Margarete Perriseau 04-21-16 FHS Marriage and Family U5 E2 Working Parents

Question
Assume that you and your spouse or partner are the parents of two children. If you had the
choice of (a) living very comfortably on two incomes and sending your preschoolers to a child
care center or (b) living on the verge of poverty while one of you stays home to be full-time
homemaker, what would you do? Explain.
Answer
Before I address the pressures on todays couples to become two-career parents with
children at home, I will begin with an interview I conducted with a young couple who are in the
midst of trying to resolve this issue in their own family. They are concerned about their two
children, the tight finances they live with, and their educational goals to get beyond their current
situation. It puts the question into the real world, with all their conflicting issues.
We are a family that has been married for almost 4 years. In April, 2015, we had twin
girls. Having to deal with infant twin girls over the last 10 months, together with our first two
children, has brought its challenges and its benefits. Currently, one of us works full time and
goes to school, while the other works part time and also goes to school. We take turns caring for
the babies and working, so that one parent is always with the children.
In our society today, paying for daycare is very expensive, even for one child. We have
two children who would be in daycare. Currently our parents and other family members live in
California and Texas, so we dont have family here to watch over our children. My wife is a fulltime teacher; as you know, teachers dont get paid enough; and I just work part time. We make
just enough money to pay our bills and our expenses for education. To repeat, since daycare is
very expensive, and since we do not have any family to watch our girls, we decided we had no

Margarete Perriseau 04-21-16 FHS Marriage and Family U5 E2 Working Parents

other choice but to figure out how to do everything ourselves. We also did not want to have
someone else raise our daughters in their early stages of life.
Another reason why we would not pay for daycare, even if we had the money, is that
you dont know if they are treating your child with proper care. A lot of children get sick and
still come to daycare; your own child has the risk of getting sick while surrounded by sick
children. Right now our plan is for my wife to stay home with our children until they turn 8 or
10; at that point she could go back to teaching at a university, while I then have a full-time job
after finishing my degree.
Ultimately we feel that living within our small income and taking care of our daughters
ourselves greatly outweighs having all the money in the world and not being able to bond with
our children.
This couple obviously has great discipline to put up with considerable hardship for an
extended period of time, while they patiently work toward what they think will be an easier
future. They have strong attitudes about the importance of being there for their children, even
though it requires a kind of two-shift marriage and family life. Nevertheless, the vision of their
future still includes both of them working, although at higher levels of both income and rank in
society. Even though their current situation would probably be described as in poverty, they
demonstrate middle-class attitudes and goals. In talking with them, it is clear that they do not
consider themselves poor. They would describe themselves as in a temporary early stage of
development to enter into full middle-class status.
As a summary, our textbook provides a good description of the attitudes of this couple
toward their lives: Middle-class marriages tend to be ideologically more egalitarian and are
often two-career marriages. In fact middle-class lifestyles increasingly require two incomes.

Margarete Perriseau 04-21-16 FHS Marriage and Family U5 E2 Working Parents

This creates both benefits and costs for middle-class women [and men]. . . . Middle-class
marriages are ideologically more egalitarian because middle-class couples more highly value
and more readily accept the ideal of marriage as a sharing, communicating relationship in which
spouses function as best friends. I see myself mirrored in the comments of these two young,
struggling parents (Strong & Cohen, 2014, p. 87).

References
Strong, B., & Cohen, T. F. (2014). The marriage and family experience: Intimate
relationships in a changing society (12th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.