I am a stay-at-home parent with two small humans. As any parent knows, this gig is exhausting. My husband and I both had crying jags this morning, it’s been a rough week. The hardest part in weeks like this is thinking about how I chose to stay home, and that I’m supposed to be putting a pretty face on that choice. I chose to stay home, so I must love everything about this, and be completely fulfilled by raising these hooligans.
Let me say that I do love staying home… most of the time. Kids can be transcendent and awesome. One second they’re trading kisses with you, and telling you how much you’re loved (which for the record, is better than just about anything). The next second, the three-year-old will have a meltdown because you didn’t give him something he didn’t ask for, and you, as the mind reading adult, should have known better. You will be hit, kicked, and spat upon. This is while the one-year-old is wailing in the background because you aren’t holding her, and how dare you! Repeat, ad nauseum.
I’ve stayed home since a few months before the three-year-old was born. At the time, I was in nursing school. I have every intention of returning. My staying home is not, and was never meant to be the end game, but I’ve had a tough time coming up with the elevator pitch to convey that information. I want a shirt labeling me #temporaryhousewife. But that’s a tough sell to others. I made a choice, thus, I should be sticking with it, right?
Let’s break down that “choice.” I get that I’m in an immensely privileged position to have even thought about not working once my kids came along. That we are making a go of things, first in LA, now in NYC, on one salary is no small thing. I get that. I also get that for women who are established in their careers, the math around staying at work and childcare costs before school starts is much more complicated. There are long-term factors at play that need to be weighed heavily. No one has all the choices laid out in front of them. Circumstances, goals, geography, whatever else you can think of present limitations to the paths available to us. It is easy to make judgments from the outside: to tell a parent that they made their decision, they need to deal with consequences, and to stop whining (even if all that parent is looking for is an empathetic ear). I have had those judgments directed at me, more than once or twice.
Here’s how I came to stay home: I was in school, not working. We could afford life on my husband’s income, but not once full-time childcare costs came into the equation. To stay in school, I would have needed to return to class, full-time, no later than two weeks after giving birth. I would have also had to work in order to be able to pay the childcare bill, which would equal next to no time with the kids we had decided to have while working a job that I did not want but attending school for the career that I do. My kids were planned, my choice of timing may look poor in hindsight, but I felt physically and mentally ready to handle a pregnancy, which outweighed the poor timing. We did not, and still do not, have family nearby, so any and all help we need is hired out. The budget looked like: stay home and be reasonably comfortable, stay in school and scrape by, or go into (not insignificant) amounts of debt to keep ourselves reasonably comfortable. School is something I can go back to. Nursing is a career that many come to later in life. And so the answer we agreed on was that I’d stay at home until our youngest is situated in preschool.
Alright, so now, I’m a stay-at-home mom. When I meet people and am asked what I do, I tell them I stay at home and leave it at that. It’s hard to provide the context when exchanging small talk without seeming defensive. Or, if nothing else, long-winded when someone asks what do you do and the answer is: “I’m a stay-at-home parent, but I am plotting my re-entry into nursing school so that I can someday be a nurse practitioner or certified nurse midwife. I’m thinking I’d like to either have my own clinic or get into policy work to move along reforms so that nurse practitioners can take a larger role in the future.”
I went to try out that little spiel one day with my mother-in-law and a good friend of hers, both of whom were working mothers, but I couldn’t even get it out. They started in with how much they wished they could have stayed home, it’s the only way to be a good mother, what a selfless, wonderful person I am. I was so uncomfortable. I was also going through a rough patch with my newborn and searching for an empathetic ear—cluster feeds are no joke—but that conversation made me feel like an epically shitty mom for not wanting to be home forever. Plus, I was outraged at how they were devaluing their own mothering, as well as my desire to have goals that don’t involve my kids. My husband is an incredible human, and for that, I credit his mother. She spent her working years developing and implementing public health programs in third world countries. All she can say about her mothering is that she is ashamed that she wasn’t a better mom, and thank goodness her son survived in spite of it. I see a man thriving because of not in spite of—and I resent anyone who would tell any mother that her children would be at a disadvantage because of her decision to follow her career. One woman’s choice to say home is not a commentary on another woman’s choice to work. Nor does staying home equal better parenting—not by any stretch.
I made this choice to stay home, for a time. I am not ungrateful for what my kids and I are getting out of this time together. I have been the one to see and hear all the firsts. I would not trade that for a finished nursing degree, but I do long for that degree. And I will get it. I hope that my ambition and desires have an impression on my kids, but mostly I want these things for myself because I have never thought I would stay home forever. I don’t want to have to pretend that I made the best choice from all the choices available ever, nor should anyone else. I also don’t want to pretend that desires and circumstances don’t change. I think we are all working toward some happy midpoint that allows balance between our personal goals and the best interest of our families. It’s a fluid thing. It’s complicated. We should talk about it.
