For Immediate Release
Contact: Catherine Myers
703-304-3982
Family and Home Network Speaks up
for Stay-at-Home Mothers on Wikipedia
ALEXANDRIA, VA—May 2, 2024. Family and Home Network (FAHN) discovered that the Wikipedia page for “Stay-at-Home mother” redirects to “Housewife” and set out to change it. FAHN penned a new Wikipedia entry for Stay-at-Home mother, which can be read on our website. We plan to post it to Wikipedia on May 7. This is the organization’s 40th anniversary project
“Stay-at-home mothers are often ignored or stereotyped in cultural and political conversations. Although stay-at-home parents do essential work, they're not considered part of the workforce and their work is not counted in the GDP," says Willow Duttge Tepper, member of the FAHN Board of Directors and lead of the project.
“Though homemaking skills should never be denigrated, at-home mothers must not be misidentified as housewives,” says Catherine Myers, Executive Director of FAHN. “Most at-home mothers are focused on their children’s needs and on their own desire to spend time together with their children. Family and Home Network is happy to set the record straight.”
FAHN has four decades of experience listening to and speaking up to dispel misconceptions about at-home mothers, and the team brought that knowledge to the Wikipedia entry. It’s important because all families must be included in family policy, and many families with an at-home parent are economically vulnerable.
Unfortunately most U.S. family policy is crafted through the lens of “working families,” leaving out at-home mothers and at-home fathers, who are forgoing paid employment in order to care for their children by choice or by circumstance. FAHN found that stay-at-home fathers have their own Wikipedia page, and now stay-at-home mothers have one too.
“Care has value, whether it's done by child care providers or by parents themselves,” says Myers. “At-home mothers, at-home fathers, and other unpaid caregivers must be recognized and their care counted and supported with equitable, inclusive family policies.”
FAHN is a grassroots nonprofit organization founded by three at-home mothers in 1984, and originally named Mothers at Home. In 2002, recognizing the many creative ways mothers and fathers care for their children, and knowing that today’s “working mother” or “working father” might next year be “at home” and vice versa, the organization chose a new name: Family and Home Network. Today, the organization celebrates 40 years of offering parents affirmation, information and advocacy. FAHN urges policymakers to adopt principles of Inclusive Family Policies.
Family and Home Network is a grassroots 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization helping families spend generous amounts of time together by offering affirmation, information and advocacy.
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