"At-Home-Parent"? "At Home Worker"?

[blackcurrants]

This blog post over at Fertile Feminism is interesting me, and I'd love to know your thoughts on it. What do we call people (the assumption in our culture being that they're women) whose primary role in that of a caregiver to their children?

Slightly tangentially; my mum runs her own business now but was a self-described 'housewife' until I (her youngest) was starting secondary school. She agreed to help the local primary school kids do some kind of survey a few years back, and the first question they asked her was "what is your occupation?" She was very thoughtful about it afterwards. "What I was a child no one asked a woman what her occupation was! But now no one expects a woman not to have one."

Mum doesn't really 'do feminism' so I'm always fascinated by what things strike her as significant.

Returning to the blog post - I wonder what would be a good term, since stay-at-home-mum seems a bit odd to me (most seem to be outside all the time, and most work at lots of other things, just unpaid) - "full-time mum" seems a bit off as well, since it suggests that mothers who work outside the home are 'part-timing' their motherhood, and .. ugh, yeah, that gets my goat. But we really don't have a term for it, do we? I'd love there to be one, and I'd love it to be gender-neutral.

What are your thoughts on this?

[foreverastudent]

I like 'primary childcare provider'. Or 'unwaged childcarer'.