Not a Wasted Word

I feel like I should wrap this series* up in sparkly paper and curly ribbons, but honestly, I don’t know how (and I’ve always been more of a Dollar Store gift bag wrapper anyway). The SAHM/WOHM debate is so complicated. And so glaringly simple.

The simple of it: We all work hard. We all make choices that we believe are best for our family. We all struggle. We all triumph. We all are doing are best, trying to make it work, and hoping that (we, and) our kids  are okay at the end of it all.

The complicated of it: Each mother’s choice to stay at home, work from home or manage some combination of the two is uniquely intricate and arduous. Even for those of us who don’t have a choice, we agonize over whether we’re doing the right thing for ourselves and our families. When a path that is best for us in some ways is also more challenging for us in others, it becomes impossible to make the “right choice.” We are constantly wondering if there might be some other, better, way to make it work. The reality is, there probably isn’t.

Despite the simple, and complicated, nature of this dialogue, I think it’s an important one to have. When we talk about the challenges and benefits of working from home, or staying at home, validate each other’s experiences and open each other’s eyes to new and different possibilities. A SAHM who is fearful about rejoining the workforce might realize there are ways to manage the difficulties of working outside the home, and the mom who wants to be with her kids might discover new ways to make it financially (and emotionally) feasible. The mom who finds staying at home a grueling, even onerous, experience might feel better knowing that moms who aren’t at home feel just as frustrated with their kids (and life) at the end of a long, exhausting day. And the mom who fears she’s failing both at work and at home might feel a little better about herself knowing moms at home worry they’re messing things up as well.

Parenting is hard work. I have struggled a lot with the maternal ambivalence** that seems to define my own experience. It’s not that I don’t love my kids–I absolutely adore them–it’s the mundane, repetitive tasks required to raise them that send me oscillating wildly between elation and disdain. I cherish the moments of laughter and silliness when wrasslin’ with my daughter and revere the quiet, tender snuggles shared with my son, but I loathe all things related to feeding them and cringe before, during and after every transition. I spend so many parenting minutes looking forward to that glorious moment when I can finally be alone, and then fill the alone minutes thinking about my children, gazing wistfully at their pictures.

Sharing our experiences as stay-at-home and work-from-home moms, expressing how our maternal ambivalence might color those experiences, these are vital endeavors. We need to be having these conversations. We need to be speaking our own unique truths.

Because no matter how unique each of our experiences is, every single one is relevant and every single one is an important addition. The more stories we hear, the more we are able to understand and normalize our own experience, while hopefully putting it in perspective.

So thank you for participating in this little discussion. I know I learned a lot, my complicated feelings were normalized and I gained perspectives I didn’t realize I lacked. I am more accepting of my own “choices,” while maintaining the utmost respect for women who make very different choices for themselves. If anything, this conversation has reminded me that there is no ideal answer, there is no “easier” or “harder,” there is just shifting shades of every color imaginable, coming together in the brilliant and muddled cacophony we call motherhood. I hope others have similarly benefitted from this conversation, and that you’ll continue it with other parents you know.

What do you want to add to the this discussion? Do you think this is an important conversation to have?

*For the first three installments see the introduction and inventories one and two.

**For some really interesting thoughts (and lots of great links) on maternal ambivalence, see Stephanie Sprenger’s recent post. I am so appreciate of the conversation she is starting.

So yesterday I wrote about the challenges of being a WOHM (for me), but I’ve already declared that I believe I’m happier not being a SAHM, so now I’m going to write out all the things I appreciate about working outside the home.

– It provides financial stability for our family. My job has a lot of drawbacks, but one of the benefits is that it is VERY secure. It would be very hard for me to lose my job, and knowing that we have my salary as almost a guarantee brings us a lot of piece of mind (especially since my husband’s job is new(ish) and somewhat political in nature and we’re unsure of what kind of stability it offers).

– It provides financially security and independence for me. I’ve read some horror stories about SAHMs struggling to provide for themselves and their kids after death or divorce, especially when they need to re-enter the workforce after extended absences. I have never been someone who assumed her marriage would withstand the general wear and tear of parenting (and the daily grind is so much more damaging that I ever could have imagined), so my own personal financial stability is important to me. I also feel piece of mind knowing that I’m contributing to my own retirement and that I’ll be able to take care of myself in the future, regardless of what happens to my marriage or my husband.

I also appreciate making my own money. It’s nice to know that I contribute to our family’s finances and to be able to point to a tangible way in which I support our family as a whole.

