Where do the stay-at-home moms live? (Pittsburgh, California: neighborhood, living, mall)

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by pittnurse70

My nephew and his family live in Wexford, and his wife stays home. How many other people in that area stay home, I have no idea. Seems not many from what I hear.

We're all sprinkled throughout the area. As a result, the neighborhoods aren't like when we grew up. There aren't many kids out playing in the streets until the parents get home from work.

I'm surprised the US Census doesn't gather statistics on one and two income families, excluding single parent households because they already total those numbers. Maybe they do, but I've never run across the data.

[ontheroad]

I met quite a few stay-at-home mothers at the Natural History Museum a week or so again and we talked about homeschooling. The museum actually has a rather large home-schooling program so it appears to me that a fair percentage of Pittsburgh families do home-school. Just an observation--no facts!

[elfgirl]

Homeschooling is growing very fast in Pittsburgh and all across the country.
The somewhat recent availability of cyber-schools really added a lot of families to the "home educated" ranks, although they are not technically homeschoolers.

[claremarie]

There seem to be plenty of SAHMs in Ross, where my parents still live. I've seen lots of them walking with strollers, and especially at Ross Park Mall.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by claremarie

There seem to be plenty of SAHMs in Ross, where my parents still live. I've seen lots of them walking with strollers, and especially at Ross Park Mall.

Funny you should mention that, clairemarie. I have a neighbor here in Colo who used to live in Pittsburgh. She was a SAHM at the time; met her best friend at the mall, by some bird thing. BTW, she liked it there (for the most part, we have talked many times), but had to leave when her husband's employer went out of business.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by claremarie

I've seen lots of them walking with strollers, and especially at Ross Park Mall.

Just because the Ross Park Mall happens to be in Ross doesn't mean that everyone you see there lives in Ross.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by pittnurse70

I have a neighbor here in Colo who used to live in Pittsburgh. She was a SAHM at the time; met her best friend at the mall, by some bird thing.

Oh, memories!

You must be talking about the Northway Mall. It used to have a bird cage in the middle of the mall.

Here's a picture of it: http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/2...-birdcage.html

When I was little, there were trees and plants inside the cage too.

The birdcage was removed in the early 90s.

Northway Mall is considered a dead mall now. Ross Park Mall sort of made the Northway Mall second rate.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by elfgirl

Well, for my family, we purposely made the decision to buy an inexpensive house and cut expenses as much as possible so that I could stay home with the kids. It worked great for a while but the neighborhood is declining and now we are looking for somewhere more stable, that means our mortgage payment is going to go way up! I hope we can make it so that I can still stay home and homeschool my kids. I'm not knocking working moms at all - we all have to make the choices that work best for us! It's very hard to make it one one income these days though. It always cracks me up when I tell people I am a stay at home mom and they say "ooh must be nice", assuming we are super wealthy and don't need the second income! No - we just live very modestly!!!

Out here it's a completely different mind set... if you're wealthy, you work and your kids have a nanny. Women who stay home and take care of their kids are living modestly and making "sacrifices".

If we had had kids one of us would have stayed home -- who ever made the most money would have stayed working. And with our "excellent" Oakland (CA) school district (lowest ranked in the State! ) we would have DEFINETELY homeschooled....

But boy -- homeschooling out here is a big can of worms. People get real heated about it, and you can tell when someone says they homeschool, it's almost like they're on the defense, waiting for someone to throw the first verbal punch.

Kinda funny -- for a place that preaches tolerance (Bay Area, CA) , it's not really tolerant at all....

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by Hopes

Oh, memories!

You must be talking about the Northway Mall. It used to have a bird cage in the middle of the mall.

Here's a picture of it: http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/2...-birdcage.html

When I was little, there were trees and plants inside the cage too.

The birdcage was removed in the early 90s.

Northway Mall is considered a dead mall now. Ross Park Mall sort of made the Northway Mall second rate.

The picture is cool. I will e-mail it to my friend. It looks pretty much as she described. They lived there ~ 22-23 yrs ago.

[claremarie]

Just because the Ross Park Mall happens to be in Ross doesn't mean that everyone you see there lives in Ross.

That's true, but lots of them do. My point was that this part of the North Hills is very affordable, enabling moms to stay home with their kids. But the other reason that the original poster might have wondered about the shortage of SAHMs in neighborhoods is that so many of them are not actually staying at home....they are running errands in the car, taking their kids to the library for story hour, going to the many mom & me classes, the zoo, dance class, sports practices, etc. And going to the mall....