Press Releases

Press release from The Iona Institute

Stay-at-home mothers becoming an endangered species new Census data reveal

June 29, 2012 – NEW CENSUS data released yesterday show that the stay-at-home mother is becoming an endangered species.

Census 2011 reveals that the number of stay-at-home mothers is plummeting by almost 10,000 per annum and this rate of decline has been going on for over 20 years.

Commenting on the figures on behalf of The Iona Institute, Professor Patricia Casey said: “The new Census data should give us pause. We have to find out whether the number of stay-at-home mothers is falling due to the choices women are making or are these women being forced into the workplace out of economic necessity?”

She continued: “To put it another way, have we replaced ‘a woman’s place in the home’ with ‘a woman’s place is in the workforce’?”

According to Census 2011 there were 321,300 women at home fulli-time last year, down from 370,878 five years eariler.

Of the 2011 figure, 230,000 were married women, compared with 264,000 in 2006. This is a fall of 13 percent. (The figures do not include people past retirement age).

The total number of women working full-time in the home, both married and unmarried was 653,000 in 1986, meaning the number of women in the home has dropped by more than 300,000 in 25 years, a spectacular fall.

Professor Casey concluded: “This massive social change has happened without any real debate taking place as to its desirability, or its effects on children, if any. We need to have this debate now. We cannot allow ourselves to become a society in which it is extremely difficult for mothers or fathers to raise their children at home if that is their wish."

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The Iona Institute is a pro-family think tank