Ten Things Moms Should Be Able to Put on Their Resumes

When I dusted off my resume last year, with the daunting task of updating it with “what I’ve done” during my stay-at-home-mom years, someone said to me, “Just don’t put ‘Mom’ on your resume.” At first, I was horribly insulted. What kind of a lame person did he think I was to consider such a thing? Then I was insulted again! I have learned so much as a mom and—despite the fact that it has made me a much better person to employ—none of it will ever get any respect from anyone in charge of hiring anywhere. It’s the hardest job (that we know!), but it also teaches you more about working hard and fast and smart. More than any other job I’ve ever held.

Since I’ll never actually put any of my many mom skills on an actual back-to-paid-work resume, I’ll share here the list of “skills” I wish I could include:

1.      Strategic Planning—Quiz: Your husband is putting the baby down for nap, do you finally take that shower you’ve been planning for days? No! It’s quiet—type now, shower when naptime is over.

2.      Executive Function—Apparently, I am in charge.

3.      Prioritization & Decision Making—I have never made so many decisions in my life. And whenever my careful planning is met with resistance (all day long), I ask myself, “Does this really need to happen? Is this really important?” What if no one gets a bath tonight? What if my sick kid only eats ice cream today? Would I rather get groceries with two kids today or spend my alone time with a shopping cart this weekend?

4.      Building Strategic Networks—Hopefully, we can all agree that It-Takes-a-Village, but… How do you find your village? No one does it for you!

5.      Change Management—If you’re going through a tough time, rest assured it will pass. Things looking nice and calm and steady? This too shall pass. Change is the only sure thing.

6.      Community & Stakeholder Engagement—If you can make doing laundry and errands sound exciting to a toddler, you can get anyone on board for anything.

7.      Risk Management— This one may be the most important skill a parent can learn and is a particularly hard one for me. I know I need to give them enough space to make mistakes, to get hurt, but knowing when they’re ready and making sure they have everything they need to succeed… Not easy to know when to let go of the back of the bike, but these are everyday decisions for parents.

8.      Relationship Management—You can’t call a big meeting and take care of everyone at once. It’s all about one-on-one contact. With your kids. Individually. With your spouse. Alone, outside of the home. Yourself. Alone, at home. Not to mention friends, co-workers, extended family. You’re going to need a calendar.

9.      Flexibility—Not talking yoga here, though that helps with all kinds of flexibility. Not one single plan ever goes the way you actually plan, but you know how to bend yourself into a pretzel to make it work for everyone.

10.   Accountability—Ain’t no one else to blame (or claim credit). 

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Where Have All the Old Moms Gone?

I've been stroller-free for over a year now.

No, this is not some weird new parenting movement (free-range lite!) or statement of superiority. I’m not comparing my stroller-free life to anyone else, just saying that we don’t need one anymore. The kids are big, and, whether they like it or not, they walk. (Ok, except when I break down and pick up the little one when he whines just loud enough. But then he gets too heavy and down again he goes.)

This morning, looking at moms pushing their babies in strollers, it hit me how far away I am from that. From having a baby, from needing a stroller, from being seen as a comrade to moms with tiny babies.

I remember smiling sympathetically at other moms with strollers and receiving those bolstering smiles in return. It doesn’t really happen to me anymore. It’s a kind of radar, picking up on the presence of another mom of similar aged offspring.

The new moms know I’m not one of them.

When I’m home with my kids now, I usually have a four year old with me—already old by today’s stay-at-home mom standards, but I’m also the mom of an almost seven-year-old, which makes me ancient in middle-of-the-day-mom years.

Being a stay-at-home mom with an infant is a world apart from staying at home when your kids hit preschool. The herd thins as the kids grow older. More and more moms go back to work with every passing year. 

(Do I really have to say something in support of working moms here? And then say something in support of stay-at-home moms, too? Can we just assume I did that?)

There's an arguably strong culture of moms with babies who don't hold jobs, but it's a culture that's not sure what to do about moms of older kids. 

