Mothers Do It All for Love--but Money Helps

By MELISSA HEALY

Aug. 22, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

For Jenny Shreve-Alcazar, full-time motherhood has a thousand rewards. For Holly Richter, it has a thousand and one.

The difference is a paycheck.

Shreve-Alcazar and Richter have left the paid work force to care for their children themselves at home. Shreve-Alcazar, who lives with her husband and two children in the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista, does it for love, and her decision has taken a bite out of her family’s income. Richter, a wife and mother of two in Glenwood, Minn., also does it for love. But there’s money in it too.

That’s because the state of Minnesota, in a fledgling program to make at-home parenthood pay for low-income and working-class families, sends Richter $259 a month in response to her decision to stay home in her baby’s first year.

The result is that a choice that would have plunged Richter’s family into poverty is now a feasible option. The young mother cannot decide who benefits more--her or her children. But she is sure that society is better off for it.

“I absolutely love staying home with my children, watching them grow,” Richter said. “I learn so much from them, and they learn so much from me. Not everyone can stay home, and I feel very blessed that I can.”

Stay-at-Home Parents’ Emerging Activism

Stay-at-home mothers are beginning to gain new governmental concessions and a growing political voice after years spent on the sidelines as large numbers of mothers flocked to the workplace.

“There is an emerging activism on behalf of at-home mothers--and fathers,” said Heidi Brennan, public policy director of Mothers at Home, a national nonprofit group based in Vienna, Va., with nearly 30,000 members nationwide.

They write and e-mail organizations like Mothers at Home and FEMALE to learn more about “sequencing” work and child-rearing, about at-home work opportunities and about making traditional workplaces work better for parents.

In recent years, state and federal initiatives for improving day care have mounted, bringing new money and attention to the needs of children with working parents. But in the last year a new political dynamic has emerged. Each new day-care proposal is prompting politicians to seek benefits for stay-at-home parents as well.

Even President Clinton, who has championed a $21-billion package of day-care subsidies and tax breaks, has drawn on Republican proposals and urged Congress to enact a tax break for at-home parents.

To Shreve-Alcazar, a special-education teacher until the birth of her first child 2 1/2 years ago, the new political dynamic is long overdue.

“They’re always talking about [paid] child care. It’s like the central issue,” Shreve-Alcazar said of politicians. “Instead of talking about better and more child care, why not educate people about staying at home with their kids? Why not do things that would make it easier to stay at home and not treat it like it’s some rare privilege that only rich people can afford?”

In Minnesota two years ago, the new political dynamic resulted in overwhelming passage of the At-Home Infant Care program, a first-of-its-kind effort to provide a financial incentive for mothers to stay home with their newborns.

The program is the brainchild of State Rep. Richard “Doc” Mulder, a family physician from the tiny town of Ivanhoe, Minn. He won support across the political spectrum with his argument that in the interests of children’s health and emotional development, mothers should stay home with their babies as long as possible.

In short, he said, it was time for politicians to put their money--or their taxpayers’ money--where their mouths were.

His solution was to draft a law that would offer a lower-income parent a choice between using the state’s subsidy to pay for child care or staying home and pocketing the stipend instead. A family of four earning as much as $45,438 a year before one parent left the work force would be able to qualify for stipends that would hover around $250 a month. As long as the parent remained the baby’s “primary caregiver,” the checks would keep coming for as much as a year after a child’s birth.

For Richter, her stay-at-home stipend brings her family’s yearly income to about $17,500. Her husband is a computer student who picks up work-study jobs at school and puts in as many hours a week as he can at Target, where his wife worked 20 to 30 hours a week until the birth of their son, Zachary, four months ago. Richter said that the program helps low-income families like hers “to get by so we can make a better life for our children” and readily acknowledges that for families in middle-income brackets “there isn’t anything out there. . . . And that’s too bad.”

Now there are 57 mothers participating in the state program, at an average annual stipend of $3,000 each.

Mulder hopes in coming years to extend the program beyond a child’s first year and to make it available to more middle-income Minnesotans. He has had inquiries about the program from lawmakers in dozens of states and believes that, if such programs are to spread, it will be at the state level.

But budget-conscious politicians have rightly assumed that there will always be women in the world like Shreve-Alcazar, who will make at-home motherhood work at no charge to the government.

While pregnant, Shreve-Alcazar only vaguely considered quitting her then-$30,000-a-year teaching job to stay home with her children. But, she said, her mind was made up the moment she saw her daughter, Star, 2 1/2 years ago.

“When the baby came, I just knew that nobody else was going to be raising her but me,” Shreve-Alcazar said. “I knew I was the best qualified for the position, and it was important to me that she learn the things I could teach her. I just couldn’t justify teaching other people’s children and sending my own child to someone else to take care of. I said, this is my new career.”

Value of Mom’s Work: $507,200 a Year

Today about 36% of married women with children under 6 make the same choice as Shreve-Alcazar, staying out of the work force while their children are still preschoolers. Another 29% work jobs that are part-time or part-year, allowing them to take part in their children’s care. A recent study by Edelman Financial Services of Fairfax, Va., estimated that a mother’s work would be worth almost $507,200 per year if she were paid at standard professional rates for all the services she performs, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Alcazars live in a modest Chula Vista home that they can afford on the $35,000 salary that Shreve-Alcazar’s husband earns teaching second grade in the San Diego Unified school system. To stay afloat financially, he and his wife drive two old cars that are fully paid for, go on “dates” at home after the kids are in bed and eat a lot of pasta, rice and beans.

She considers herself lucky beyond measure. But, she said, “It doesn’t really have to do with luck.

“We’re not a wealthy family. It’s something you decide to do. We had a choice. Everyone has choices, and you need to decide where your sacrifices are going to be. It’s not about affording it. It’s about choosing to afford it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

For More Child Care Information

* An extensive list of child care resources and the complete Caring for Our Children series are available on the Times’ Web site:

https://www.latimes.com/caring

* Mothers at Home (a national nonprofit organization):

8310A Old Courthouse Road

Vienna, VA 22182

(703) 827-5903

https://www.mah.org/

* FEMALE (for women who have altered their career paths to care for the children):

P.O. Box 31

Elmhurst, IL 60126