Baby goes buy buy: once a child arrives, parents must turn their focus from retrofitting the bathroom, dining out and fancy vacations to budgeting for diapers, formula and day care

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 5, 2002 | by Alexandra Rockey Fleming

* Of 1,015 Americans surveyed in a 2001 Gallup poll, 41 percent said it was ideal for one parent to stay at home full time "solely" to raise the children. This was higher than in July 1991, when 39 percent said a stay-at-home parent was best.

"It's time to recognize that `quality child care' is provided every day by parents" and child-care discussions "must include the needs of those who do not pay others to care for their children," says Cathy Myers, executive director of Family and Home Network.

According to Myers and Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, a lot more could be done to support parents, regardless of their child-care choices. Myers suggests tax incentives for businesses offering health benefits to part-time workers. Carlson suggests a universal $2,500 "preschool" tax credit that would go to all parents of young children in lieu of the dependent-care tax credit, which primarily benefits parents who buy day care.

CHERYL WETZSTEIN WRITES FOR Insight'S SISTER DAILY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.

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Evelyn Buitrago was laid off from her high-paying consultancy job at Accenture in Miami in September. But she is happy to have more time to spend with her family and is looking for more personally fulfilling work.

Peter, who did not want his last name used, left his lucrative position as a stock analyst on Wall Street this spring so he could have more time to travel out West and tend to his personal life.

Rachel Feldman quit her time-consuming career as a health-care consultant with a six-figure salary so she could spend more time with her daughter, and open an art gallery in Arlington, Va.

These workers have found that their jobs and lifestyles are being transformed by profound changes arising from the recession last year, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Enron scandal. All three events called into question the quest for lucrative jobs and easy money that became the hallmark of the economic boom and bull market in the 1990s.

"The recession marked the end of the last era," says John Challenger, president of Chicago outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. "People now are looking for jobs with more meaning, more time to be with their children and not traveling all the time."

For many, Sept. 11 was a wake-up call. Shortly after the terrorist attacks, a poll by American Demographics magazine found that 77 percent of Americans wanted to spend more time with their families, while only 19 percent thought making a lot of money was important. More recently, 70 percent of those interviewed in a Ranstad North America poll said family was the greater priority, up from 54 percent in 2000, when the economic boom was peaking.

The recession since March 2001, which prompted mass layoffs and the loss of nearly 1.8 million jobs nationwide, accelerated the change of attitude, according to Challenger. "The heavy job losses may have eroded loyalty to large organizations and cultivated the idea that personal satisfaction is more important than higher pay," he says.