I want to work full time after 11 years as a stay-at-home mom. But I can't afford it

Yvonne So
Updated ·4 min read
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One ignored demographic this legislative season: moms.

We’re the social safety net of our American society. We contribute to a $1.5 trillion economy of unpaid female work that overlaps with the care economy.

While immeasurably personally rewarding, this work has setbacks that even our president acknowledged with his April 18 executive order increasing access to high-quality care and supporting caregivers.

Our legislative session saw some valiant efforts like House Bill 2146 to provide full-day kindergarten and HB 2407 to appropriate funds for a pre-K pilot program.

But neither advanced past their committees, and barely made a blip in the news cycle or the Request to Speak system, a bellwether for public interest and support for legislation.

Lack of child care is a major economic problem

Bipartisan bills aimed at addressing the child care crisis are advancing throughout state legislatures outside of Arizona.

These family first, pro-mom bills are a starting point that give us the structural support and emotional bandwidth to convert our unpaid labor to paid work.

Coming together for moms may be just what would help our Arizona legislators to play nice in the sandbox.

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce report in April 2022 estimated that 1 million women remain missing from the labor force.

The top factors spurring this phenomenon: career burnout, scarcity of child care and the inability to pay for child care. There are obvious overlaps.

Nearly half of Arizonans live in a child-care desert, a term for any census tract with more than three times as many children under 5 as licensed child care providers.

In Arizona, this child care, when available, costs more than in-state college tuition.

Arizona loses big money to this each year

This lack of labor force partition has grave economic consequences.

A Boston Consulting Group brief forecasts our country will lose $290 billion each year in GDP in 2030 and beyond if women and moms cannot participate in the workforce.

The U.S. Chamber Foundation estimates Arizona alone loses $1.77 billion every year because of child care issues.

We need to invest in the care economy and provide better support for mothers and caregivers.

We can start by:

  • investing in affordable and high-quality child care,

  • expanding access to and coverage for paid family and medical leave,

  • incentivizing employer-sponsored child care,

  • extending Medicaid through the postpartum period, and

  • increasing funding for programs that support elder care.

To enact this change, however, we need to change the culture around the importance of care jobs, which when paid, is typically hourly paid work done by women of color that do not include benefit packages.

And when it’s unpaid, those jobs are typically shouldered by moms.

As a mom, I can't afford to work full time

I have been a full time stay-at-home mom for the last 11 years, and 100% of my work is unpaid.

I also hit a big mom milestone this year: My youngest son started part-time pre-K, which means I have a block of “free time” during the day, three days a week.

I naturally tried job searching, thinking I could get a flexible, part-time position. The results were soul crushing.

According to any corporate HR department, any “work skill” I may have possessed pre-mom is dead.

Child care is tough: Phoenix plans new center at airport

And my 11 years of raising the boys 24/7 with no paid time off or sick leave are a gaping white space on my resume with very little “real world” application.

I have cobbled together seasonal projects, gig work, and I continue to do a lot of volunteer work within the community.

But without job flexibility, flexible child care that costs less than my wages, the math just doesn’t work for me to work full time.

How do single moms even do this?

I have become another statistic to prove the “motherhood penalty,” which refers to the gap in pay between fathers and mothers that grows until their children reach 10 years old, and never fully goes away.

I am acutely aware I have a very first world, privileged problem. My family has the luxury to live off my husband's income. If I do not work, my family still eats, and we still have benefits.

Yet if I am facing these types of challenges, I cannot imagine how any single mom whose child care costs are more than 30% of her monthly income has the time or energy to share her math equation for staying right side up in a newspaper op-ed.

With $1.1 trillion in Treasury holdings, Japan is the largest holder of U.S. debt. At a conservative estimate of $1.5 trillion, American women and moms’ unpaid work make us the largest creditor to our nation.

Show moms love by reciprocating our investment in America; it’s an investment that will yield outsized returns as moms never have a losing year.

Yvonne So is a mom, AAPI activist and host of iHeart Radio and Seneca Women podcast, “Cashing our Trillions,” which spotlights the work moms do to sustain the $1.5 trillion economy of unpaid female work. She is a member of the Board of Contributors for The Arizona Republic. Reach her at cashingourtrillions@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why stay-at-home moms like me can't rejoin the workforce