The Stay at Home Mom Pivot Part II—The Lessons
Note: This is part two of a two-part series. Read the first post here.
Now that I’ve been doing this stay a home mom thing for a little over a year, I have some thoughts, some insights, and a whole lot of gratitude. I know I am considered “lucky” because I get to stay home. While I understand the thought, I want to point out it was a choice we made. We shifted our priorities and made sacrifices in order to make it possible for me to be a stay at home mom. We have made significant changes in order to allow my husband’s salary be enough for our life. What some call lucky, I call a pivot. I call sacrifice. I call it a shifting of priorities.
I should also point out—being a stay at home mom allowed us to quickly decide when it was time to pivot to homeschooling. I was already home, I was already in the place to make this pivot we made after we moved. Deciding to homeschool was one of the easiest decisions we have ever made. That’s another post for another time though.
That being said, here are some things I’ve noticed.
1. Stay at home moms are believed to have it easy.
Why do we show more societal appreciation to daycare workers and preschool teachers than we do stay at home moms? Why is the societal norm to believe that moms at home with their kids have it easy? Is it because there are usually* less kids in a home than a classroom? Do kids at home not fight and argue like they do in schools? Do we think kids at home don’t act like little hurricanes who can be wild and out of control? We’re all aware this is a possibility in a classroom, but do we think the environment at home keeps the tiny hurricanes calm?
Let me be the first to tell you, it doesn’t. In fact, I think my youngest acts less like a hurricane when he is in school than he does at home. I’m still playing referee like I did when I was a preschool teacher or even a middle school teacher. I thought a six year age gap would make these types of situations less, to be honest. Turns out, I was wrong.
I actually think I am busier now that I stay at home than when I worked full-time. I am constantly involved in conversations with my boys, teaching them new things, hearing ideas, talking about values, or even just explaining what I am doing when I sit at my computer with a blank document open. When I’m not doing those things, I am doing laundry, cleaning the apartment, running errands, driving from one activity to another. Part of being a full-time mom is becoming a full-time taxi driver. As the cool kids say, Uber. Although, I live in Arizona now so I’ve become the human version of a Waymo.
The amount of times I have been asked, “do you just stay home?” in the course of conversations is alarming to me. I’m starting to think part of the toxic mom-shame culture (one that showcases women basically hating being a mom) partly stemmed from the desire to paint a fuller picture of what being a stay at home mom was like.
2. Moms (and dads too) are the experts in their children.
Society likes to call it the mom gut or the special mom instinct, I think it’s the Holy Spirit personally, but moms have it. Moms know their kids deeply and instinctively. The symptom that led to us discovering a “rather large hole” in my youngest son’s heart wasn’t some massive symptom that terrified the entire family. The whole heart saga started with me watching my baby breathe, notice pulling in the rib cage and thinking, “That’s not right.” He wasn’t displaying any other symptoms to showcase any signs of the distress we would find out his body was enduring.
If anything, being a stay at home mom provided me the confidence to set boundaries because I know my kids best. I have more confidence now to filter through advice, suggestions, and other insights others have about my kids through my own lens because I know my kids best. This leads me to …
3. As a society, we are outsourcing too much of parenthood.
I cannot pinpoint where the shift started—I would love to research more and find out where it started— but parents are allowing too many people and things to have access to our children. Parenting has become less of an active role and more of a passive one. Parenting has turned into more facilitating. Parents are micromanaging situations and environments to the point where children cannot do things that we’re uncomfortable with but we remove ourselves from the situation so they are left to essentially act like small adults with agency they have no business having.
I might get pushback from this but “No, because I said so” is a sentence. While it might not be appropriate for older kids, with toddlers who need to learn authority and obedience, it is a full sentence and one they should listen to.
Society, as large, has parents acting more like facilitators to childhood instead of parenting. Then, since parents are just facilitating, outside agencies are acting as pseudo-parents and now children are being raised by schools, by doctors, by therapists, and countless other institutions. We’re allowing social media and the internet to shape our children’s values. In a lot of ways, these outside sources are shaping our children’s identity. We hand them phones, tablets, and computers and I’m not sure we really thought about the consequences of these devices.
Parenting is involved. It requires sacrifice, denying ourselves, and stopping what we are doing so we can teach them in the moment. Parenting isn’t something you can pick up again later when you have more time.
Proverbs 31:28 Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also and he praises her
Our first ministry is to our home, to our family, to our children. We need to make sure that our home comes before anything else, especially a job. I’m not saying any of this to be accusatory or condemning. I’m also not telling you that you have to quit your job and go stay at home. If we were to sit down for coffee and have a thoughtful conversation though, I might encourage you to consider it.
What I’m sharing is that society paints a picture of motherhood and womanhood that is actually harmful to children and to women. I believed all the things I was told and had modeled for me, especially from other Christians. I didn’t know any stay at home moms when I first came back to Jesus. In fact, a lot of my friends and ministry co-laborers were empty nesters who did work throughout their children’s childhood.
“Parenting isn’t something you can pick up again later when you have more time.”
To this day, there are probably people in my life who quietly think that this pivot was crazy and the sacrifices we made are pointless. Some might think that I’m damaging the quality of life I am providing my boys with these sacrifices. I could eliminate these sacrifices and raise our quality of life by just getting a job. I’m okay with others not understanding what we’re doing though. I’m okay with living against what was modeled for me because I want to be more active in my children’s lives and I already missed years I cannot get back. I’m not willing to sacrifice anymore.