A recent Gallup poll showed that stay-at-home moms are more likely than employed moms to report feeling sadness or anger, and to have been diagnosed with depression. Employed moms are about as emotionally well-off as working women who do not have children at home. The results are based on surveys of more than 60,000 American women between the ages of 18 and 64. The categories for employed mothers and at-home mothers refer to women who have a child under 18 at home.
“Stay at home moms,” Gallup reported, also “lag behind” in positive emotions. “They are less likely to say they smiled or laughed a lot, learned something interesting, and experienced enjoyment and happiness “.
The Gallup authors suggest that our failure as a society to recognize the difficulty of staying at home and raising children is what contributes to the emotional differences. They go on to state that if the high cost of child care is what’s keeping a mother at home, then she didn’t really have much of a “choice”, and that in itself would contribute to the unhappiness.
Read more from The New York Times here and let us know, how does this resonate with you?