It’s lonelier when the kids get older. I wonder what I’m still doing here. Feminist crises of confidence happen with regularity. Despite that, I have chosen to be home for one more year, to send my littlest off to kindergarten before finding another job, and I’m good with that.

But sometimes I miss the days when my first was a baby and I had a whole posse of mom-friends at-home with me. We were mostly first-time moms, but there were two moms who had second kids who were about 5-years-old at the time. Now that every one of those posse moms has had a second baby, we’ve looked back at the things we talked about, obsessed over, worried about, waxed poetic about… and thanked those two moms profusely for how merciful they were with us. We must have sounded so insufferable sometimes, thinking we had any idea what we were doing.

Aside from being mercifully quiet when we were insufferable, they were also a font of wisdom.

New moms have so many anxieties that can be vanished in an instant with a few words by moms who have been there, done that. Everything from breastfeeding advice to the reassurance that all children do eventually sleep better than newborns to saying out loud that it being a mom doesn't make every fiber of your being glow, we need to hear it.

And I don’t know how to say this without it sounding like a swan song to the days when fewer women worked, though I really wish I could figure out how to do that, because I don’t mean it that way at all, but…

It’s hard not to feel like we’re missing our village elders.

New moms are great for other new moms for those “yes, me too” moments, but sometimes it would be nice to see the view of a wider horizon. The horizon can be so small when you’re all new to everything. It’s not just that moms with little kids are working a lot more than a generation or two ago, but those little kids' grandmothers are working, too. So, they aren't around to be old moms either. 

Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe there’s a sense from our moms that today's grandmothers can’t share their wisdom, can't tell us what to do, in the same way that their mothers may have felt more comfortable. Moms of the Greatest Generation—it’s in the name!—seem to have had a stronger sense that there was *a way* to be a mom. It seems like they would have, for better and worse, taught that to their daughters, along with the breastfeeding and sleeping and the rest.

Of course, their daughters were among the first generation of moms not to listen, to look beyond tradition, for different ways to be a mom. It’s easy to see how it might not be in the Baby Boomer grandparent DNA to tell their daughters how to raise kids in the same way as it would have been for post-depression era parents, who had less doubt about passing along the “right way” to do things.

This is all really good stuff—the loss of one right way to be a mom, to be a woman. No one is arguing for a way-back-machine for motherhood. It just has this side-effect of lonely "old" moms and of new moms living with anxieties that could be lifted with more support from other moms.

After my second kid was born and I had to admit something was seriously wrong, I started going to a postpartum depression moms group. I remember the first time I went, telling my story, sharing what I felt like were confessions that I was a total failure as a mom, crying my eyes out. A few years later, I still go to that group, because moms with depression and anxiety need support and that’s where I found it.

There’s a group of women who are called “veteran moms” in the group who sit and listen to those crying new moms on their first visit. And this will sound like an exaggeration, but I have seen it enough times now to know it’s true. When they tell their story, and the veteran moms echo them, “Yup. Been there. Done that,” I swear you could do a scientific study: 50% of the weight is lifted. You can see it in their faces, hear it in their breathing—they are not alone. And the hard work of mothering is easier when we do it together.

Old moms are good like that. So, how do we rebuild a village of old moms, one that works for this world today? This world where women have more options and we’re glad for it, but also this world where parents have more anxiety and we need to do something about it?

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Imposter Mom Syndrome

Both times we left the hospital with new babies, I felt like an imposter. Like an overgrown teenager who didn’t take the grown-up test and wouldn’t have passed. “They’re really gonna let us just walk out the door like this, with a baby human? Who’s in charge of checking in to make sure we’re doing it right?”

I’ve talked to lots of friends about this imposter syndrome, and they have had this moment, too. One day, you wake up and the police officers are way younger than you, and it’s weird.

But I realized something this week: I’m a grown-up.

No, really, I totally am. Leaving a job that wasn’t working for me or my family was a decisive move. One of the most self-directed intentional thing I’ve ever done. There have been a lot of “Sure, why not?" moments along the way. There was an open door somewhere and I went through it.

