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Showing Original Post only (View all)Being a Stay-at-Home Parent Is a Luxury … for Your Spouse [View all]
The other day, I read an article in the Washington Post about a stay-at-home mother who was having a rather hard time adjusting to answering the ever-popular question, What do you do all day? now that the kids were at school.
Its a topic that has been on my mind lately as I watch in bewilderment as my children seem to insist on growing up at rates that surely I did not approve of when I signed my parental contract. I look at my youngest my seven-week-old baby girl and I swear my mind is already flashing to the day (tomorrow, probably) that I will be kissing her good-bye on her first morning of kindergarten.
But back to the task at hand. As I read the article, I scrolled through the comments, anticipating that there would be some doozies in a post about a stay-at-home mom basically proclaiming that she doesnt feel guilty for doing absolutely nothing all day when I came across this truly remarkable comment:
I work full time, and my husband is a stay at home dad. We have two kids in school full day (8 to 3). Dont you realize how much easier it is to hold a full time job when you have someone home with the kids? I can work late and travel when I need to and not worry about the kids. Our weekends are spent relaxing, instead of racing around to get errands and chores done. I can go back to work on Mondays having actually recharged over the weekend. It feels like such a luxury to ME to have a stay at home spouse.
I was flabbergasted.
Dumbfounded.
Perplexed that in all of my years as a stay-at-home/write-at-home mom, Ive always been fighting the thoughts that Im not doing enough or being enough. Ive always felt I honestly owed the world some sort of explanation for being at home. That Ive had to throw around the fact that since I stay at home we make sacrifices as a family like not having cable! Ive felt I had to bake pies so that the world would know Im not a worthless member of society. And in the midst of all that mental clutter and guilt it had never, ever crossed my mind that staying at home wasnt just a luxury to me
But also a luxury for my husband.
And suddenly, when I read those words, it all made sense. Well, of course, it would be a luxury to the spouse who works out of the home to have a partner who stays at home with the children. Someone who is always there to take care of the inevitable days of sickness, arrange the doctors appointments, make sure the cupboards are stocked, and heck, to ensure that no one steals the FedEx package off of the porch. And then goodness! to have someone to save you the worry of sending your kids into the world, someone to always be there to kiss a scraped knee and take care of the potty training and maybe even have a hot meal waiting for you when you come home?
Imagine that.
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/being-a-stay-at-home-parent-is-a-luxury-for-your-100013200179.html