While most moms were celebrating Mother's Day this spring with a family of three or four, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, resident Tiffany Kriner celebrated a graduation ceremony with thousands of college students.
Kriner, 31, an English professor at Wheaton College, has two young children – 9-month-old Beckett and Fiona, 3. Her husband, Josh, 32, is a stay-at-home dad while Tiffany is the family's primary breadwinner, a decision based on necessity that has since worked out to both parents' benefit.
Tiffany is one of a growing number of women in the United States who are primary earners for their household. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 25.8 percent of wives had a higher income than their husbands in 2007, an increase from nearly 23 percent in 1997 and 18 percent in 1987.
The Kriners' situation is unusual at Wheaton College, Tiffany said; most working mothers at the college have husbands also working outside the home, so are balancing a co-parenting situation. Their situation evolved when Tiffany gave birth to Fiona while in a post-doctoral program and Josh stayed home to care for her, and then when Josh decided to stay home when the couple moved to Wheaton for Tiffany's job about three years ago.
"Most people do ask whether I stay home with my kids or not, especially if they meet me in a context where they see me with my children," Tiffany said. "I don't think there's any stigma especially, but definitely an awareness."
Josh is currently working on a start-up small business, so Tiffany stays home two mornings each week to watch the children while he works. And having a stay-at-home husband has its perks; because Josh works from home, she has the freedom of a man with a stay-at-home wife. She and Josh also enjoy having more of an equal share in their children's experiences.
Tiffany said she does feel pressure to fit in with a mold of suburban, stay-at-home mothers who are interested in seeing all aspects of their children's lives. She also struggles with not fitting into some aspects of traditional gender roles of the husband as breadwinner and the wife as nurturing homemaker.
"Do I feel like I'm switching gender roles? Yes. Especially when I'm the primary breadwinner," Tiffany said. "I'm feeding [my children], clothing them and supporting them, but that seems to be a thing that's celebrated on Father's Day, not Mothers' Day – I don't consider my monetary contributions to be part of what it means to be a good mother. The real contribution is putting them to bed, or staying when I ought to be grading."
Tiffany does not feel she is sidestepping the Christian calling to motherhood – she's just pursuing it differently.
"Being in a family and raising children for the Lord and for their good is absolutely the central thing," she said. "I just think I do it better when I'm working."
This is a pre-edited story that, following consultation from editors, appeared in the Naperville, Glen Ellyn and Wheaton Suns. This article differs from the published article found here.
