Stay at Home vs. Stay at Work Mom

My career allows me the best of both worlds. I have summers off, and also had an extended maternity leave due to my summer vacation falling just three months after my daughter was born. Being at home for five months gave me much time to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of stay at home vs. stay at work moms. I thought I would share what I have discovered through personal experience and professional books I have read.

Advantages of Stay at Home Moms:

~Spend lots of time with your kids

~Breastfeeding is much easier

~Appointments are easier to make

~Easier for your child to attend preschool programs (No transportation worries!)

~Dinner preparations are easier

~Get to see all your child's "firsts"

~Flexible schedule for traveling, lunch dates, meeting up with friends/playdates, etc.

~No childcare costs while you are at work

Disadvantages of Stay at Home Moms:

~Children have less social interactions with others (THIS IS A HUGE ONE!)

~Children have less social interactions with adults other than mom

~Long days while the hubby is away at work

~Moms who previously had a career may miss the professional escape

~Mom may feel obligated to cook, clean, do laundry, and other household projects all by herself

~"Quantity" of time together doesn't equal "quality".

~Mom may miss social interactions with old coworkers or other people from professional life

~In my experience, stay at home moms tend to "lose touch with reality" about their working mom friend's lives. They expect that you have time for hour long phone calls or playdates during the week.

Advantages of Stay at Work Moms:

~Maintain a sense of self other than "mom".

~Provide income for family to maintain a living

~Professional relationships stay in tact.

~Become better at time management as your time is much more precious

~Become a better balancer of work and family, even if you don't feel like it.

~Quality time spent becomes much better than just the quantity of time spent.

~Set a good example for your children that you are motivated to succeed and provide for your family

~Giving your child the opportunity to play with others and develop social skills that are crucial for growing

~Forming a bond with other stay at work moms. Trust me, they can relate!

~Husband and wife take responsiblity for the child rearing and house keeping duties. Husband and wife are more equal for doing this.

Disadvantages of Stay at Work Moms:

~Childcare costs

~Not a flexible schedule for scheduling doctor appointments, etc.

~Missing work for sick kids

~Being run down and tired ALL the time

~Stay at Home mom friends not understanding your life (even if they used to work full time!)

~Losing touch with stay at home mom friends because lives are busy and so different

~Harder to enroll your child in preschool because of transportation issues for half day preschool programs

~Missing out on a child's "firsts" and not spending as much time with them as you would like to

As for me, I go back and forth on the stay at home vs stay at work thing. When I'm not working (summer vacation or having 5 months off for maternity leave) I realize how important it is for my son to have social interactions with others. He needs and thrives on the discipline, schedule, and peer interactions that daycare provides. I didn't always think this. After I had my son, I didn't want to go back to work...ever. But it does get easier. I pumped for one full year for my son, and am five months shy of meeting that milestone with my daughter. After pumping, you start to realize that kids do need social interaction and time away from you. It is so important for developing social skills. When I'm not working, I get restless and feel like I've lost a part of myself. When I am working, I wish that I weren't so that life could be easier.

This is a personal decision that every mom needs to make. Moms shouldn't look down on other moms for the choice to stay at work or stay at home. It really tends to ruin relationships. Stay at home moms need to remember that stay at work moms are incredibly driven to provide for their families, set a good example, and do the best they can. Stay at work moms know that stay at home moms have a tough job as well. The days can get long lonely, especially if you alienate people by choosing not to discipline your child or provide a stimulating environment for your child. Nobody wants to have playdates with people like that. Stay at home moms bear the burden of raising the children and taking care of the house. Stay at work moms don't mind if their homes are a little dirty at times. :)

Opportunity of a Lifetime

So in less than a few months, I went from being a stay at home mom to a mom who got her job back. I was very excited to have my job, but was really worrying about how I was going to handle pumping at work, a new school, and taking care of a three year old and infant. My worries would soon be diminished. In my situation, it took quitting my job to get noticed for my efforts. On Aug. 1st, I received a phone call from our director of personnel about a new position that had been created due to a grant. The job was brand new and I would help to shape it. It is basically a literacy support position for three Title One schools in our district that don't qualify for extra teachers like our other Title One schools do. Since I had worked in a Title One school for eight years, they thought that I would be a good fit for the job. I would travel to three schools on a rotating schedule and work with Kindergarten through Second Grade students on guided reading and other literacy related skills. This is pretty much my dream job. I get to spend all day focusing on the at-risk reading students in a small group to even 1-1 setting. I jumped on this opportunity, knowing that if the grant money ran out in a few years, I would still have a position in the district. My worries about going back to the classroom while pumping and with young kids had vanished. I was one lucky woman. My new job allows me to set my own schedule, pump when I need to (for the most part), and also not have to worry about sub plans if my kids are sick, which seems to be often!

