Why I Would Have (Probably) Been a Terrible Stay-at-Home Mom

First of all, you stay at home moms have my respect. Mad respect. You wake up every day and do like 25 jobs--often with little praise. You never get bonuses or raises for things like increasing productivity or working overtime. You are the unsung heroes. Working moms have a whole different set of battles to face--many of them emotional. We try to balance home and work, and usually feel like the work people think we're floundering because of our home-life and our kids/spouses think we're overextended because of work.

 As a child, I always knew I wanted to be a mom. Always. I loved taking care of/bossing around my little sisters, babysitting, playing dolls, playing house, playing "school", I basically loved the whole concept. Except I also always wanted a career. I never thought a lot about the fact that the two don't always go beautifully hand-in-hand (something I've learned the hard way). As a young adult, I watched as several of my childhood friends married very young and on went on to become domestic goddesses. I shook my head and said "not for me". I think because my mom always worked (and worked pretty obsessively), I had that picture of family life to a certain degree. Except I was going to find that illusive balance. I was going to work just as hard as her but also be more available to my daughter. I was going to have it all ;) It sounds so easy on paper, right?

My SAHM flaws?

1). I know it's silly, but I feel a little victimized by having to clean my own house. My family growing up was messy. Like, someone might put jelly on toast and leave the jelly sitting open on the counter with the dirty knife right there kind of messy. And from the time I was about 10 years old and up, we always had a semi-regular house cleaner that helped with the upkeep. We weren't rich and didn't have a live in maid or anything...my mom just realized she wasn't very good at cleaning up after 4 girls and a sloppy husband and called in professional help. This basically taught me that cleaning was only important if you  were having company or if someone else did it for you. Living in my own place from age 19 to now has taught me better habits, but I'm still not very good with deep cleaning my kitchen or bathroom unless there's a "special occasion". And I sometimes have been known to put a knife with peanut butter on it in the sink without rinsing it off first, or folding my clothes and then throwing them in a pile in my closet. I guess you could say, I'm "closet-messy". Lucky for me, I married a guy who is more or less OCD about having everything clean, so it worked out.

2). I get bored easily. I guess this is why lots of SAHM's join play groups and take their toddlers to the baby-gym and other things. Sitting at home with a one year old gets old really fast. There. I said it. While I can throw myself into her world completely for stretches of time and play it up like the best of them, after awhile I feel that twinge of boredom setting in. Rapidly followed by guilt. I'm working on this.

3). I'm not so great at multi-tasking. Holding the crying toddler while trying to cook a nice dinner while also trying to clean as I go so the house looks nice when Scott gets home....it almost never goes as planned. I clean up the bathroom, she runs in a grabs the TP and has it all over the floor before I notice it's unusually quiet. I make the bed, she sneezes all over the sheets and then wipes her nose on my pillow. At the end of a day home with Ev alone, I usually feel just as exhausted (if not more) than I feel after a day of work. The whole sleep when baby sleeps thing sounds great, but then I wonder when am I supposed to get anything else done?

4). I like to feel the tug of a deadline, the pressure of goals. With kids, you kind of have to set that aside and just be in the moment with them. Which is awesome and probably WAY better for your mind, body and spirit. But I think I would miss the thrill of the deadline....the gratification of challenging myself to get that promotion or launch that new project and the satisfaction of actually doing it!

The truth is, I didn't really end up having a choice. For now, I have more earning potential than my husband, and therefore it's my job to keep the bills paid. And he turned out to be an amazing Stay at Home Dad: his playful nature translates into hours of imaginative play, his creativity makes him the best fort-maker, play-dough sculpture, Muno-drawing parent this side of the Mississippi. He does a great job of balancing parenting with keeping up the house and keeping from getting burned out by doing little things for himself like maximizing nap-time and listening to music he likes to keep his mood upbeat.

Yep, I guess I'm pretty lucky.

The Ups and Downs of (Gender)Role Reversals

For those of you regular readers, you know that my family is currently rocking out a role reversal of sorts, where my husband is a stay-at-home-dad and I work full time. "Why?" you may ask. The answer to that is basically just that with my Masters degree, I currently have more earning potential that my husband and this non-traditional flip allows him to attend school and watch Everleigh while I work. He's not laid up on the couch eating bon bons ether ;) For those of you stay-at-home moms, you KNOW that it's tough work.

Most of the time, I enjoy our arrangement. I get to spend time with Ev in the mornings, I come home for lunch every day (we live 2 blocks from my work), and when I get home she's all mine til bedtime (and usually throughout the night at least a couple times). From 8:30-noon and 1-4:30PM, I get to be a grown up and do grown up things at my job (I'm currently a wellness coach/therapist at an outpatient behavioral health agency).


