The magazine where I work is torn as to what term to use. In many of our articles, we have to refer to all of the interview subjects in some way, and the ones with outside careers are captioned, “personnel VP,” or “makeup artist,” or “chef,” or whatever.
But how do we refer to the women who stay at home and take care of the kids, w/o being insulting, coyly p.c. or condescending? What is the preferred phrase these days?
[Note: wise-ass answers are always welcome, of course, but this is an actual question which I have to bring up with my editors for the next issue!]
Since I’ve been at home on and off for the last 13 years, I tend to put my profession as “Homemaker”. Could it be in the construction biz? Sure. But it’s not.
Thanks, all—I will print this out next week and present it to my editors.
I think “work-at-home mom” might imply a home business, like freelance editing or making tchotchkas . . . And “homemaker” would get us raked over the coals for sure.
I dunno about work from home mom. I work from home, on occasion, but for a big company. I could see that label being confusing considering that many people have home offices.
I was going to suggest full-time mom too, as I see a lot of women write that on applications at my job. But I’ve heard other women be offended by that as well, saying that it implies anyone who has a job outside of the house is only a part-time mom.
Can’t use “parent,” as that implies that mothers who work nine-to-five aren’t parents. Same reason, as Elret says, we can’t use “full-time mom,” as that would piss-off working mothers.
We can’t win for losin’ . . . All we can hope to do is offend as few people as possible.
I also prefer Full-time Mom. Not that being a working mom is really part time, to me, it just indicates that I choose to stay home without the thought of sitting on my ass eating chocolate all day.