This meme has been all up on my Facebook feed and I'm freaking sick of it. Along with the endless debate of what a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) is worth (some articles estimate a six figure number), it seems like the SAHM wants constant validation that what she's doing is the best for her family, that her time is well spent, and that she doesn't need a life outside her house for fulfillment.
Please don't get me wrong - I have nothing against SAHMs. I am home two days a week with my kids. I agree that what they do is hard work. Spending entire days at home is difficult - I have to try to keep up with my house (which always seems messier when you're in it all day staring at piles of clutter) while balancing my kids' constant needs. I have a spirited, energetic daughter who demands my attention most of the time and she wears me out. At the end of the day, I want to lock my door and crawl into bed and escape with The Hunger Games and a cold beer (or three). When I'm home, I try to get the house clean and make dinner (or order pizza) before my husband gets home from work. I crave adult interaction - I can only listen to so many Selena Gomez songs and watch so many episodes of The Fresh Beat Band before slowly losing my mind. I want my husband to come home and tell me what I did was important, and acknowledge that I worked my ass off instead of plopping it on the couch all day. The thing is though - I don't expect anyone else to give me these positive affirmations. It's really none of their business what I do all day and most of them don't care to hear about it. If I want to tell everyone the details of my day, I can type up a grouchy blog post (like the one you're reading right now). I post on one of my mom message boards, a great place to share and receive encouragement (and trust me - sometimes I just need someone to say, "You don't have a choice. You have to do all the things you have on your plate and stressing about it won't make it easier." Even if it's not what I want to hear, it's what I need to hear).
The difference to me though, between a working mom and a SAHM, is the type of stress. When you're a SAHM, your kids and your house are basically your only source of stress. Some kids are more stressful than others (high needs, special needs, homeschooling; newborns v. toddlers v. school-age). When you work outside the home (or work at home, which to me is the hardest of all because HOW do you take conference calls with Disney Junior in the background and a toddler screaming for a cup of water?), you are open to an entirely different type of stress. You have interpersonal relationships with your co-workers (which is sometimes worse than dealing with mean girls in middle school), you have to please your boss, your clients. You are typically working towards a deadline and your job is often on the line (I don't think a SAHM can be fired for not vacuuming her living room). Then, after work, you have to do all the things you would have done but you were at work - go grocery shopping, cook dinner, clean your house. You spend time with your kids (one-on-one if you can), help them with homework, get together what they need for school the next day. Most of us want to be involved in our kids lives, so we go to PTA meetings, sign up to bring snacks for the Valentine's Day party, go to parent-teacher conferences. We have to pay the bills and clean the house and fold piles of laundry.
This Slate article, courtesy of STFU Parents (a blog I would encourage ALL parents to read), suggests that working mothers spend only about "40% less time on housework", although they work 7+ hours a day outside the home. While most modern marriages are a partnership (I would not be married to a man that refused to change an diaper), it's the woman that is typically taken for granted. We are modern women and we are supposed to be able to do it all with grace.
The thing is, work stress, just like home stress, stays with you all day. So when I'm home (I currently work 3 days a week), I'm thinking about what needs to be done at work. When I'm at work, I'm missing my kids and thinking about all the things I need to do when I get home. When I crawl into bed at midnight, a to-do list for the next day keeps me up half the night (thank you, Xanax, for turning off those thoughts so I can sleep). Many women work because they have to, not because they want to (although I believe I would still work part-time even if I didn't have to - I need a life outside of my children, just like they need a life apart from me).
So as the meme suggests, yes - SAHMs spend most of their day dealing with kids, not on the couch sipping coffee and watching The View as the children play quietly in their rooms. The thing is though - most people DON'T think that's what you do all day. Perhaps it's not an issue of how society views you, but how you think society views you. We all want someone to acknowledge us - and many of our jobs don't provide us with the validation you may think they do. My office isn't issuing awards for finding a bank error or getting a new client; my reward is keeping my job.
There shouldn't be such a great divide between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. We. Are. All. Mothers. We need to support each other, regardless of our circumstances. I have a good friend that is a full-time SAHM who homeschools her two oldest daughters. I love her, and we get along with her just fine despite different circumstances. We, without even saying it, recognize that the other works hard and we focus on the things we have in common and don't fight about the things we don't (because what's the point? someone isn't wrong because they made a different decision than we did). We respect each other, and that's all it's really about. Instead of questioning who works the hardest and who is more stressed, instead of worrying about what people think we do all day and which person's time is more valuable, we should be supporting each other. If we do, we won't need validation via internet memes.
No comments:
Post a Comment