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