Member-only story
I Made the Choice to Stay Home with My Child Instead of Working Outside the Home
Go ahead. Judge away.
A man I respect and know well said to me, “you’re just a mom?” after I told him I chose to stay home to raise my daughter full-time.
He and I go way back.
He wasn’t trying to hurt or offend. We don’t have much of a filter with each other, each preferring honestly and knowing when the other is trying to BS their way through something.
Yet, his honest comment reflects how many feel about stay-at-home moms.
The knee-jerk reaction and thought process of someone hearing you’re a stay-at-home mom goes something like this, “that’s all you do,” and, “you must have no interests,” and, “it must be so boring hanging out and drinking coffee all day,” and, “you must possess no marketable skills other than making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potty training,” — which is hard AF by the way — and, “you must be dull to talk to with at parties.”
Society at large still sees the choice to stay-at-home full-time to raise children as irrelevant.
They view the person who chooses to stay home as having little value, or, not the type of value our culture obsesses over — money, power, fame, status.
