Mom/Work Thing

Are you a mom who’s in love with her job? Do you have the whole mom/work thing all figured out? Are you happy with the balance between your roles in this hectic life? Or are you unsatisfied- either with your job (or lack thereof) or with the ability to be there for your family?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the whole mom/work thing. Stay-at-home-mom, work-at-home-mom, part-time-working-mom, full-time-working-mom. It’s a decision all of us moms face and it’s a choice we all have. Sometimes it might feel like we don’t have a choice- life can push us in directions without asking! Annoying, isn’t it? But it really is a choice for most of us. We can be quick to say, “Must be nice,” about whatever is on the other side of the fence. But we’re living our lives and we do have choices.

Becoming a mother is maybe the most radical life change women who become mothers will ever face. There’s a quote I love that says something like it is deciding forever to have your heart run around outside your body. So there’s all the emotional stuff about becoming a mother. Then there’s also the life stuff. Like who’s going to take care of this little creature now that he or she is here.

My Stay at Home Mom Story (very shortened version)

An angel from above (she was really the wife of a friend and coworker) watched my oldest when I went back to work after she was born. I cried every day when I dropped her off. Like when I dropped her off and then the whole half-hour car ride to work. And then I sniffled my way through the day and cried again on the way home. That lasted for two months and then I resigned. I knew I wanted to stay home and I knew it was financially irresponsible and I knew I would do it anyway and figure it all out later.

I have been very lucky and stayed home with all four of my children. It has been amazing and wonderful and something I know I will never regret. It has also been long and lonely and stressful in many ways. Especially when they were younger and doing anything was hard. Cleaning, food shopping, taking a shower. It has also meant not doing things or buying things or fixing up things.

I’m not going to “woe is me” here because I loved it and I’m grateful we could make it work, but it was hard. There were many days when I said, “They’d be better off if I just went back to work,” because I felt like a terrible mother. And it was isolating a lot of the time. If I could go back and do it all over again I think it would be better (mostly because I’d invite people over even if my house is messy!) but there were some lonely days.

I think in an ideal world maybe I would have worked two days a week, but with total flexibility at an incredible job I loved and which left me feeling fulfilled. And I would have had an enthusiastic, active family member to watch my kids for unlimited hours with limited notice. Why? Because it’s good to get out of the house. It’s good to socialize with adults.

It’s also good to get a little dressed up once in a while. (By dressed up I mean something other than comfy old jeans and t-shirts, not dress pants or heels or anything crazy like that.) At least for me, but I’d guess for most people.

It’s good to work your brain in different ways, too, and to feel satisfied with accomplishing concrete tasks. But flexible jobs are hard to find, and free childcare in your own home by someone you love who loves your children is hard to find too!

So I was home full-time until last school year. Every morning I thanked God I could be home. (And this was way before my gratitude journal!) I did a little bit of this and a little bit of that- waitressing, babysitting, running a parenting center- to make money. But I was truly a stay-at-home-mom.

Mom Guilt and Inner Conflict

I remember going to a group for moms and babies after my oldest was born. There were only 3 of us in the group, besides the leader. One woman was sitting through the meetings and after a few weeks, she “admitted” to wanting to go back to work. Like it was a terrible crime. She felt guilty that she was financially able to stay home with her kids, but didn’t like being home all the time.

I think that’s a struggle for a lot of women- the conflict. The guilt. Feeling guilty for not being home because you have to work or feeling like a bad mom for not being home because you want to work. Feeling guilty for wanting to be home full time and can’t be or because you don’t want to be home full time.

I did (and still do!) want to be home most of the time, be the one who stays home when my kids are sick, go to all the concerts and parent visits at school. I don’t want to miss things. It makes me so happy that I am the one who takes them to school and picks them up. But I also want to work and kinda sorta have to work now that they’re all in school full-time. I want to have both! A fulfilling career I love and the ability to be there for my family.

I have talked to so many other moms who are in the same boat. They’ve been home but their kids are getting older so it’s getting to be “that time.” That time when we (those of us who have been home) go back to work. So many women don’t really want to go back to what they were doing before, but they’re not sure what else to do. So many of them just go back to what they did before anyway. Because they have to financially, because it’s easier than figuring something else out, because it’s comfortable.

There is nothing wrong with returning to a career because it’s what you know. There is something to be said for going to a job you’re comfortable in, doing your thing, feeling pretty happy there, and returning to your home life at the end of the day. To be honest with you, if my old job was closer to home and still available it would make having to go back to a full-time job outside the home much easier.

But I know there are lots of women who don’t want that. They want something different, they want something that will give them the flexibility to be there for their kids on their terms, they want a job they feel passionate about, they want to do something new, something they love.

Possibilities…

In this day and age, there are more options than ever before. You can create that. You can build something. Maybe you’ll have to do something else in the meantime to stay afloat, but don’t give up on finding that something that literally makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning.

The world is very different than the world in which we grew up. (At least if you’re somewhere in the neighborhood of 43!) So much of life is online now. Jobs are changing. Needs are changing. We can take advantage of that and create new paths for ourselves.

If you want to be home it doesn’t make you lazy or traditional or 1950s Betty Crocker. You can be a stay at home mom and still be ambitious and driven and smart and independent. Just like you can go to work and still be an amazing, present, loving mother.

Let’s not pigeonhole ourselves or each other. And let’s not give up on what we really want either.

Do you love where you’re at now? If you could design your ideal life what would it look like? Please tell me! I really want to know! You can leave a comment, reach out to me on Facebook, or email me mary@stayathomefit.com.

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. If you liked this post share it with someone who’s getting close to “that time” too!