I came across a link to an article in Ad Age and in the spirit of representing fair and impartial, gender-neutral blogging I selected this issue to bring forward for your scrutiny. It's about how the drop in revenues suffered by the restaurant industry is due to the rise of stay-at-home moms.

Say what? (My reaction also.)

The article begins:

“For the first time since June Cleaver donned pearls and aprons in the 1950s, the percentage of women choosing to work outside the home has been flat to down for several years running. Not coincidentally, the number of meals purchased at restaurants per person has stopped growing too, for the longest sustained stretch in the 23 years NPD Group has tracked the number.

The decades-long rise of women in the work force -- and the related rise of meals bought from restaurants -- has ground to halt and begun to reverse since the turn of the millennium. The numbers have gotten little attention, and they fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but their ramifications are huge for restaurant, supermarket and food marketers.”

Why?

“Women's participation rate in the paid U.S. labor force topped out at just above 60% in 1999 and again in 2001 but has fallen since then, according to the Labor Department. Restaurant meals, fueled for decades by the migration of moms to the work force, also topped out at 211 per person per year in 2001 according to NPD and likewise have been bouncing lower since, hitting 207 this year.”

Some of you blog readers may have a problem with this I’m sure, but the fact or fallacy that more women are staying at home has been hyped by major media sources for years. In a 2005 New York Times article on this subject, the Times reported that some female graduates of elite universities were shunning careers to make babies. An earlier study that alleges a very slight drop-off in women's labor force participation has drawn complaint regarding all manner of counting errors.

But probably the most compelling antidotal information comes from working eat-at-home moms, who explain this phenomenon impacting restaurants by simply offering (among other explanations) that they eat at home, because: 

·        I prefer it to eating with strangers, colleagues or business clients;

·        I like to share meals with my family;

·        I eat at home because I'm cheap;

·        I live in the 'burbs and going out is a pain;

·        I eat at home because I like to eat, and I like to know what's in my food;

·        I would like to remain this side of enormous for at least a few more years. 

You know what they say… there is nothing worse than a liar… except for a damn liar, and there is nothing worse than a damn liar… except for a statistician!  It does look like there has been some creative manipulation with the data for this subject.  Doesn’t anyone realize there are just going to be fewer people in the active labor force, no matter what their gender, as the boomers begin to age out?  This is of course, is ground you may recognize that I have already covered, if you have been reading my blog. 

Not to trivialize the subject, but speaking of aging boomers… At one time I was a stay-at-home/eat-at-home dad, but back in my day they called it being laid off from work.