This time, when my life wasn’t the way I wanted it to be, I changed it.

For now, I’ve renewed my stay-at-home status. There are people who believe I am doing just the right thing, focusing on my family, not working outside the home. Some of them, I would not like very much. And there are people who think I’m a relic, not living up to modern day commandments. I probably wouldn’t like most of them either.

This week it hit me—I’m in charge of me.  The only question I need to answer in my current self-doubting, insecure incarnation is this: Am I ok with me?

I know that sounds horribly trite, like a big fat cliché. I’ve had these thoughts many times, but this time was different. Because this time I’m a grown up.

The people who would judge who I am based on my current state of affairs—one way or the other—will step off, as we used to say back in the day, if I feel good about what I’m doing and emanate that feeling. Or at least I’ll stop seeing their judge-y faces because I’m too busy living my life according to my own, grown-up desires.

Don’t get me wrong here. There are days when I’m no Rosie the Riveter. The self-confidence required to not only figure out what you want to do, but to do it and not ask anyone else for advice, that’s pretty grown-up. There are bound to be slip-ups.

In grad school, I had a professor who told me that my poetry is “not for everyone,” but that people who “get” me will “really get” me. It’s kind of like being okay with that. I’m not for everyone.

Over the last six years, since I have become a mother, I have found it incredibly hard to be okay with me, to feel confidence in my choice, but I never really figured out whether those questioning voices were coming from someone else or from me.

When I was first home with my first baby, I went through a whole messy process of trying to figure out who this new person was. She doesn’t work, she runs playgroups, she does mommy and me yoga. Was that ok? Was I happy? Did I need more? And then the anxious questions tumble out… What if my husband left me? What if he suddenly died? It was a vulnerable place to be and it made me very insecure—financially and emotionally.

Home again now, after working a real, pays-me kind-of-job, I’m cycling through all of that again. All of the doubts, the insecurities and the questions came back at me full force in a way I had not expected.

Working at a job gave me the confidence that I still have value in that part of the world, that I have something to offer and am welcome if/when I choose it. I spent money without checking in first, because it was my money. And I hadn’t even really noticed that, when I wasn’t working, I had felt like it wasn’t mine. With the first paycheck, that feeling of security came back and reminded me what life is like when you earn your own money.

That may be the hardest part of being “at home” for me—completely relying on another person in a whole body-whole life kind of way. Just like falling in love and realizing what you’ve just handed to someone is the ability to hurt you.

Having kids adds to this, because it’s about more than whether I get hurt, it’s about my instinct to protect these vulnerable offspring who have been entrusted to me. What if I’m suddenly, by accident or choice, the only one to love and feed and clothe and support them? Yikes.

Having a job comforted that part of my mind. I thought it would last, but now I think it’s just a part of it. Being a “stay-at-home” mom is a choice to be vulnerable, and it needs to be paired with the peace of mind that I would be able to do all of those grown-up things if it was left to me alone. And then letting it go.

Because you can’t think about all of the weight of that every day and stay sane.

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The Myth of Choice Parenthood

My mom was 21 when I was born. By 25, she had four kids. Today, that has shock value. I get tired just thinking about it.

I was a full decade older than my mom when I was a tired new mom with babies who wouldn’t sleep. It’s no wonder I was always tired. Being up all night in your twenties is easy. I was otherwise occupied on my 20-something late nights.

When I became a mother at 32, I certainly didn’t have the energy (or the body) that I had at 22. Three years later, pregnant again at 35, I was even more tired. The exhaustion of parenting is cumulative. Being pregnant starts it off with a bang, followed by seemingly endless night wakings, and then they learn how to talk… and you learn about a whole new depth of exhaustion.

Coming up on my 40-somethings, one bad night’s sleep can really throw me for a loop.

When I was 20 and pregnant, I made a choice not to have a baby. I had an abortion, stayed in college, and took the time to (kind-of) figure out what kind of life I wanted while it was still all mine. 

