Staying home with kids vs. paid work: what the research says

Learn how economic principles can help you make thoughtful work and family decisions.

Before You Start

Goal: Apply economic research to your real work-life decisions. Examine the tradeoffs you're making to maximize long-term success and happiness for you and for your family.

Watch: "The Economics of Working Motherhood" — Myra Strober, Stanford University / Lean In. Members are encouraged to watch beforehand, but a quick recap at the meeting works too.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 60 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Key Takeaways · 5 mins
  • Activity · 20 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

What's one tradeoff you've made between your career and family that worked well? And what is one you'd reconsider if you could?

💡 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

Most of us make major career and family decisions without knowing the research about long-term consequences. Economic principles can help us see more clearly.

  • Your human capital is your greatest asset. Education, experience, skills, and professional relationships compound over time. Stepping away from building them for a year or more has a real cost that's often invisible in the short term.
  • Childcare costs are an investment. Even if childcare costs are the same as your pay for several years, your long-term earnings and career trajectory may improve if you stay in the workforce.
  • Opportunity cost is always present. Every choice to stay, scale back, or step away has a cost on the other side. Making the costs visible helps you choose more consciously.
  • Efficiency gains matter. Strategies for maximizing productivity at work can make tradeoffs more realistic.
  • Short-term optimization can damage long-term wellbeing. Saving on childcare costs this year can create long-term costs in your pay, career progression, and wellbeing.

🏋️ Activity · 20 mins

Apply the economics framework (20 mins)

Step 1: List your current work-life challenges (5 mins)

Individually, write down work-life challenges you're facing today or will face soon: deciding whether to take a new role, asking for a flexible schedule, considering a career pause, managing workload through a major life transition.

Step 2: Apply the economic lens to one challenge (8 mins)

For one item on your list, consider:

  • Human capital: What is the long-term impact on your skills, earnings, and career trajectory?
  • Opportunity cost: What are you giving up on either side of this choice?
  • Short vs. long term: Does this optimize for right now, for five years from now, or both?
  • Efficiency: Are there ways you can save time and energy, or maximize productivity, through this challenge?

Step 3: Share with the Circle (7 mins)

Each person shares one decision they're facing and what they learned by applying the economic lens.

✍️ Write It Down · 2 mins

Take a few minutes to connect the discussion to your own life.

Think about the work-life challenge you just discussed, or another work-life challenge. Is there anything you plan to do differently, based on the economic framework?

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action, big or small, you'll take before next meeting.

Before your next meeting, identify one concrete action you'll take based on today's discussion: researching a decision's economic outcomes or adjusting a work-family tradeoff that isn't serving you well.

Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, plan your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between