The following post is by MPFJ staff writer, Melissa Batai. Melissa is a freelance writer who covers topics ranging from personal finance to business to organics to food. She blogs at Mom’s Plans where she shares her family’s journey to healthier living and paying down debt.
We women are often told that we can do it all—have a good marriage, raise children, and maintain a rigorous career. However, many women are finding that is a myth.
More and more women are walking away from the workforce, either permanently or temporarily, while they raise children, but should they?
I was raised in the 1970s and 80s, a time in between two worlds of women—those who always stay at home and those who pursue jobs outside the home.
My mom was raised by a stay-at-home mom. My mom, too, was a stay-at-home mom, though she also worked from home babysitting so she could contribute to the family income. My mom just assumed I would also be a stay-at-home mom.
As luck would have it, I didn’t find Mr. Right and get married until I was 29, and we didn’t have our first child until I was 33. That gave me plenty of time to earn a B.A., a M.A., and to work full-time as a community college teacher. After my first child was born, I really wanted to stay home with him, but we couldn’t make it work until I was 39 and we had three children.
I was solely a stay-at-home mom for 10 months. During that time, I felt a bit at a loss. After 10 years in the workforce, juggling both work responsibilities and childcare, staying home and “only” caring for my children felt a bit strange.
When I got the opportunity to do some freelance work from home, I jumped at the chance.
In the 4.5 years since then, I’ve stayed home with my children, now homeschooling them, but I’ve also maintained a part-time freelance workload.
For me, it’s the best of both worlds. As a writer for Fortune stated, “Work at home moms have similar perks to stay at home moms. They can attend the pre-school holiday parties or pick up a sick child from school and still make it back home for a 1 PM conference call. They’re also able to save money on childcare by working evenings and during nap time. It’s almost like you get to—dare I say—‘have it all.’”
As I watch my young daughters grow, I find myself hoping that if they don’t want to work full-time, that they take a similar path as I have and will work from home part-time while caring for their children. I hope they always spend some time doing work besides caring for their children.
Why I Want My Girls to Always Work
There are four primary reasons why I want my girls to always work, even if they choose to stay home with their children:
Personal Fulfillment
Staying home with kids can be challenging. . .and tremendously rewarding. However, kids won’t be little forever. Kids grow up and spend more time with their friends. Kids go to college and leave the home.
I want my girls to have other interests and pursuits besides just raising their children so that they aren’t lonely when their kids grow up and leave the nest.
I also want them to get pride and satisfaction both from raising their children and doing work that they love. Sometimes, on particularly difficult days, raising kids can be exhausting. Escaping to do work can be a way to recharge and spend some time in the adult world.
In the Event of the Death of Their Spouse
As I mentioned, my mom did work from home babysitting. However, she never went to college, and she married young, at age 20. Before she married, she worked in a factory and hated it; she quit as soon as I was born, 11 months after she was married. While my dad was alive and the primary bread winner, they could make it financially.
However, at the age of 37, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and just four short months later, right after he turned 38, he died. My mom was a 36 year old widow with two young kids and no work skills.
Life insurance provided her with a year’s worth of income. Then, she started working as a cashier at a grocery store; she struggled to pay the bills on that income.
A few years later, a friend managed to get her a part-time job as a secretary, which eventually turned into a full-time job. She went on to work that job for nearly 20 years before retiring. I often hear her mention how grateful she was to her friend for getting her that job because she never would have gotten the job on her own due to her lack of skills. Instead, she got her foot in the door and learned on the job.
Those years after my father’s death were very difficult for her because she didn’t have any skills or experience to help her survive when she suddenly found herself on her own.
In the Event of Divorce
No one gets married with the idea of divorce, but divorces happen in our country. . .a lot. A woman who continues to work full-time or part-time or freelances from home keeps her skills sharp.
Right now, I only work from home about 10 hours a week. I only provide about 25% of our family income, but if I needed to, I could ramp up that workload, especially if I found myself in a position where I needed to support my family myself.
We had a family friend, Joan, who was a stay-at-home mom for forty years of marriage. Her husband was a hard worker, but he struggled with alcohol abuse. They finally divorced in their early 60s. Joan was like my mom and had no education or skills. After the divorce, she found a minimum wage job, and is still working that job today.
She gets half of her ex-husband’s retirement, but she doesn’t see much of the spousal support she was supposed to receive because he was fired from his job soon after the divorce.
In the Event on Injury
There are a number of ways a stay-at-home mom may lose her husband’s income, and it isn’t always because of death or divorce.
In our community, a woman in her thirties has become the primary breadwinner because her husband, just 40 years old, had a catastrophic stroke that has left him in a nursing home.
Luckily, she had a full-time job, so she was able to financially support herself and her kids.
Sometimes Life Works Out as Planned
Certainly, there are many women who are stay-at-home moms and go on to have good, secure lives. My cousin and his wife married in their late teens and had 7 kids. During that time, he worked full-time at his own business, and she stayed home with the children. Now, all of the children are grown except for the youngest who is a high school senior.
The marriage is intact, they’re both healthy, and their arrangement of him being the breadwinner and her raising the family has worked out wonderfully.
Yet because there are so many times this situation doesn’t work out as well, I will always encourage my daughters to get their educations and to keep their toes in the workforce, whether that means working from home part-time or working outside the home part-time or full-time.
How about you all? What do you think about these situations? Would you encourage your daughter to continue to work in some capacity even if she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom? Would you discourage her from being a stay-at-home mom?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy https://pixabay.com/en/laptop-woman-coffee-breakfast-943559/