Even at 27, newly-married, I still wasn’t ready for a baby. I remember the feeling very clearly—on my honeymoon in Paris, failed birth control left me in tears in fetal position in one of those short, deep French bathtubs. The idea of a baby was terrifying.

We are only two or three parenting generations into birth control being legal for married couples—and (mostly) reliable. The Supreme Court is still ruling on cases that impact women’s access to birth control. And yet the sense that we can control our family planning is almost taken for granted.

Don’t get me wrong—birth control is awesome. But it doesn’t always work. It just doesn’t—there are plenty of unexpected babies to prove it. Still, what it has done for women could fill volumes.

Many of my generation spend a sexually active decade avoiding pregnancy, with the naïve assumption that it will happen when we’re ready. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.

The idea that you can choose when to get pregnant, naturally or otherwise, choose when to give birth or how, choose what your life will be like when your baby is born, whether you’ll nurse, how much sleep you’ll get, what your children will be like and what they’ll need…it’s all false freedom.

The first lesson of parenting—you have no control, surrender is your only hope. 

So, when I read (here and here and here) about the controversy surrounding decisions by Apple and Facebook to pay for employees to freeze their eggs, my so-called choice feminism told me that more options available to women is always good. Except when it’s not.

There are good medical, economic and cultural arguments against egg freezing as a catch-all solution. For some, IVF is a gift, but for others it’s a disappointment—either way it’s far from a sure thing. And I agree with all of the cynics who see this as a way for companies to take the pressure off being a parent-friendly workplace. It does seem like a ploy to keep younger workers away from that struggle, to insist that pregnancy and parenting are things you can postpone and that will be there for you when you want them…In fact, why even time to date and settle down? You’ve got another decade at least. Just stay at your desk. We’ll take out your dry-cleaning. Go play ping-pong if you’re worried. 

The result is a line is drawn between parents and non-parents, further sidelining those who would ask for more flexibility, day care options, sick leave, and other things that make work work. Even for non-parents, it maintains a cultural work ethic of having no life outside your job. No time for family, friends, whatever you want to do can wait. I hear marathon training is pretty all-consuming. It doesn’t have to be a parents-only argument against reasonable work expectations. Most workers would prefer a life that offers more—whatever that means for them.

It seems to me that we need a re-centering. The articles about the science of egg freezing, the struggles of IVF, the reality that it may not be as easy to have a baby a decade later, those are needed voices. But there’s more to having a family than how hard it is to get pregnant. If you have a partner and want a baby, or even if you don’t have a partner and want to have a baby, it’s misleading to be told it’s all the same.

Forget about getting pregnant and giving birth, having a baby is harder when you’re older. Being up late nights, having the energy to run after a toddler… all of parenting requires energy. While we may be more emotionally ready to parent at 40, we can’t ignore that our body was more ready at 20.

Similar to our focus on the wedding and the honeymoon and not the marriage, our attention to procreation is heavily weighted on the pregnancy and childbirth side of things and not to the life of parenting that follows. No one cares about that until they’re there. And apparently it annoys non-parents when parents so much as open their mouths. 

I spent a good six months planning my wedding. A year is hardly uncommon. And I paid good attention in my prenatal classes, even took notes. Six-weeks focusing on everything up until the baby is in the world. Anything else is left for the steep-learning curve that begins when the baby arrives.

Maybe we should devote at least one week to the “happily ever after” of parenthood. Maybe pregnant couples should be required to do an internship—spend a day with actual parents, ask them questions. They could use your help anyway. Childcare’s not cheap (nor should it be—those ladies work hard!).

Parenting is hard in the same way marriage is hard. Making and birthing a baby—the only things we care about pre-parenthood—have virtually nothing to do with parenting. It’s like saying that someone who could plan a lovely wedding is likely to have a happy marriage.

The baby is easy, it’s being a mom that’s hard. And sometimes the baby isn’t easy. How are Facebook and Apple going to help with that?