The pro's:

• When I get home, the house is always clean (Scott, you are kind of OCD, but you ROCK!)
• I know my daughter is home all day with someone who loves her, plays with her, and teaches her things.
• She misses me while I'm away and is always excited when I come home. It's nice to have that :)
• It's free. Kind of. In theory.
• I get to further my career and be a grown up while still having plenty of time with my girl

The cons:

• There is literally no space in there for a break. Not to take a bath, go to the bathroom, go to happy hour, go to the CVS for a leisurely stroll. None. From the second I wake up to the second I fall asleep I am needed by my daughter or a client. Sometimes both at once.
• If I'm really honest about it, sometimes I'm envious of my husband and the time he gets to spend with Ev. I know his job is also very difficult, but the grass is always greener, right?
• Having to "ask" me for money (he doesn't really have to but usually does) and explain our arrangement to other people sometimes makes my husband feel bad. When he isn't happy, nobody's happy.
• When I have a rough day at work, I still have to muster up the energy to play with Ev until she falls asleep (sometimes at 8, sometimes at 10:30 depending on how much she fights bedtime).
•  We both feel overworked all the time. But maybe that's normal for parents? I'm new to this still.
• When my husband goes back to school later this month, he'll be pulling two 12-hour school days a week and watching her the other 3 days. I'll be working full-time and juggling her alternate care (Grandpa and a Mother's Day Out program 1 day a week), then watching her alone most nights while he's in night school. Which means we will basically have 0 time for each other.

Whenever I feel stressed about money and time and lack of energy and EVERYTHING, I always think of you amazing single moms out there. I'm really not sure how you guys do it, but hats off!

I guess I just wrote this because I know I am SO blessed to have my daughter at home with daddy full time. However, you never really hear an open honest reflection of what that's like for the working/bread-winning mom. It's great in some ways and kind of awful in others. Yes, you're working, but to your kid, you are also Mom and that doesn't go away or lessen or get easier just because you see them less. I think us 21st Century girls really bit a lot off! 

That said, I think it's great that gender roles are changing. That regardless of who works when and pays which bill, most couples are approaching child-rearing from a loving and pro-active standpoint. Everleigh thinks it's awesome that Daddy is home with her all the time. I just hope someday other people will too :)

Mr. Mom and the Stay-At-Home Dads

The phenomena of the Stay-At-Home-Dad was captured in the 1983 film, "Mr. Mom" as a father loses his high paying job and then struggles to fill his wife's shoes when she receives a job offer and returns to work. While it's a cute depiction of how the typical man might feel being "stuck at home" with the kids, it's funny how in the end the dad gets his job back and returns to work having learned his lesson about appreciating his wife and kids more, etc.

But what about REAL stay at home dads? What is their often untold experience? How do they really feel about their wives paying the bills, about telling others in public what they do, about forming an extra special close bond with baby that most dads miss out on?

I don't know all the answers to these questions. But I can you my experience as the wife of a stay at home dad.

When my husband and I decided to try for a little bambino, we thought it would take awhile to get pregnant, then awhile to grow this little bean in my belly, and that our circumstances would likely change many times between then and when baby was born. When I got pregnant, my husband and I were both full time students, and I was also working full time. We envisioned that I would graduate with my MA, step into a sweet new job, and that my hubby would keep on going with school (while working part-time) and then graduate a couple years later, get a great job, make bank, and we would be doing awesome. At that point, I could be a stay at home mom if we wanted or see how things shook out.

Reality check? My hubby looked for part time work the whole time I was pregnant and couldn't find jack. I didn't get the raise I was up for, and after graduation I couldn't find a job in my field. i still haven't received so much as an interview from one of the 20+ applications/resume's I've sent out. My maternity leave was super short and primarily unpaid, and I headed back to work exhausted and poor. Then 3 weeks later, my husband's classes started again at school.

I know he's had mixed feelings off an on about our situation. He thinks it's awesome that he gets to spend more time with our girl than your average daddy, and hopes that connection with create the foundation for an amazingly tight lifelong bond. However, I think he struggles with sometimes asking me for beer money or checking with me before he signs on to participate in an opportunity at school that would interfere with the baby's schedule/my work schedule.

On my end, I've struggled with being jealous that my husband gets to spend so much of this critical time with our little one while I'm slugging it out at my less-than-thrilling job for which I am brutally underpaid. I get a little miffed when I return from a day at work to a crying baby (evenings are still kind of "melt-down" time for her) and don't get to eat dinner until she's asleep at 8. It's tough for sure and mommy-burnout is common for new moms but i think especially for working moms and maybe even more so for bread-winning working moms.

But you know what? I'm still so happy that I have an amazing and talented husband who loved me enough to A) have a child with me even though he wasn't 100% sure/on-board at first and B) loves her so much and has enough scheduling flexibility to watch her most days while I work. The way he engages with her is so incredible to watch. He really tries to get to know her as a person, and the way her eyes light up when he's around is worth all the money in the world.

Maybe some day we'll strike it rich, or at least score the jobs we want and so on. Until then, I love my stay-at-home husband!