Staying At Home

Lesley Stahl Reports On 15% Increase In Number Of Moms Who Do

(CBS)  Frelinghuysen, Amy Cunningham Atkinson and Andrea Hagan are just the potential leaders she's talking about. Atkinson went to Yale and had a great job as a television producer. Hagan became managing director at a top Wall Street investment bank after Harvard Business School, where the subject of working moms came up.

"There were panel discussions about work and lifestyle issues, which as a 26-year-old, didn't mean a lot to me," recalls Hagan. "Until I had my own child did I realize what a juggling act it was going to be."

Do any of them wake up and say, "I'm June Cleaver. I'm living in the ‘50s?"

"I don't think we are. I think that's wrong," says Atkinson. "I worked for 20 years after college. And so my experience in leaving to have children is different than hers. I think I would feel differently about my choice to stay at home for a few years if I didn't have that experience behind me."

She says she's also different from many in Stahl's generation, who were determined to stick it out no matter what. These women say they don't feel they have anything to prove. They have been successful, and if they want to take some time out to be with their kids, why shouldn't they?

"I think there's a lot of focus on what I'm sacrificing by staying home. And what's hard to articulate is how much I get back," says Hall. "I do it really-- a lot of it is for me. I enjoy seeing and being with my children."

Hirshman fought her way into the workforce, stayed there despite years of male colleagues refusing to eat lunch with her – and raised a daughter, too. She's not an impartial observer. There aren't two sides in the way she sees things.

"The women that I have interviewed are completely dependent upon the goodwill of their wealthy income-producing husbands," says Hirshman. "They chose dependence."

But isn't it their right to choose? "It's different to talk about their right than what's the right decision," says Hirshman. "As Mark Twain said, 'A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.'"

"These women are choosing lives in which they do not use their capacity for very complicated work," adds Hirshman. "They are choosing lives in which they do not use their capacity to deal with very powerful other adults in the world, which takes a lot of skill. I think there are better lives and worse lives."

"I think the women's rights movement was very much about giving women choices and respecting the many choices that women make," says Frelinghuysen.

Adds Hall: "I think there's some people with preconceived notions that because I'm at home with my children all day, I must be preparing husband-delight casserole in a cocktail dress. … The mothers groups get together and talk about Iraq policy."

Hirshman believes that women who remain in the workplace are going to be hurt by the ones who are leaving, that there'll be a backlash. Graduate schools will stop accepting women, and companies will stop hiring them. Well, first off, that would be illegal. And second, it's not as if men stay in their jobs forever; they leave all the time.

Harvard Business School did a survey and found that just 38 percent of its female graduates in their child-raising years were in the workplace full-time. But Kim Clark, dean of the business school, told 60 Minutes the last thing he wants to do is to stop admitting women. He says companies are going to have to change.

"I've had some friends say, 'It's driving us crazy. Why are they leaving,'" says Stahl. "I've heard that from businessmen. They're frustrated. They are investing in these women for years."

"They're asking the wrong question," says Clark. "The right question is, how do we change to keep this talent active and involved with us?"