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Someone Has to Be the Wife

It’s 11:30 in the morning on a Tuesday and I can’t find a parking spot at the local mall.

Who are all of these people who are running to Target in the middle of a workday?  In my imagination, it breaks down something like this: retirees, moms with babies, people running errands at an early lunch, a parent taking her kid out to lunch after a doctor appointment, people who work at night, unemployed people, freelancers.

If everyone works the 9 to 5 life we all assume most people live, this thing would collapse. Someone has to take the kid to the doctor. Someone has to pick up the dry cleaning. Someone has to buy a gift for the birthday party this weekend. Someone has to write a blog post… Okay, maybe not that one… But seriously, what are all of these people doing here? Shouldn’t they be at work?

In the last month, being newly home again, with kids in school for most of the day, I have crossed so many things off my to-do list, things that have been piling up since the first kid was born. I mean, I’m still not unpacked from moving two years ago, but I did manage to clean out the fridge, organize the hall closet, get some shoes repaired, re-organize the kitchen so things aren’t spilling out from every cabinet.

It’s a really boring list, actually, but it feels great to cross things off of it. I’ve even done the dishes on a semi-regular basis. Still need to work on getting to the grocery store for more than the things we needed yesterday. But I have been working out and writing and doing volunteer work. I might even find time to read a book one of these days.

“The list” got especially long while my husband and I were both working—at least when I was home with kids I could get one or two things done on any given day. But with both of us employed? So. Much. Stress. We contracted out what we could—sent the laundry to be washed, got groceries delivered, had someone clean our house occasionally. We’re lucky to be able to do that. But there’s only so much you can pay other people to do for you if you’re not Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love stay-at-home dads? Love. Them.

If there were no stay at home dads, I would have a much, much harder time with “not working.” If all of the everything-that-needs-to-be-done-to-keep-a-family-running-along-somewhat-smoothly was only done by women, I would totally quit. But these days, there are these magical creatures called “dads” and some of them even do the things that “moms” are supposed to do.

There is no good reason why it should be the female partner who “stays home” and does all of these things, but it’s not like it can just be ignored. If today’s work culture feels dated in the way it assumes that everyone has a spouse at home to manage the family’s business, today’s marriages, with our Gen X opinion that men should pitch in, are working to upend the assumption that it should always be a female spouse who does that work. Dads can do it too and these days, some of them are.

To me, they feel like feminist heroes, fighting for equal access to do what has long been women’s work and supporting their working wives. (I don’t know how to navigate this discussion with equal emphasis on all of every possible pronoun, which is another way in which traditional marriage is being modernized—newly-married gay and lesbian couples need to manage the same crap as the rest of us. When they ask the “who should do what?” question, it opens up the possible answers for all of us just a little bit more.)

A stay-at-home dad friend told me he called this job the “cruise director.” Who knows what you do, but there’s a lot of it and it never ends.

I’m not saying that it’s not possible for both spouses to work, especially once the kids are in school for large parts of the week. There’s before care and after care and summer camps and day-off activities and a million other ways that American parents have pasted together a “We can make this work!” collage. But someone has to find the aftercare, sign up for the camps before they fill up, stay home with sick kids.

Most jobs just aren’t flexible enough to account for the fact that the person doing them is a human being with, if not children, parents, friends, hobbies, need for air and food and exercise. Maybe you can squeeze in a run at the gym during lunch and grocery shopping every Sunday, followed by making the meals for the week that you won’t have enough time to make after a long workday. I’m tired just writing about it.

With my first post-motherhood stint at “working” now behind me, I can now announce first-hand what everyone already knows—this way of life is no way to live. Not happily. Not for long. Because eventually, you will have a kid who gets the flu for two weeks or a spouse who’s in the hospital or a parent who dies, and you won’t be able to help it. Your human side will show.

When I say “Someone Needs to Be the Wife,” I don’t mean that these are womanly things for women to do and that not doing them is shirking some biological responsibility. I have plenty of male friends who are better at cruise directing—and happier to do it—than their other half. I sincerely hope that, as more and more men want to be involved in their children’s lives and want to share the to do list with their spouse, this will feel less gendered.

