The Stay at Home Mom Pivot Part I— The Backstory
I’ve worked my entire adult life. I even had some part-time jobs when I was sixteen. They didn’t last long as my home life went through upheaval after upheaval. Once I got my “adult job”, still part time but in that part-time almost full-time awkwardness, at a Levi’s store in the outlet mall off the Strip the working grind never stopped. There were some in-between stints where I didn’t have a job but they never lasted long and were usually triggered by outside circumstances, like health reasons, or national pandemics that eliminated my position.
I used to dream of quitting my job and pursuing writing full-time but our situation never allowed for it. Plus, I liked working. I liked being around people, having conversations. Turns out, when you're an extrovert, jobs are great. What’s funny is that I really thought that my jobs were what was hindering me from writing more and actually pursuing writing. Turns out, it was my lack of discipline and lack of ideas that kept me from writing. That was one of the minor lessons I learned in 2020. I suddenly found myself with all the time I used to dream of and I still didn’t use it for writing.
With my move to Arizona, a new change was coming, something completely different than anything I had experienced in my adult life. I was going to be a stay at home mom. At the time of the move my oldest was nine and my youngest was three. For my oldest, he had only known me as a working mom. Outside of the pandemic—which only had me out of a job for a few months before I started freelance writing and getting clients— and a car accident that put me on bedrest for a few months, I always had a job. My oldest learned to roll with the pivots of life as jobs changed or schedules changed. He was used to daycares, preschools, and eventually after school programs since I worked later than his dismissal time.
My youngest had a different experience, but one that was still though the lens of childcare. When I first put my youngest in daycare at five months old, we would spend three months of hospitalizations and illnesses that taught me that my youngest couldn’t be in daycare. I couldn’t stop working though so I pivoted. I put my youngest at an in-home daycare that couldn’t have more than four kiddos at a time. When we moved him over there, we saw improvement. It didn’t solve all the illnesses but there was improvement.
All that to say, being a stay at home mom wasn’t on my radar. While I used to dream of being able to quit my job and pursue full time-writing, it was really a pipe dream (and one I probably would have failed at if 2020 was any indication). I’ve always needed to work and even in those seasons where I wasn’t working for whatever reason, I was eager to get back into work. I didn’t enjoy not working.
When you’re a kid adults always ask you what you want to be when you grow up. We still ask kiddos this today. We even upgraded the question and have the first day of school signs where we list what our kids want to be when they grow up every day. I actually think this is a fun tradition, I’m not mocking it or questioning it. It’s fun to see how their dreams change as they grow older. I would love to see someone who was consistent with those signs put them all together to show how the dream job evolved but have it with someone who is now an adult so we can know what they ended up doing. Did they follow their dreams?
When I was asked, I always said lawyer. I have no idea where I got the idea to be a lawyer. I imagine my parents' love for Law and Order and how the show played as a background to a lot of my childhood had something to do with it. My childhood best friend would answer that question with “mommy.”
Which leads me to another reason why I never entertained the idea of being a stay at home mom. I had a friend who desired it so clearly and I … didn’t. My own desires were never to be a mom. My first date with my husband I told him I was never getting married and I was never having kids. If he continued to date me, he was going in knowing that. He never once tried to change my mind either. I grew and changed my perspectives in my own time. There was a lot of work from God though, God gets the glory for my heart changing.
I would love to say that my heart was changing and opening up to the idea of being a stay at home mom. I had been listening to some podcasts, listening to some researchers who were presenting studies that spoke out against the cultural norms. Even through those findings and reconsidering my own feelings and stances, I never once considered changing everything in my life in order to become a stay at home mom. The systems we had were working. Were they perfect? No, but they were working and the big priority stuff (i.e. my son’s health) were managed-ish. He was getting sick every month but he wasn’t being hospitalized so there was some management we were able to obtain.
Moving to Arizona though, that changed everything. We were already making a big change so pivoting to becoming a stay at home mom was a lot easier. Especially when my husband and I were on the same page and thinking it was the move we needed to make. He didn’t need to convince me and I didn’t need to convince him. We decided it would be best for our family for me to be home.
This post continues soon, with lessons learned from this pivot. Stay tuned!