As a stay at home mom, I think we often become forgotten. Forgotten by our parents who now look forward to seeing our children more than us, forgotten by our significant others, even our friends who don’t have children forget us. Our infants become toddlers and they forget how much they loved cuddling and cooing with Mama. Sometimes even we forget about us. We forget that we have needs and wants and dreams, some women even forget that they matter. It’s so easy to become a Robot.
It’s funny to me, because I was once asked by a friend of mine, a friend who didn’t have children. “What do you do all day?” I think a lot of us are asked that question. I said, I take care of my son and clean the house. “That’s it? I would go crazy just sitting around the house all day!”
Ha. Sitting around the house all day is not part of our description. I get up, I make the boys breakfast, I change their diapers, wipe their faces, feed them, clean up that mess, sit them down for some Sesame street while I clean the kitchen and attempt to clean the house up. They of course don’t stay sitting and while I’m cleaning this room they are going right behind me and tearing up that room… I take them for a walk, we might play outside for awhile, and then it’s lunch time, make them lunch feed them, put them down for a nap…. Start the laundry, clean the messes they made while I was cleaning… haha… and start it all over again when they wake up. Yeah, sometimes it gets lonely, and sometimes I wish I could be out in the working world again… but I wouldn’t much rather be a stay at home mom than leave my kids with strangers, only because I have had a personal experience with a bad daycare.
I think it’s insane to think that a stay at home mom is someone who does not work. If that were the case, than please explain why daycare providers, nannies, babysitters and any other kind of child care receive monies for their services? Why do Maids get paid to clean? Why do nurses get paid to care for sick people? I mean, if what mothers do is not work, than why the hell are we paying everyone else to do the same things?
I do have to give props though, to those women who do work, and come home and take care of the household solely on their own, to single mothers, and mothers who have husbands who don’t help out. I have to give props to the men who work their butts off to support their children and give their significant others a chance to BE stay at home moms.