– It creates a more balanced parenting dynamic in our marriage. My husband takes mornings. I take afternoons and bedtimes. We try to both be home for dinner, and we work hard to cover each other so we can each pursue our own interests and show up after-hours when our jobs require it. My husband is in charge of the kitchen and I do everything else around the house. In no way are things split evenly, nor would I declare it perfect, but I KNOW things are a lot more even with me working full time than they would be with me staying at home.

{Having said that, I deal with a lot of resentment that I’m still relegated to being the “default parent” and that I still do all of the “invisible work” and that I don’t get any credit for either. I think I feel MORE resentment about that because I work outside the home, than I would if I were a SAHM.}

– It allows me to avoid the stress and uncertainty of re-entering the workforce. I don’t do uncertainty well and I think the uncertainty of how and when I’d return to the workforce would be a big issue for me. I’ve seen women struggle with this and I know how hard it can be. I appreciate being able to avoid the topic entirely by continuing to work.

– It provides an identity outside my family. I really appreciate having an identity that belongs only to me, that has nothing to do with my husband or my kids. At my job I can feel competent and accomplished (though I wish I felt that way more); it’s hard for me to feel that way at home. And while teachers aren’t afforded much respect by society in general (“Those who can’t do, teach.”), I am lucky enough to work in a district where my colleagues and administrators consider me a professional, and some of my students and parents share that point of view. Even when I feel like no one respects or appreciates how much effort and skill teaching requires, I appreciate having an identity that is completely separate from my role as wife and mother.

– It provides feelings of fulfillment. This one is complicated, because I struggle with so many aspects of my job, but I believe, ultimately, that I am fulfilled in some ways by what I do. Teaching does play to many of my strengths, and most of the time I feel like I’m a good teacher. Feeling accomplished at work can help mitigate the damage of feeling like a failure at home. I have a hard time articulating this one, because I can never get a handle on how I feel about my job, but I do believe I take something important away from work that I would miss dearly if I were only at home.

 – I avoid mealtimes. I hate feeding my kids. I LOATHE it. I hate making them food, I hate watching them not eat that food, I hate negotiating with them to please eat just a couple bites of that food, I hate cleaning up after they don’t eat that food. I hate every. aspect. of. feeding. my. kids. It’s absolutely the thing I dislike most about parenting, and to avoid two meals a day with my little ones is a gift that I cherish every weekday. Truly. I can’t stress this enough. Whenever I’m clenching my jaw to maintain my composure while my daughter complains that she doesn’t actually like one of the five things she’ll usually eat, I remind myself that I didn’t have to endure breakfast or lunch, so surely I can at least survive dinner.

Also, my kids eat way more things when I’m not around, so that is another plus!

– My kids learn from others what I can’t teach/give them. My daughter attends a Spanish immersion preschool/daycare where the teachers are all native speakers. While I consider myself fluent, I am not native speaker and I love that my daughter gets exposure to native Spanish all day. Her teachers also have specific strengths that I lack, and I know my daughter learns a lot there that she wouldn’t learn at home.

My in-laws watch my son and they obviously love him with their whole hearts. He probably gets more undivided attention and enthusiastic, involved playtime with them that he ever would with his easily distracted, ADD-afflicted mother. Seriously, I truly believe my son is better off with my inlaws during the day than he would be with me.

I also believe my kids do more productive things with their time away from me than they would with me. They also watch WAY less TV (only one movie per week) than they would if they were home. They probably eat better too.

I get to leave the house. I suffer cabin fever something fierce when I’m stuck at home. I’m sure I’d take my kids lots of places if I were a SAHM, but I’d still spend a huge portion of each day at home. This would drive me insane. I love getting out of the house each day. I even enjoy my commute: 30 minutes of quiet time when I can listen to whatever audiobook or music I want. My job doesn’t afford me much time to myself, but I do appreciate getting out of the house and away from my kids every day.

I cherish my time with my kids more. My kids drive me crazy. They know how to push my buttons and send me straight over the edge. After a whole day with them I start to go a little batty. Having limited time with them makes it easier for me to deal with their intensity, and I cherish that time more for how little of it there is. Having such limited time with them can make it extra stressful when I need to sacrifice that time for work or something else, but mostly I appreciate how sweet it is to see them again after I’ve been away.

– It affords us the life we want to live. One sentiment in the SAHM arsenal that always bothers me is “we make sacrifices to make it work.” It’s hard not to feel like this implies that I am NOT willing to make sacrifices to be at home with my kids, at that my income provides us with luxuries that the families of SAHMs go without. It’s true that my income allows us to live a life we couldn’t otherwise afford, but what we have prioritized is urban living in a city that we consider home (my husband grew up here and I’ve been here half my life), with our parents near by.