Maybe as we notice more male cruise directors, the value of the work that cruise directors do will be heightened. If it’s not just the work of wives, maybe we will be able to admit that it does still need to be done by someone—whether it’s one spouse or the other, shared evenly or divided in an individualized “works-for-us” kind of way or even delegated out to paid professionals. It won’t, however, go the way of the dodo just because the forever-at-home wife and mother is fast becoming a thing of the past.

So, a hearty salute to all the men who are running errands and buying birthday presents and cooking dinner side-by-side with me today. Thank you for being “the wife” so I don’t have to be only and forever “the wife.” Thank you for making the phrase “women’s work” sound pre-historic. Your feminism is so necessary.

This is Not My Grandmother's Revolution

The imaginary feminist in my head is extremely judgmental. Of me. Not other moms—they should be able to do whatever works for them, right? 

Self-imposed feminist shame can be very intense and very hard to shake. I would never judge someone else as harshly as I do myself. In fact, sometimes it helps to pretend to be my own friend. The imaginary feminist friend in my head is very understanding. She knows how hard it is. She thinks I should do whatever works for my family and makes me happy. 

I recently went back to work after being an at-home mom (can we please just keep the puppy command word out of it?) for about five years. Eight months later, after deciding the job was not working for me or for my family, I resigned. So does that make me a SAHM or am I now unemployed? There can be a very fine line for those of us who are keeping one an eye on job openings and another on our families.

I don’t know what’s next for me. I don’t want to “not work,” but I need enough time outside of work to be the person I want to be, whether that means writing or hugging my kids—maybe even going to the gym on a regular basis.

Do you know what’s missing from the debate about whether or not women should work outside the home when they have small children? (I mean, besides a basic sense of reality.) Most of us are not Angelina Jolie or Barak Obama. When we work, we go to jobs that don’t fulfill our whole person every minute of every day. Our work is boring or it’s stressful or just average.

“Working” is not some kind of Shangri-La for every woman or every man. It can be meaningful, but more than that, it’s just something most of us have to do. And being with babies or small children all day is no Peaceable Kingdom either. In my perfect world, everyone would work 15-20 hours max and spend the rest of the time as we please. Like doing laundry and grocery shopping. Sexy stuff.

After almost a year of sleeping on his own, my son crawled into our bed every night while I was working. Two weeks after leaving that job, he’s back to sleeping through the night in his own bed. Most nights. What am I supposed to make of that? I know kids are adaptable. I do. But they do need us, different kids at different times. How is that supposed to work…with work?

In the last five or six years, as I’ve been at-home and then at-work, both of my grandmothers passed away. My mom’s mother was first. When she was close to the end, her family gathered when they could, but there were also deathbed visits from many local big-name types, politicians and such. She was very active in her community, even spent one term as mayor, trying to root out local corruption and having her phone bugged by the local police chief. I remember going door-stepping with her during her campaign when I was little.

She was a very intense woman. Very well respected, but the sort of person that has enemies. At her viewing, about 500 people came to show their respect, as they say. But what I remember from that day is my mom crying, not about losing her mother, but because all three of her sisters had decided not to speak to her that day for lord-knows-what reason. That’s my lasting memory of my grandmother, as someone whose children would be cruel to each other at her funeral.

 My dad’s mom only had about 150 people at her service—and about a hundred of them were family. Her children told the most wonderful stories about her. I found out how many shirts she ironed every week, but I also heard about how much she loved my grandfather. My aunt told a story of how her mother would run upstairs 5 minutes before her father was due home from work to change and put on a little lipstick.

 I’m sure my inner feminist is appalled that I find this very sweet. But all the tears I could see at her funeral were in recognition of the loss of well-loved matriarch.

 She had six kids still living when she died, all married only once, all with kids, and several with grandchildren. Her family was big and, mostly, very close. Outside of family, she was not very social. Her husband was my first grandparent to die, and there were times when her final years seemed lonely.

