Census Bureau study also finds stay-at-home moms skew younger
Sonia Martinez and many other mothers who take their children to the Guadalupe Head Start program worked before they had children.
Martinez, 30, worked for a cleaning service. Others like Laura Ocegueda worked at a restaurant, as did Isela Patino. Luz Melendez did in-home baby-sitting.
But once their children were born, these four women - all from Mexico and all with working husbands - quit their jobs to stay home with their children.
They are among an estimated 5.6 million stay-at-home moms who are more likely to be young, Hispanic and foreign-born, according to a first-ever report that looks at the characteristics of mothers who stay home to take care of their children.
"There was a lot of play in the press about the 'opt out revolution' and the idea that was floated that stay-at-home moms who were highly educated and successful professional women were opting out of the workforce to stay home," said Diana Elliott, a demographer who co-authored the new U.S. Census Bureau report with Rose Kreider.
"So we decided to look at the characteristics of stay-at-home moms with a representative sample to see if that was the case. It was not."
The study, released Thursday, showed that 27% of stay-at-home moms were Hispanic, with 34% being foreign-born. READ FULL STORY
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