Interesting Facts and Statistics about Work at Home Moms

in the past, there were only two types of mothers: the stay-at-home caregiver mom and the working mom. However, the line between staying at home and working is now getting blurred. Instead of asking “Do I work or do I stay at home?” mothers are now asking “What work can I do while at home?” In today’s economy, many mothers can now take on various sidelines and freelance opportunities while staying at home to keep earning some income while being able to take care of the house and the kids.  Of course, this makes for very busy mom’s who have to juggle a lot to manage all their many responsibilities.

It’s a nice trend, actually. A survey has revealed that among the working moms, 51% of them feel guilty about not spending enough time with their kids and spouses and about not being able to keep the house clean. Many of the mothers who are only working only for the paycheck score 11% lower on the engagement index than career-oriented ones. It means they are often less effective on their job, limiting their potentials for success due to their home-related stress.

Meanwhile, 55% of stay-at-home moms are worried about not making a contribution to the finances of the family. They are also being stressed because they feel they are being frowned upon by society, especially that degree-holder, stay-at-home moms. Some say you don’t have to earn that master’s degree to change diapers! Telecommuting, or working from home, spared other stay-at-home moms from these concerns because they can work while caretaking.

Here are some other interesting facts about work at home moms:

1. Sixty-two percent of stay-at-home mothers are contributing to their household income, and about a quarter of them are running a business from home. One big contributing factor is the accessibility of the Internet through Wi-Fi in almost all areas.

2. Almost a third of the stay-at-home moms are workers contributing income to their family, and they work an average of 4.5 hours a day.

 

3. Telecommuting is most popular among moms. Many even consider that working from home is a “mommy thing,” but in reality, the number of women and men who telecommute is just about equal. According to a report by Global Workplace Analytics and FlexJobs, 52% of telecommuters in America are women, while the other 48% are men. There is no exact data about how many of that 52 % are mothers, but we bet it’s a big portion.

4. There are 10.1 million women-owned businesses in the country, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. Again, there is no exact statistics as to how many are run by stay-at-home moms, but their numbers are surely increasing.

 

5. Blogging is the “in” thing for mothers nowadays. Type in “mom bloggers” and you’d see thousands of stay-at-home moms putting up stories of their daily lives online. Mothers share tips about motherhood, single parenting, cooking and recipes, adoption, homeschooling and a whole lot of various topics. You might be thinking that isn’t profitable work. But many are making huge money from their blogs as they get more and more views, attracting endorsement offers, speaking engagements, book deals and more. They become influential to other moms who are most likely having the same situations as them. Bloggers also get great perks such as freebies from brands asking to review their product, with some receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of products monthly.

 

6. Most working, stay-at-home moms say the desire for family flexibility is the leading reason why they work from home, according to Ellen Parlapiano. co-founder of Mompreneurs Online. She says, another reason is the growing acceptance of the society, wherein working from home is now common and even respectable. In the past, mothers have been hesitant to tell their clients that they work from home.

7. More mothers nowadays are preferring to stay at home compared in the 90s. The last three decades of the 20th century has shown continuous decline in the number of stay-at-home mothers, only to be reversed in the 21st The number of moms who do not work outside the home rose to 29% in 2012 from a modern-era low of 23% in 1999, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. This turnaround seems to be affected by different factors, and one is the observed impact of working mothers on young children. Many millennial mothers nowadays are raised by working mothers who participated actively in the labor force outside the home. Their mothers had a lack of quality time for giving adequate guidance and for building deep relationships with their children, which negatively affected children’s character development and performance. Most probably, moms of today simply don’t want their children to be raised how they were raised.

8. Another study from Pew Research Center revealed that 48% of stay-at-home moms in 2007 consider being home full time as an ideal situation, compared to only 39% of mothers having the same opinion in 1997. This arrangement is more and more considered as ideal because of wide telecommuting opportunities available. Also, this is somehow caused by a backlash among the millennials in a sense that they are modelling themselves after their grandmothers, not their mothers – who mostly struggled in balancing priorities for family and work, and had problems with their marriages. This doesn’t mean that the millennial moms are giving less concern about career advancement; they are more concerned about living a balanced life than proving they can do all things.

9. Businesses owned by stay-at-home mothers used to be more about arts and crafts, and other types of livelihood that involves product selling. Nowadays, mothers are building their own businesses that provide professional services such as tutoring, Web design and programming, social media analysis, customer service, being a marketing guru, product designing, legal counselling, home healthcare recruitment and many others (thanks to technology and the Internet)!

10. Working, stay-at-home moms are worth more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. A study cited by Fox News in 2008 looked at the pay of ten different jobs that require workers to perform the same tasks as the stay-at-home moms (teaching, cleaning, community building, etc.), and the total came out to be $116,805 annually. Imagine if a stay-at-home mom has a professional job – her value would be much greater! When the same was done to working moms, their worth is found out to be at an average of $68,405.