A luxury for the lazy? Not on my hectic, stressful, messy, painful, hair-greying but entirely worth-it, beautiful, filled-with-wholesomeness life with littles. Call it, rather, a labor of love, a blessing from God, a high calling, a season of sacrifice.
"Dunst expresses appreciation for the work that her stay-at-home mother did and makes the obvious observation that such work is sometimes undervalued in our culture.
"Undervalued, and often misrepresented. The writer Ariane Sommer, in reaction to Dunst’s comments, told Fox News that “people nowadays have to make a living and simply can’t afford the luxury of spending the entire day at home.” Actually, for many families, it makes economic sense for a parent to provide full-time child care rather than paying someone else to do it, given the cost of day care, transportation, and taxes on additional family income. Most stay-at-home mothers are middle-class; they are not indulging in a “luxury.” As the New York Times has reported, Census Bureau data show that “65 percent of married women who stay home with children under 18 years old live in households that earn less than $75,000 a year.”
