I came across this blog post on facebook today by Matt Walsh, and I just had to share it here. The post, entitled, "You're a stay-at-home mom? What do you DO all day?" addresses a topic I am all too familiar with, and one that is all too prevalent in our culture: the idea that stay-at-home moms have it easy. The amazing thing is, it was written by a man!
Interestingly, I grew up with a stay-at-home mother who was fully supported by my father; that is, until I reached 5th grade, and my father reluctantly agreed that my mother going to work might help support our family of nine. This had a profound effect on me, because I experienced first-hand what happens when a mother goes off to work (I'm the one who ended up having to do the laundry for said family of nine, because my mother no longer had the time to do it).
It wasn't the laundry aspect that solidified for me the importance of a mother at home, though; it was the effect it had on my two youngest brothers (who were about 2 and 4 years old at the time). They were the first of us seven children to have to be cared for outside of our home, and seeing how they were affected by my mother going to work made me vow to never be a working mom. Even though they went to my aunt's house every day while my mother was at work - a fairly close family member who had children their age to play with - the affect of not having my mother at home was instant. They became clingy and whiny when my mother was with them, and they threw fits if she tried to sneak away to the grocery store by herself. They were notably less independent and secure, and they were suddenly subject to a lot of chaos that my other siblings and I had never had to experience.
I shouldn’t need to explain why it’s insane for anyone — particularly other women — to have such contempt and hostility for “stay at home” mothers. Are we really so shallow? Are we really so confused? Are we really the first culture in the history of mankind to fail to grasp the glory and seriousness of motherhood? The pagans deified Maternity and turned it into a goddess. We’ve gone the other direction; we treat it like a disease or an obstacle.As it turned out, the experiment failed: working cost our family more than my mother was being paid, and not just because of the added costs of a second vehicle (and all of the included costs that came with it), clothing and childcare, but because it wasn't worth the stress it put on our family. My mother came back home, and didn't return to the workforce until my youngest brother went off to school. Still, I've always felt that the experience forever changed my two youngest brothers - and not for the better.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to fully keep my vow to be a stay-at-home mother. When my daughter was born, I continued on with my full-time job (11 hours a day) as a nanny, because I was able to bring my daughter with me and because we didn't see how we could adjust to losing my salary, but that only lasted until she was 8 months old. When my former business partner offered to trade the nanny agency we started together for my nanny position, it seemed like a better fit - I could work from home and continue to be with my daughter.
It was during this time that I first experienced what the general population really thought about stay-at-home mothers. Even though I worked from home, people would call me for favors during the day all the time because I was "just home and not really doing anything." Not really doing anything?! At one point, I was running a nanny placement agency, being a stay-at-home mother to a toddler, working part-time as a nanny (and bringing said toddler with me) and I was pregnant with my second child, ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
Worse, I didn't even feel as if I could cut myself some slack! My husband, after all, had the "real job," and I, after all, chose to stay home with my children - keeping up with the housework and bills should be my responsibility,right? Because I was so lucky to get to be at home. Even I, who knew better than anyone, how stressful it really was - so stressful that, at one point, I actually got shingles from the stress - thought that I had to "really work," so as not to feel the condemnation of people around me - even people in my own family - who thought that I had it easy because I got to stay home. I felt overwhelming pressure to have to prove myself and my worth - and it nearly broke me - all because we live in a society that downgrades motherhood. Being "just a mom" is not good enough.
The people who completely immerse themselves in the tiring, thankless, profoundly important job of raising children ought to be put on a pedestal. We ought to revere them and admire them like we admire rocket scientists and war heroes. These women are doing something beautiful and complicated and challenging and terrifying and painful and joyous and essential.
I had to learn the same lesson my parents learned back when I was a kid: it costs more than you think to be a working mom. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but love and admiration for working mothers, and staying home with kids is definitely not always what's best for every mom or child. I've certainly worked as a nanny for several mothers who've had a nice balance between working and motherhood. That being said, time is serious money. They didn't have time to take care of their kids, to work in their garden or to clean their home, so they paid other people for what they didn't have time to do themselves. The difference was that they could afford to hire someone else to do it for them and still come out ahead, and I couldn't - or, more so, I chose not to.
I still struggle with feeling undervalued, though my children are now 10 and 8, because I chose to homeschool. Let me tell you, the only thing more thankless than being a stay-at-home mom is being a homeschooling stay-at-home mom. It took me five years of homeschooling before I realized that it's a full-time job, and I really can't work while I'm doing it. I know that there are plenty of people who probably think I'm lucky, lazy or privileged, and there's nothing I can do about that, so I just have to let it go. I traded money - and the respect that comes with it - for time. It's a hard choice but, at the end of the day, my family and I are the ones who have to live with it.