But at the end, she spent hospice in her son’s home in the constant presence of family. With her daughters and her son’s wives standing in a circle around her bed, holding hands and leaning on each other for support. That’s what I remember from her death: Surround yourself with strong women. They’re the one’s who will be there at the end. My sister and my cousin who’s like a sister and I made a pact—we’ll be there.

Women are the caretakers in our society for the most part. Whether it’s our babies or our parents, our grandparents or our husbands (who live longer because of us, while we lose a few years for being married). And, I’m sure you’ll be shocked (shocked!) to know that when we step away from work to be there for family and for friends in times of need, it’s not exactly a career booster.

When the “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” piece was all the talk, the thing I found most surprising was that she felt the need to step away from her fast-paced, important job when her sons were teenagers. That’s when she felt they needed her the most. Reading that it wasn’t when her children were small that she decided to step back (lean away, if you will) was a shock to me.  Damn, I thought, I had been planning on putting in my time by focusing on my children, at the expense of career ambition, during these first formative years and then get back to working. Now I’m finding out that they might need me the most later in life?

These are the things we can’t control—who needs us and when—and how we respond says a lot about who we are. Or it should. At least as much as what we’re paid to do. My inner feminist is appalled at this writing. My inner feminist friend is channeling Emma Goldman saying, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.” If I can’t choose family over work, I don’t want to be a part of your feminism. 

“No one will lay in their death bed saying, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” If we can accept that as true for men, can’t it also be true for women? Working at a paid job can’t be the only way to be a good feminist, but it’s a real struggle to feel like a good feminist as a stay-at-home mom.

Not in theory, just in the actual world, where we are asked what we do all day. 

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100 Different Thoughts on Being a Stay-at-home Mom But I Only Have Time to Write 46

As I head back to the world of gainful employment and go through some sort of mid-mom-life identity crisis, I need to get a few things off my no-longer-nursing chest. Some of these thoughts are about all of the times I’ve felt like I had a chip on my shoulder about something but didn’t say anything because I’m not a mommy warrior. Plus, five and a half years and two kids later, I may have actually learned a few things. Maybe one or two. The other 44 are just filler.

1. Fact: “What do you do all day?” is the dumbest question you can ask a stay-at-home parent. 

2. “What "else" do you do?” Also a rude question. Do you ask your working friends what they do other than their job? And if they’re not in a band or writing a novel do you assume they’re wasting their life away?

3. A little advice: Before you ask any question of a stay at home parent, ask yourself if you would ask the same of someone who works? Any question you would not ask your friends with 40-hour jobs is probably rude or intrusive or both.

4. You know how lawyers have to account for all their time in 15 minute increments to prove that they were doing something worthwhile with their time? It’s kinda like that, except people who expect a full report are not your boss.

5. Your “boss” can be a real jerk and it’s ok to think that, but when you think it too often, find a way to get away.

6. Find a moms group. Or other moms. More than one. If you don’t, you’ll never last at home.

7. You need time alone, away from the baby. You may not understand why at first, but you just do. Trust. Plan.

8. Truth: There are other ways of finding out what stay at home moms do all day. Try: Do you take any classes with your kid? Have you found a moms group? How was your week? 

9. There are good days and bad days and that is not different than any other job.

10. Hours pass by when I couldn’t say what I did. It’s called mothering.

11. Sometimes I can do more in one hour than you did all week. Sometimes I don’t get that hour.

12. Don't tell me you could never do what I do. It's condescending. Cleary what you mean to but wouldn’t say is: I would never do what you do.

13. Truth: If you have any reason to believe the SAHM considers herself a feminist, she will be defensive about everything all the time. Deal with it.

14. I hate the acronym “SAHM” but I also think all acronyms are simultaneously stupid and elitest.

15. It’s such total crap that in the Era of Choice Feminism there is any judgment at all about whether working or taking care of your kids during the day is feminist or not feminist. 

