Stay-at-home wives without children - a status symbol?

Researcher and author Scott Haltzman says that more than 10 percent of the hundreds of stay-at-home women he has interviewed are childless. The story makes it sound like an abnormally high percentage. That seems like a low percentage to me. I would expect it to be 20 or 30 percent. Many people I know don't have kids. And kids are expensive, so not having kids means you have more disposable income, and therefore there's less need for both spouses to work, meaning it's more likely that such couples would have one partner stay at home.

I disagree more vehemently, though, with Daniel Buccino's view from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He says that stay-at-home childless women are "status symbols," symbols of "an extreme and visible luxury."

Hmph. My darling wife is a stay-at-home. She has two bachelors degrees and a master's degree, and worked for a decade in the oil business as a scientist. She got tired of stupid corporate life and incessant male chauvinism, and decided to quit. She wasn't rich, and she wasn't destitute. She supported herself after that by working as a housekeeper for several families for another decade. It was simple work that merely required responsible diligence, which she has in spades.

Then I met her, and she continued to work in the good economy of the city where we lived. But when we moved to the jungle, where old people on fixed incomes won't pay much for housekeepers, she decided it wasn't worth her time to work anymore. And I agreed.

She stays home and makes our home beautiful. She takes care of me, takes care of the house, takes care of the cats and our relatives who live near us, takes care of our neighbors, and volunteers a lot of time to the county to help with park maintenance and development. She does a wonderful job at all of it.

Are we rich? No. Is she a status symbol of my luxury? No. It's my job as her husband to support her, and give her the means to do what she wants to do with her time, because I love her, and I want her to be happy.

I think our life is better because she stays home. Sure, we could use more money if she worked. But what would we use it on? We have what we need. It's more worthwhile for her to enjoy her time as she sees fit. If she's happy, I'm happy, and I've done my job.

I think these ivory-tower researchers place value judgments where they are not needed.