Unbelievable

Well, it has been a few months since I posted. We have had an insane summer. We sold our house in May. We received our financial aid package for PhD school for my husband. It was crap. Since we both have full time jobs and on paper (via our 2010 tax return) we make good money, we did not qualify for much in the federal loan department. Private loans had interest rates of 10-20%. After four hours of discussing our future, we made the painstaking decision to call off the whole PhD school thing. Let the freak out begin! We sold our house, so we had less than one month to find a place to live. We didn't want to buy right away, so that meant we had to find a DECENT house to rent. Much harder than we realized. Luckily, a friend stepped in and saved the day. Next up was me trying to get my job back. I called my former principal (I had literally been released from my contract for one week). I reapplied and she told me that she would contact our personnel director to explain the situation. One week after I applied, I got called in for a "formality" interview. I had to go buy a damn suit! What a mess. I interviewed and was offered a different position in the district...first grade at a different school. I jumped on it immediately, eager to begin working for my old principal. I felt much better and was so thankful that my district had offered to rescind my resignation due to the circumstances. Next up was moving, finding a new babysitter (since our old one decided to retire), and finishing my grad class, all while juggling a 3 year old and a new baby.

Baby Detergent IS All It's Cracked Up To Be...

So I found out the hard way how important it is to wash Zoe's clothes in the special baby detergent. She woke up one morning and had a terrible rash on her face and chest. At first, I was afraid that she had come down with strep, since I had gotten it when she was four weeks old. But then I remembered that I had accidentally washed her clothes in the wrong detergent. I ended up having to take all her clothes and re-wash everything. The poor baby looked horrible! Luckily, she has been fine since I started paying more attention to what type of laundry load I am doing.

My Swiffer Hates Me

I have come to realize that cleaning the house can no longer be done in one attempt. The only way I can get my house clean is to do a little bit at a time. This makes it hard when we have to keep it clean for showings. One day, I was attempting to clean the kitchen during Zoe's 20 minute catnap. All I had left was swiffering the floor. I got about halfway through and Zoe started screaming. I tried holding her while I swiffered. I found that holding a screaming baby and swiffering is harder than it sounds. I lost my grip on the swiffer and dropped it. It fell hard. When I picked it up to try to use it again it was broken. Go figure. I finally got it working again, but it decided to only work when it wanted to. It will work for awhile, and then stop working again. Apparently my swiffer was in protest to my using it. Now, I have a reason not to clean. =)

Holy Spider Batman!

Well, apparently I needed Batman on the day I found a ginormous spider in our basement. We had a pile of junk that we were planning on getting rid of in the corner of our basement. I am planning on having a garage sale, so I was trying to get things ready. I was going through some stuff when I happened to look up. There, resting on Brody's folded up Thomas tent was the biggest spider I have EVER seen! I jumped back and thought, great, this isn't a spider I can just pretend I didn't see. I knew that I had to kill it because it was over by Brody's toys. I started looking for something that I could hit it with. I finally settled on an old winter boot.

So there I was standing in my basement, iphone and winter boot in hand. I had to take a picture of this thing. It took me about five minutes to get up the courage to smack it. As I was standing there, boot in hand, I realized that I was really sucking at this whole stay at home mom thing if I couldn't kill a spider. Luckily, Brody was at daycare that day, but I knew that I had to kill it soon because Zoe could wake up at any minute.

I finally got up enough courage to hit it. I smacked at it, and of course, missed. It fell down between the wall and a box. So, I slowly pulled the box away from the wall...no spider. Then I slowly started turning the box toward me looking for the spider that I knew had to be on the box. As I turned it, I finally located it, sitting on the side of the box. Again, I freaked out and couldn't smack it at first. When I finally did, I missed AGAIN!! This time, the spider jumped off the box and started running toward the wall. I finally had it on flat ground, so I just started smacking the crap out of it. I finally killed it! It was then that I realized I was shaking. I grabbed a paper towel and scooped it up. I set it on our trash can in the garage so that my hubby could see it if he wanted. We tried to Google what type of spider we thought it was, but could never figure it out. All I have to say is that I have never seen a furry spider that big (larger than a half dollar coin), and hope I never have to see or kill one again!

The Accidental Housewife

This blog post is aptly named. I have all of a sudden found myself as a housewife/stay at home mom and have wondered "how did this happen?". I am thrilled that I get to spend time with Brody and Zoe. Brody will be starting preschool this fall, and so I get to be one of those moms that drops off and picks up her kid each day. So excited! I am also pumped about not having to "pump" at work anymore. I breastfed my son for an entire year. This was very difficult while working full time as a teacher. Gone are the days of pumping and eating (at the same time) on my lunch break. I literally had 30 minutes from the time I dropped off my class in the lunchroom to the time I had to be back out to the playground to pick them up. During that time, I somehow managed to eat, pump, and even go pee. It was a freaking miracle. I was never able to pump enough for the next day, so each night, I had to tap my frozen milk supply. How stressful this was! I am NOT going to miss those days! I will however, miss the social interaction with adults that I had daily before. I am a homebody though and am content with hanging out most days.

I am starting to find, however, that this whole housewife/stay at home mom thing is a work in progress. It is something that I'm having to figure out, not something that comes as naturally as I'd hoped. I'm sure I'll get into the groove soon. I never thought I'd ever be a stay at home mom, so there is definitely a learning curve for me. In my defense, most new stay at home mom's don't start a grad class the day after their 2nd child is born. There have been many adventures so far that I find myself thinking, "how did I get into this predicament?". I hope you enjoy the ride!