More and more single female home buyers hitting the real estate market...

“You’ve come a long way baby”, undoubtably most of us will remember the Virginia Slims tagline when Philip Morris introduced a new cigarette marketed to women.  That was in 1968 and, believe me, we’ve come alot farther in the past few years!  One revelation from the recent recession is that more women are working today than ever before largely due to lay-offs being predominately in construction/factory type jobs.  The January 2010 issue of Economist Magazine announced that in the fourth quarter 2009 labor statistics, the Bureau reported that women held 49.8% of American jobs.

The mindset of women has changed as well.  Jeremy Conaway of Recon Consulting reported that according to Meredith’s “The Rise of the Real Mom” white paper they discovered in today’s leading consumer market of 18-43 year olds, only 46% of men consider buying a home important, as opposed to 86% of women.  That is big news.  We are also finding that women wait longer to marry or sometime forego marriage all together which makes them an important segment of the home buying industry. Here in Kentucky we are noticing more and more single women taking the step  to buy thier own Bluegrass homes by themselves .

I personally found Meredith’s white paper very interesting.  In particular their indepth study of Generation X and millennial mothers and how they differ from their older counterparts.  The following paragraphs are directly from their report:

“Increasingly, Gen Xers (ages 30-44) and millennials (ages 18-29) are not beholden to perfection. Having seen their predecessors exhaust themselves trying to achieve an elusive ideal – the corner office, 2.5 well groomed children at home and Julia Child’s command of the kitchen – these younger mothers realize that “having it all” deos not require doing it all.

While a decade ago mothers aspired to be “Supermom,” today’s mothers aim to be pragmatic, efficient and rooted in reality. They want to be real moms. (That lower case is intentional; these women don’t need fancy titles.) Perhaps more importantly, they want to be real women, with interests that include and extend beyond their roles as caretakers, providers and nurturers.

In this way, real moms look to subvert the so-called “mommy trap,” where a mother has to choose whether to forfeit a career to care for the kids or plow ahead at work and hand over the stroller reins to the nanny.  Real moms understand that tradeoffs are implicit in motherhood; they just don’t see things as black and white.”

They go on to say: 

“What’s different today is that women – millennials in particular – are becoming more accepting of opportunity costs. With the publication of books such as “Good Enough Mother,” “Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box,” “The Mommy Myth” and “Perfect Madness,” the second half of this decade has brought a backlash against the mythical Supermom – that hyperactive Type-A personality who whips up perfect cookies and perfect children – and an embrace of the likable, more relatable real mom, who doesn’t obsess over the little things.  Spilled milk? No problem.”

All in all I am not surprised at the changes we have made over the past 30 years.  When able to make a choice, most women are choosing quality of life over quality of possessions and material goods.  It’s all good.  What’s next?  A woman President??  We will see.