This article was originally published on Compact Magazine on August 21, 2025 behind a paywall.
Media reports generally give the impression that families with a stay-at-home parent fit a particular mold: white, rich, and Republican. The New York Times, for example, recently published a story with the title: “Not Just More Babies: Republicans Want More Parents to Stay Home.” It noted that some in the Trump Administration believe “stronger families are formed … when a parent stays home.” These types of stories give a misleading idea of who stay-at-home parents really are, thus causing needless polarization around family policy that can support American families in all their diversity.
First, many families with a stay-at-home parent are not wealthy. Extensive research by the Institute for Family Studies reflects that the income distribution of stay-at-home parents forms a “U-shaped” curve, with both wealthier and poorer moms being more likely to stay home than middle-class mothers. The iconic stay-at-home mom is not a billionaire’s wife on Fifth Avenue, but rather an ordinary mom in a Midwestern town (who may or may not be white or American-born, given high numbers of immigrant stay-at-home parents) struggling to balance the home budget.
Nor are stay-at-home parents exclusively women. In 2023, Pew found that almost 20 percent of stay-at-home parents are fathers. We at the think tank Capita recently conducted research into these dads. They defy expectations. One of the dads we talked to told us: “I cook 80 percent of the food that goes in anybody’s mouth in this house. And some of the gentlemen I go to church with … haven’t even made a meal in their own kitchen in 20 years.” Stay-at-home parents often get caught up in debates about feminism and women’s advancement. How much would it change the conversation if we realized that many of them are men?
Further confounding expectations, many stay-at-home parents work even as they assume primary responsibility for young children. As part of our research, we talked to parents who had primary responsibility for a child under 12 during the day, regardless of whether they made money or not. We talked to a nurse, for example, who works the night shift a few nights a week, and then sleeps in and homeschools her children when she wakes up. We also talked to two married parents who work split shifts at a hotel in order to avoid putting their baby in a child care program. In other words, they are pulling double-duty as both caretakers of their kids and contributors to the family bank account.
Nor are stay-at-home parents ideologically associated with one particular party. Rather, they are relatively evenly split between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Our research revealed that in a large sample of these parents, around 40 percent of respondents identified as Republicans, 37 percent as Democrats, and 24 percent as independents or “other.” Historically, proposals to support such parents have also come from both parties. President Bill Clinton, for example, supported a bipartisan proposal that would have allowed stay-at-home parents to use the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (currently only available to parents working, studying, or looking for work outside the home).
Stay-at-home parents are not a uniform subculture or tiny minority. The majority of infants and toddlers are not in formal external care, like a licensed childcare program: rather, they are cared for by a parent, a parent/grandparent combination, or (more infrequently) by friends or neighbors. The usage of external child care arrangements goes up as children get older, but many families continue to express a preference for less formal types of childcare.
This does not obviate the need for robust public investment in external child care. A solid percentage of American families require or prefer it. But we also need a “both-and” approach that centers families over funding streams. Indeed, conventional wisdom often casts childcare in the United States as a dichotomy, in which working parents use childcare, and stay-at-home parents do not. This misunderstands the complex web of how childcare actually works. Stay-at-home parents often provide care for other children—or even open up small, in-home daycares to watch other children as well as their own.
Many stay-at-home parents also need childcare to go to appointments or simply to take a break. Yet in our survey, while most said they needed care at least several times a month, 41 percent reported they “rarely” or “almost never” had access to it. Politicians who want to understand the childcare needs of Americans must also understand families with a stay-at-home parent.
Second, many stay-at-home parents do vital work. In one of our focus groups, we spoke with spouses of actively deployed military service members. One participant, S., told us a typical story of becoming a stay-at-home parent: “It wasn’t like a deliberate, ‘I’m going to stay home,’ it was, it was kind of circumstantial.” In S.’s case, her spouse’s ongoing deployments in the armed forces meant that she has gone in and out of the workforce based on family needs. S.’s flexibility is vital to her family; and her family is, of course, vital to our national security. Despite this important role, S. does not often feel valued by our wider society: “I think it’s hard saying that you’re not working.”
Other vital work done by these parents includes: caring for disabled children, caring for the elderly, and volunteering. They are, in many ways, a crucial neighborhood safety net. We spoke with Kelly Mantoan, a homeschooling mom who has five children, two with the same degenerative neuromuscular disease. She is doing heroic work in caring for her two youngest children, who are wheelchair-bound, and need round-the-clock care indefinitely.
Society relies on these parents—but has yet to recognize it. Media reports that pigeon-hole stay-at-home parents as a regressive social bloc contribute to this incomprehension. Rather than a throwback to the past, stay-at-home parents are an important part of our present and future. With this fuller picture of stay-at-home parents, we firmly believe neither policymakers nor media should engage in their own version of the “Mommy Wars” (the conflict between working and at-home moms), but rather recognize that these parents are doing vital work that needs and deserves social support. While many of those who want to support stay-at-home parents are conservative, prominent liberals are also in favor of such parents. This issue should be seen not as a partisan issue, but rather as a human one.
Elliot Haspel and Ivana Greco are Senior Fellows at Capita