16. If you know one stay-at-home mom or dad, you can pretty much extrapolate what they’re all like. Right? And then definitely, please, we would love for you to share your wild generalizations with the world. Preferably in the comments section of a website meant to be supportive of new mothers.

17. What gives my life meaning, what “else” I do, what is still mine alone… None of these things are any of your business if we are not friends.

18. If you are not offering to watch my kids, don’t tell me I look tired.

19. Truth: The annoying part of pregnancy where everyone suddenly thinks your body is public property and acquaintances expect answers to intimate questions? Yeah, that keeps happening. 

20. Don't make assumptions about how much or how little money my family must have because I’m staying at home.

21. Don’t assume I’m happy all the time. Or expect that I should be.

22. Don’t assume that I think I love my kids more than a mom who chooses to or needs to work. I don’t think your choice is bad, just because I made a different one. Some days I’d swap.

23. Some days I wouldn’t, not for anything. Picnics and sunny days and other clichés are usually involved. 

24. If you didn’t know me before I was a mom, I must not have done anything with my life except wait to become a mom. Obviously.

25. Don't assume I will never work again. Lots of moms stay at home for 2 months, 1 year, 3 years, until kindergarten… Most of us don’t know our path back until it’s there.

26. Once you admit that you’re looking for paid work again, you become an unemployed person who cares for the kids during the day. Lots of people think of all stay-at-home dads this way from day 1. That seems fair, right?

27. If you stay a home after all of your kids are school age, are you a stay-at-home mom or do you suddenly turn into a housewife? Maybe. But it’s no one’s business beyond your family walls. 

28. Some kids need more of their mothers than others. Some mothers are built differently than other mothers. If being at home works for you and your kids and your family, rage on. 

29. Stay-at-home parents shouldn’t feel like they have to do anything more than be with their kids. But that’s really hard.

30. If you’re not paying attention, you’d be surprised how many things would grind to a halt without the unpaid labor of women, including stay-at-home moms.

31. If most women today take some amount of time away from a job when they have a baby and most women head back to work at some point later, it shouldn’t be so scary to have a “gap” on a resume. But it totally is.

32. Even if you think you’ won’t end up doing more chores because your job is supposed to be daytime parenting and your spouse’s job is what it is and everything else should remain the same, you will and it doesn’t.

33. The primary caregiver is stressed. The primary breadwinner is stressed. Try to hold hands and walk across the bridge to each other’s island now and again.

34. I never felt like it was his money. It was always our money. Just not my money.

35. Laundry used to be this kind of romantic thing we did together. There was nothing about laundry in our wedding vows. Yet hours have been lost sorting socks. Hours, people.

36. We are not all Mary Poppins.

37. The ones who look like Mary Poppins—which by the way, is the best movie I’ve ever watched with my kids—also sometimes cry to themselves while their husbands sleep by their side. 

38. It’s hard. It’s lonely. It’s freaking amazing.

39. If you never tell another stay-at-home parent that you’re struggling, they won’t tell you either and you’ll both think everyone else has it all together all the time and you’re a big mess.

40. Staying at home can be made to seem just as romantic as working. And just as unromantic.

41. You do not need to work harder on tummy time because your kid had better be ahead of the curve if you’re home with them every day. 

42. To stay-at-home, you don’t have to be the sort of parent that gets down on the floor and plays with your kids all day. If they lay on a blanket and watch you fold the aforementioned laundry or help unload the dishwasher, they’re good. Kids who help with errands and chores are happy kids. You don’t even have to do Gymboree.

43. It’s ok to drink in the afternoon if you invite another mom and call it a playdate.

44. I am a whole person. I am not my kid. I don’t take my identity from being a mom and it doesn’t take my identity from me. At least not forever.

45. Everything is half done all the time and you have to let it go. If you have a daughter and she’s old enough ask her to sing you the song. She’ll be happy to oblige.

46. I’m really glad I did it and I’m really glad I’m done.

What do you think? Any stay-at-home mom thoughts to share?

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