stay-at-home

• stay at home

stay-at-home (not comparable)

1. (chiefly attributive) Of a parent, not employed, and rather devoting more time to one's children.

   stay-at-home dad

   • 2020 May 25, Abby Ellin, “Couples Who Eat Together May Not Stay Together”, in New York Times‎:

     Ms. Andrews is forthright about her distress. “Jonathan’s eating habits have irritated me for years anyway and have only been exacerbated during the last six or seven weeks of him working from home,” said Ms. Andrews, 53, a stay-at-home parent who lives just outside London, in Surrey.

2. (attributive) Of rules or regulations, forbidding the populace to leave their domicile except under emergency or other special circumstances, especially for purposes of quarantine.

   stay-at-home orders

   • 2020 May 27, Jackie Rocheleau, “A Monday Is a Tuesday Is a Sunday as COVID-19 Disrupts Internal Clocks”, in Scientific American‎:

     In April Jenny Rappaport sat down to inspect her calendar because she could not tell how many days had passed since New Jersey’s stay-at-home order took effect.

3. (attributive) Of or relating to quarantine in the home.

   the stay-at-home era

   stay-at-home boredom

4. Not ever travelling or moving far from home.
   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 195:

     He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them - the ship; and so is their country - the sea.

• This adjective is mostly restricted to attributive use; predicative uses such as in “My mother is stay-at-home” do exist, but are quite rare.
• In particular, this adjective is most commonly found in the expressions stay-at-home mother, father, mom, dad, motherhood, and so on, or else used in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.