There are those questions that every stay-at-home parent dreads to hear:
“What do you do all day?”
“How can you guys afford anything?”
“Don’t you go crazy just sitting at home?”
Or even better, the unsolicited advice based on nothing:
“You’ll someday regret these years you aren’t paying into retirement.”
“Your job as a parent is to provide as much financial security as possible to your family.”
“This is doing irreparable damage to your career.”
Then there’s a whole lot of the “well-meaning” comments from people who have “good intentions”:
“I could never do what you do.”
“You don’t have to do this. There are so many good childcare options these days.”
“I would be in great shape too, if I had all that extra time to go to the gym.”
“You’re so lucky that you get to watch TV and drink wine all day!”
How exactly can I explain to these people that I do what feels like, basically, everything!? How can I tell somebody that I do, in fact, sometimes feel like I’m going nuts, yet it is worth it? Why is my family’s financial situation such an anomaly to them? Why are they so worried about the future of MY career?
Aside from all of that, the fact that they think I get time to myself? Suuuure, people. I can work out at the gym for hours, then come home, sit around, drink wine and watch TV alllllll day! #livingthedream
^That is just plain hilarious. I’m always in stitches over those assholes.^
This topic is a tricky one. I cannot simply explain my decision to become a stay-at-home mom to families with two working parents. It is legitimately, damn near impossible. They either:
1. Get offended. Maybe they think that in some way talking about the hows and whys of my decision in turn means I look down on their own? I’m not sure, but it has happened more times than I can count.
-OR-
2. They look at me like I have 3 heads. I am no longer allowed to be an independent, educated feminist. How dare I not earn my own paycheck and pay my own bills!? How could I let my husband do that for me!? I am the problem! Down with domestication!
I am going to try to explain this life and why I chose it. My point here is not to offend, my point is to educate. Maybe you are one of those people above? Perhaps some of those words have come out of your mouth? If you didn’t say them to me, maybe you said them to another parent who decided to take a few years off work to focus on their kids. Maybe you decided you would crack a joke about the sad and pathetic stay-at-home moms of the world. I have heard it all, trust me. During conversation at a dinner party, there was a man who once said to me,
“If my wife wasn’t helping to contribute financially, she better be waiting for me in a sexy outfit with a cold beer every day. Cody’s a lucky man.”
I’m going to take a stab at what he assumes about stay-at-home moms like me… You assume that I barely made it out of high school and had no future. My only option was to trap the first guy with a decent salary I stumbled upon into marrying me and pop out a few kids. Now I’m just another one of the mommies who bake cookies, wear mom jeans and drive minivans full of screaming kids to the grocery store. I’m forever lumped into the “housewife” category. I’m not worth the dirt on the fancy, designer heels you bought for your own glamorous wife to wear as she clip claps into her corner office. Your wife is better than me because she chose to put her career first. (Or did she? Sounds like maybe you weighed in on that matter, sir!) I am a lost cause to the feminist movement, a failure who could have done better for myself. May God have mercy on my soul.
Well. I would answer him plain and simple: YOU. ARE. WRONG.
Turns out, like so many other stay-at-home parents, I graduated high school with honors and have a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. I have experience training college athletes and educating patients in cardiac rehabilitation. I also have two kids. And when my oldest was born, I decided none of that was as important as she was. Plain and simple, everything else in my life could wait.
You know what won’t wait?
My kids. They are going to keep growing up. Nothing can slow that down, and I feel like if I blink I am missing something. They were only babies for two years. That’s it. Two. That is all you get, and it goes by way too fast.
I opened my eyes one day and my daughter was running around on chubby legs and asserting herself in her own little voice. She wasn’t a baby anymore, she was a toddler. Then I was dropping her off at preschool and watching her climb on the playground, and before I knew it, we had a kindergartener. This kindergartener is in cheerleading, dance, gymnastics and soccer. She is her own person. She lost all her baby fat. She has her own smell, and it’s no longer the scent of my baby. She has long blonde hair, instead of wispy baby fuzz. She chooses her own outfits, does her own homework and gets herself snacks. Next year she will be in school full-time as a first grader, and she won’t need me during the day anymore. Coming up, just as fast, behind her is my youngest. I have a couple of years left at home with my babies, and then I’ll go back to work.
A job and a big, fat paycheck will always be there. I might have to work a little harder to gain the ground that I lost. I’ll have to do some continuing education to bring myself current and stay competitive in my field. I may never climb as high as some have, but then again maybe I still will, despite this self-inflicted “career suicide”. I have well over thirty years to devote to my career at this point, so I really don’t have FOMO. Promise. I don’t waste time crying myself to sleep over the job I could have had, mainly because I have so many other productive things to do with my time right now. Oh! Which reminds me, you have been wondering what I do all day? Here’s your answer!
I do everything you pay your childcare to do. I do everything you pay your cleaning lady to do. I have never paid anybody to come into my house and do a single thing. I get it done myself, because it’s my job to get shit done. More important to me than all of that – I am the only one who raised my kids. Nobody else ever tagged in. It was all me. I kissed every single boo-boo. I wiped every single tear. I was the only one to hold them every time they were scared, hurt or sick. I read all the stories, did all the puzzles and built all the legos. I potty trained them myself. I sleep trained them myself. I taught them how to count, write and read. I know exactly what nutrition they took in, how much activity they do and how much screen time they get. I manage their schedule and know the exact amount of time they napped, and the exact time they went to bed. Me. I was in charge of it all. Nobody else. And I’m damn proud of every single part of it. Scoff at that if you want to, but it won’t change my mind. If you can be proud of a successful and productive few years at your job, then why can’t I?
Every minute of this eight total years home with my kids will be worth all the financial and career sacrifices. I feel like these years of my kids’ lives were not something I ever wanted to miss. They were only little once. I’ll never, ever look back on this time of my life and think, “Man! I wish I had put those kids in daycare and gone to work!” I couldn’t imagine trusting somebody else to do as good of a job as me. I wanted it done my way, so I did it myself.
Does all of this mean I think working parents are wrong? Am I any better at being a mom than anybody else?
HELL NO! Each family has the freedom to choose what is best for them. They can manage their own finances, their own careers and their own children. They make choices that benefit themselves and their families in whatever ways they see fit. So let’s stop weighing in on each other’s lives, because in the end what really matters is that everybody is happy and taken care of. MY choice wasn’t YOUR choice, and that’s perfectly okay.
Feminism is about equality. Feminism is about people having freedom to choose their own life, rather than anyone else making those choices for them. I had the freedom to make my choice. I agree with that man from the dinner party – My husband is a pretty lucky guy! Cody often tells me he appreciates everything I do, even on the days (ahem…every day….) he gets home to find me with unwashed hair in a messy bun and my painting sweats on. If he wants a cold beer, he gets it for himself because he happens to be a grown-ass man who understands when his wife is busy. I wasn’t forced into this life by anyone. I consciously thought it through and decided to stay home with my kids while they are little. This doesn’t make me less of a woman than anybody else.
Now let’s all go #dowork, whatever that work may be!