesimo anno #71:

71. In the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family.[46] That the rest of the family should also contribute to the common support, according to the capacity of each, is certainly right, as can be observed especially in the families of farmers, but also in the families of many craftsmen and small shopkeepers. But to abuse the years of childhood and the limited strength of women is grossly wrong. Mothers, concentrating on household duties, should work primarily in the home or in its immediate vicinity. It is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of the father’s low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children. Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs adequately. (Emphasis my own.)

Even sT. John Paul II says the same in Laborem exercens:

Such [just] remuneration can be given either through what is called a family wage—that is, a single salary given to the head of the family for his work, sufficient for the needs of the family without the other spouse having to take up gainful employment outside the home—or through other social measures such as family allowances or grants to mothers devoting themselves exclusively to their families.

In her essay, The Case for Just Sex Discrimination, Margaret Harper MacCarthy adds:

As Erica Komisar shows in Being There… mothers are primed to remain attached to their newborns in a direct, bodily, way. for at least three years. The mother naturally “discriminates” in favor of her child, her attention and energy riveted to the child in a way not remotely comparable to the father’s. The child, in turn, “discriminates” in favor of the mother. The other side of this mutual privilege is, of course, the disproportionate burden on the woman. It is the mother who “ ‘pays’ directly for this shared generation, which literally absorbs the energies of her body and soul,” said John Paul II. The father has his disproportionate burdens, too; but they are also his privileges. (Emphasis my own to show that Mom is always indispensable at home, but even more so during the baby’s first three years.)

MacCarthy concludes:

But the emphasis, culturally and legally, should be on raising the next generation in a robust home, not warehousing it in pursuit of disembodied goals. For many women, their children, and their husbands, this would come as a relief. For others, it would mean sacrifice. But individual desires, talents, and capacities need to be subordinated to vocations. Indeed, everyone who has children sacrifices what he or she “wants to do.” But one thing they don’t sacrifice is work that’s worth doing: the building up of a whole culture of life

Would you believe me if I told you that just because woman can “have it all” their kids may not?

Framing “having it all” as an economic project, with little consideration to what our kids need and deserve, is not only shortsighted. It implies that the selflessness of motherhood is somehow beneath us.

Maria Baer, “Maybe Women Can Have It All-But Can Their Kids?

In her article for the Institute for Family Studies titled, “Maybe Women Can Have It All-But Can Their Kids?,” Maria Baer tackles the long‑standing tension between a woman’s professional ambitions and the well‑being of her children. Drawing on recent research, policy reports, and personal stories, she argues that while many women are able to achieve “it all” in terms of career success, this often comes at a cost to their children’s developmental, academic, and emotional outcomes. I highly recommend you read it!

In the meantime, here are some memorable quotes:

By definition, a woman’s attempt to have it all is a venture with multiple stakeholders. The most vulnerable stakeholders are, arguably, that woman’s children. Yet we seem to measure the outcomes without considering children at all. Why, whenever we set out to investigate whether women really can “have it all,” do we only ask whether she’s happy? (Emphasis my own)

… [There] is no boss, no industry, no political administration or nation who needs a woman more than her children need her. We pursue high-powered careers because we want to make an impact, to leave a legacy, to be remembered, or to change the world. There is no surer way to accomplish each of these than by mothering our own children—a job which, by definition, no one else in human history can do. (Emphasis my own)

It’s as clear as day: If you’re a Catholic or even an Orthodox Christian or Protestant woman who cares to live traditionally and do what’s best for your family, stay home with your children (listen, at least part-time while they’re very little, and later, when they’re at school), and marry a man who’ll want that, too.

SOURCES:

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Annie's the founder of Imperfectly Grateful, where she shares honest blog posts, helpful resources, neat printables, and beautiful Catholic phone backgrounds. She also runs a separate website to chronicle her homeschooling journey, and help/learn from other bilingual families. She's her husband's girlfriend and their kids' full-time mom.

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