"I don't know how you do it," Janie tells me recently, "I couldn't stand to be stuck at home like that."
***************************************
"Will you be quitting now that John got his promotion?" I ask Deb.
"No, I don't want to be stuck at home all the time," she says.
"STUCK at home"? Few three-word sentence fragments annoy me more than those three words put together.
Why are we who choose to be home perceived as "stuck" at home?
Aren't we the ones who have the most freedom?
We can get up at 10am, wear no makeup all day, watch Oprah and Ellen and every morning soap on t.v., walk around in grubby clothes, ignore the kids and deal with the consequences later, stay up until 2am without concern about an early morning alarm, see how long the baby can go without her diaper leaking, eat ice cream at breakfast, doughnuts at noon, and feed the kids PB&J sandwiches for every meal...
Or, we can choose to see our baby's first walk, change every one of her thousands of diapers so we don't miss out on the fun of that, read and study to wisen up our brains, sell something extra on eBay, practice baking and gardening and knitting and Spanish lessons, take the girls to ballet and the boys to baseball, read a book aloud to the kids after lunch and have a cup of tea at 3pm.
Over the past 9 years, I have been a working-outside-the-home mom, a working-at-home mom, and a stay-at-home mom (unpaid work). Of all of them, it is the stay-at-home mom who gets the greatest disdain from the outside world.
But don't you worry about her.
She owns all of the 1,440 minutes in each of her days. And she can spend each of those minutes as she wills, with no boss, no schedule but her own, and all the freedom every American loves to have.
If she gets a hankering for a bologna sandwich, she can go to the grocery store and get the ingredients. If she wants to see a movie, she can load the kids into the van and take them. She can attend a craft show on Friday afternoon and a Grand Opening pre-sale on Thursday morning.
She has been given the freedom to choose how to fill up her days.
If having that kind of freedom is being "stuck," then I am so glad I'm one of those poor souls who are "stuck at home."
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Amen from my corner of the SAHM world! ;)
I LOVE being at home. I have never felt STUCK.
I love being "stuck" at home! And my kids are at school all day! I love the freedom, although I wouldn't mind a part-time job a couple days a week! The most important part is that I am here for them when they get home from school!
AMEN for stay-at-home-moms!! If I had it to do all over again I would do it all the same! I've been a SAHM for 18 years! All of my kids are in (or even out of) school now and I'm still at home with everyone else's kids! Being a SAHM has enabled ME to watch my kids grow up and see them take all of their "firsts", etc, etc., instead of a sitter. It would take up WAY too much space to write down all of the reasons, rewards, and blessings for being a SAHM. Most of all it was the most important choice I could have made after adopting two kids that terribly needed a SAHM rather than leaving them feeling left behind and abandoned and insecure every day like they had already experienced for the first 2 & 3 years of their lives! Not to mention the continued blessings of being at home with our next two (biological) children. Although I have always been a working-at-home SAHM for these 18 years I may not have the freedom to leave the home whenever I want to but I have the freedom to run my schedule the way I choose, and do whatever I choose to do. It beats the heck out of rushing out the door every morning to meet the morning work traffic, buying lunch out or brown bagging every day, having to constantly shop for career clothes, spending so much on gasoline, fighting the evening work traffic home, and getting home just in time to eat dinner and see the kids off to bed with no time left for anything other than a few chores and getting ready to start it all over again the next day! I am a SAHM because, like most others, I CHOOSE to be. Even though my oldest two are already out of school now and my youngest two are well on their way in school, I WANT to be here for them after school, holidays, or when they are home sick, etc.! The rewards are immense!! (Wow, I could start my own blog on the topic!) Great writing Lori!
Hope, AGK, Peg, and Kami - Thanks for commenting in, gals! I'm glad to know there are other SAHMs out there, proud of what we do.
Kami - You sure could get a blog going! Just go to http://www.blogger.com and follow the easy instructions. It's free!
I am a happily "stuck" at home mom too! Great post!:-)
Post a Comment