09:39 PM CDT on Monday, August 15, 2005

By PAULA LAVIGNE / The Dallas Morning News

An executive-level salary doesn't always buy belongings with big price tags.

LARA SOLT/DMN

Stay-at-home mom Amber Hare, whose daughter Kaitlyn is tuckered out, plays dress-up with Hailey Hotchkiss at McKinney's Happy Land Play Center.

Many Collin County-area families are sacrificing material luxuries to afford time with their children – a benefit they deem priceless.

Families are tapping their income to keep one parent – usually Mom – home with the kids. More than half the stay-at-home moms in America come from higher-income households, and Collin County's wealth fits that profile.

Every major city around here has at least one chapter of a MOMS Club, an international support group for stay-at-home moms. Five chapters were formed in Frisco to handle the demand there.

Nicole Furtaw, 35, is a member of the Northeast Frisco chapter. She used to work as a fundraiser for a local foundation but quit soon after her son was born.

"I had a bachelor's degree and a career, but I wanted to be at home with my kids," she said.

The family relies on her husband's salary as an engineering manager at Texas Instruments. While they're "financially comfortable," she said, they have to watch expenses to make the arrangement work.

"We don't eat out as much as we would like to. ... We live humbly to get by and not get into debt," she said.

She and her husband planned ahead. They could have afforded a larger house when they had two incomes and no children, but they bought something not so large in preparation for Ms. Furtaw's decision. Their home is worth about $225,000.

Now they have two children, 5-year-old Cameron and 3-year-old Chloe. Ms. Furtaw doesn't plan to go back to work.

"Both of my parents worked as I grew up, and I came home to an empty house, and that wasn't my ideal choice," she said.

The understanding that stay-at-home moms are fortunate financially is "kind of one of those unspoken things" among her MOMS group.

"There's a general consensus we're all doing what we want to do. We're all where we want to be, and we're very thankful we can do it."

Angie Kanter envies mothers such as Ms. Furtaw. To pay for a $250,000 house in Murphy, two cars and other expenses, both she and her husband have to work.

Ms. Kanter, 33, placed her infant son in a child care center close to her office, but it's not the same as raising him full time at home.

"There are nine other babies he's competing with for attention," she said. "Is there a half-hour where he's crying, and because there's only two teachers to 10 babies that he's not getting picked up?"

Stay-at-home moms contribute to more than their own children's development. School district officials say they provide a valuable resource to teachers by volunteering in classrooms, chaperoning field trips and organizing fundraisers.

"It helps tremendously," Frisco school Superintendent Rick Reedy said. "There's so many different roles they fill for us."

Up to 30 parents volunteer each week at Norton Elementary School in Allen. That's a big boost to a school with 60 teachers and staff members, principal Sandra Cheek said.

They help run the chess and drama clubs, do clerical work and read to children, and some even translate foreign languages, she said.

The volunteers in Allen are often highly educated and skilled, she said. For example, mothers with degrees in mathematics and engineering help run the school's new math lab, she said.

"They impact our everyday programs in so many ways," she said. "They help us run our school, basically."

E-mail plavigne@dallasnews.com