TheLoop21.com

By: Raechal Leone (Add to your loop)
Fri, 09/25/2009 - 12:33

Another downside of the recession? Limited choices for women.

The great thing about money isn't what you can buy with it, but what you can do with it. Take some time off work to spend with your family. Stop worrying about how you'll be able to pay for your kids to go to college or to retire. Finally do some Oprah-style living, traveling and eating healthy food whipped up by your personal chef.

Money equals the freedom to choose how to spend your life. And unfortunately for us, many women are losing out on those choices this year and will for years to come, because of the recession. Men are affected by the recession, too, of course, and have lost more jobs than women because of it, but we have to remember women had less money and let's face it, choice, even before the recession.

Then, this week, the results of a new survey from the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute showed 44 percent of women asked are waiting to have children or not having more children for economic reasons. The 947 women included in the study were ages 18 to 34 and live in households earning less than $75,000 per year.

Considering the government's estimate parents spend up to about $250,000 per child from birth to age 17, we should all be taking the financial implications of deciding to have a child very seriously.

At the same time we're stressing over whether we can afford children, we're also worried about our financial situation. Many highly educated women are returning to work after leaving to raise children or for some other reason, as a direct result of the recession, according to economists quoted in a story in The New York Times.

The piece focused mostly on married women with (at least previously) affluent families, but it also revealed more women overall are jumping back into work to take the place of those being laid off. That's not happening with men, probably because more of them were working before the recession began. "The percentage of women aged 20 and above in the work force has remained relatively flat during the recession, while the percentage of men has fallen slightly," Steven Greenhouse wrote.

Even more women want to work. Black women had an unemployment rate of 11.9 percent in August, while white women faced a rate of 6.9 percent. The overall national unemployment rate is at 9.7 percent.

What it all comes down to is this: More women who didn't want to work before the recession are working now, and more women who wanted children before the recession are rethinking it. Less money equals fewer choices once again.

Raechal Leone is TheLoop21.com's senior editor and content manager. She writes the Inside the Loop blog.