We want to live in San Francisco for deeply personal reasons and we value the close proximity to both sets of grandparents, who are HUGE presences in our kids’ lives. Could we move to another state so I could afford to stay at home? Maybe. I don’t know what my husband would do there, as his job is closely tied to where we live, but I bet we could make it work. Of course that would be at the expense of both of our personal and professional satisfaction.

So yes, I work at home so we can afford a certain lifestyle, but that lifestyle doesn’t include cable, or family vacations or fancy dinners out or even a second car. That lifestyle is about living in a culturally and linguistically diverse city that has so much to offer our children. For me, that trade off is absolutely worth it.

 

I have to admit, after writing yesterday’s list I was a little nervous I wouldn’t be able to articulate all the reasons I appreciate being a WOHM. I worried today’s list would fail to convince you all that I’m happier working than staying at home. I’m not concerned about that anymore. I think it’s clear that I would choose to work outside the home, if I did have a choice. I think I would choose to work outside the home even if we did move away from this insanely expensive city that we can barely afford on two salaries. I love my children, but I just can’t be with them every minute of every day. I often wonder if part time work (maybe three days a week?) would be the best of both worlds, but I suspect it could easily become the worst of both worlds too. So for now, it helps to remind myself that this is what I would want, if I had a choice.

In the end, what this exercise usually ends up doing is making me question my choice of profession. I think I would enjoy being a WOHM a lot more if my job didn’t make it so demanding in so many ways that are similar to mothering. But that is for another post.

What do you appreciate about your current set up?

What started as a simple post ended up being a bigger, two multi-part series. The introduction is a public discussion of the SAHM v WOHM, a look into why we can never seem to put enough fuel on that fire and why we continue participating in the conversation even when it pits us against people we consider friends. (I have, and will be, responding to all comments on these posts.)

In the end, publicly, I think it’s all about recognition and validation. But for some women it can be a really difficult personal conversation. If a woman has the choice between staying home with her children or working outside the home, deciding what to do can be incredibly difficult. I know women who have anguished over the decision and I recognize how hard it must be.

For a long time I felt a lot of jealousy toward women who had the choice, especially when I determined they didn’t adequately acknowledge their own privilege in even having a choice to make. (Wait, you didn’t get the memo declaring my ability to judge others in that way? It must have been an internal memo.) Then I decided to do an honest inventory of my life as a WOHM and to attempt to honestly imagine what it would be like as a SAHM. I had some experience staying at home, during my six month maternity leave and my three two-month summer breaks with my daughter, but I knew that becoming a SAHM entailed a lot more than what I experienced during my limited periods at home. Reading posts from SAHMs helped me identify other struggles I might not have considered, so that I was able to create what I believe is a pretty accurate understanding of what being a SAHM mom would be like for me.

In the end I think being a SAHM would be easier for me, in that it would be logistically simpler. but I absolutely believe that I am happier as a WOHM than I would be as a SAHM.

The following is an inventory of the ways being a WOHM challenges me.

– It’s logistically complicated. It’s hard on our family to have two working parents, with two different schedules to reconcile, two sets of obligations, and two sets of moving parts (sometimes those parts move in completely opposite directions). Making sure the kids “are covered” can take a lot of finagling.

– It’s inconvenient. With so little time at home, and absolutely no flexibility at my job, it’s really hard to get things done outside the house. Shopping is a chore, making doctor’s appointments is a challenge, getting the oil changed requires scrutinizing my schedule for weeks in advance, and getting someone to come fix my leaking washing machine is almost impossible (I’ve been attempting this for over two months). Scheduling anything that has to happen during the work day is really, really difficult (and I recognize that this is much harder for me than it is for other working moms because my job offers no flexibility and being away requires a huge amount of additional prep beforehand and afterward).

– It’s hard on my kids and family. It’s harder on everyone that I’m not at home. Mornings are harder for my husband. Evenings are harder for me. My kids are in the care of others for long periods of time, which is emotionally draining for them. My husband has to make choices that might limit his possibilities at work because he has to be home with the kids. It would definitely be easier for our family if I were home, and I don’t doubt my kids would be happier for it.

– It leaves very little wiggle room. A lot of things have to happen, simultaneously, for our household to run smoothly. If one moving piece comes to a halt (either parent, caregivers, or kids) the whole machine can burst into flames. The whole family being sick a couple weeks ago was a prime example of this. First our daughter came home from school sick on Monday so my husband stayed home with her Tuesday. Tuesday night I got sick, and had to stay home as well. My inlaws, it turned out, were also sick. To make matters worse, both my kids ended up being sick too. So not only did I have to take care of my sick kids while I was sick, but I had to manually input 20 of my student’s phone numbers to mass-text them saying I wouldn’t be there for zero period. Then I had to write sub plans (that could be used without me preparing my room) in between visits to the porcelain god. And when my husband came home from work sick Wednesday afternoon, I had to drive back to work at 5am Thursday morning to get my classroom ready for yet another day of sub plans. All this, on top of cleaning up diarrhea diapers and throw-up clothes and sheets, while throwing up myself.

These kinds of situations are much more stressful for me because of my job, but I also recognize that my job is especially inflexible when it comes to being late or not being there at all. I can’t just show up 10 minutes after I’m supposed to; there will be 25-32 students standing outside waiting for me to show up (not to mention the disciplinary actions that would follow). And if I can’t be there at all, I have to write detailed explanations of what all five classes need to do in my absence, and have all the resources required for them to do those things, ready and waiting in my room. Plus, there is the added stress of using sick days, which isn’t a big deal until I run out and start not getting paid for the days I’m not at work, which can affect our ability to pay our bills at the end of the month.

– It’s incredibly isolating. Most WOHM list daily adult interaction as one thing they appreciate most about not being home, but as a middle school teacher my job is super isolating. With my current set up, seeing other adults just doesn’t happen–I don’t see my colleagues at work (I don’t even eat lunch on campus) and I can’t make play dates with the parents of my daughter’s friends after work (it’s way too late by then). That leaves only the weekends to see other people, and they fill up fast with the boring, monotonous chores that can’t get done during the work week (shopping, laundry, etc.) Sometimes I think I made a horrible mistake becoming a teacher because it has created this incredibly isolating existence that as an extrovert I find tortuous.

– It’s hard to manage the household. It’s really hard to keep the house clean, get the laundry done, make and clean up after dinner and just generally do things around the house when I only have a few hours at home every day. If were a SAHM and my older kid were in preschool (at 4.5yo I’m assuming she would be) and my younger kid were napping (at 15 months old he still naps), I’d have an hour or two to get things done around the house every day. I know when I am home in the summer I always feel way more on top of managing the household than I do when I’m teaching.

Having said that, I absolutely appreciate the lowered expectations placed on me because I am NOT at home. I think a feeling of absolute failure in the cooking/cleaning/home management would really wear on my self-esteem if I were a SAHM.

 – It’s stressful. Having a job means managing a whole separate set of obligations and expectations every day. Not only do I have to consider my husband and my kids, but I have to consider my students, my administration, my colleagues and my students’ parents. At the ends of the night I am frequently grading papers, responding to (indignant) parent emails, preparing lesson plans for the next day or filling out IEP or 504 paperwork. Most of the times my nightmares are related to work stress and sometimes the combination of stress at home and stress at school can be completely overwhelming. Being at work all day I never feel like I’m measuring up as a parent and spending most of the evening with my kids I’m always falling behind as a teacher. I spend most of my life feeling like I’m failing everybody, and that is incredibly stressful. And demoralizing.

– It’s exhausting. I have to wake up at 5am to be at work at 6am so I have some time to prepare for my first class at 7am. My kids usually wake up around 7am, so I’m losing about 2 hours of sleep a night, on average, being a WOHM. My job is also very exhausting–standing in front of a bunch of middle school students for 5+ hours with only one ten minute break to go to the bathroom, does not offer me a chance to recharge. And while I don’t have to deal with the behavioral management of my own children, I do have to deal with the behavioral management of other people’s children. And teach them stuff too. When I am home in the summer I am much better rested and have a lot more energy.

– Managing maternal guilt. This one is closely tied to the stress, but I feel guilt deserves it’s own bullet point because I feel a considerable amount of guilt for not being there for my kids and I wonder constantly if my absence is harming them in some way. There are a lot of messages out there about how important it is for mothers to be home with their children and how we’re damaging them by putting them in someone else’s care. Add that to the regret of missing important milestones and the guilt can be crushing.

These are my biggest reasons challenges with being a WOHM. It’s kind of a daunting list, and yet I stand by my assertion that I’m happier with this arrangement than I would be as a SAHM. I guess tomorrow’s inventory has a lot of explaining to do.

What are the biggest challenges to your current set up?