This is something I've found myself considering a lot recently. I've come to the thinking that modern feminism is less about choice and more about independence. Independence and security in the abscence of men. There's an incorrect conflation between independence and choice in feminist rhetoric. It results in the choices we make that decrease our independence and increase our reliance on a man/our family being viewed as not all that feminist. I'm definitely guilty of it myself, pre-kids I held thoughts about stay-at-home parents that are very much in line with your article - 'it's her choice' but also 'it's not a choice I'd make' 🙈 and now I spend most of my working day trying to figure out how I can afford to spend less time working an more time parenting 😅
About the same time you originally wrote this article, I had an important conversation with my grandfather. He had always given me well-meaning but unsolicited advice about how I was "wasting my potential", and how I was "too smart" to stay home and homeschool my children.
One day, he was giving me the usual spiel about how I should really go back to school and finish my degree.
I asked, "And what would I do with a college degree?" He grinned, thinking he was about to deliver the killshot, "You could do anything you want!" I replied, "Pawpaw, I'm already doing that."
That was the last he ever said to me on the subject.
As a mom who is currently working full time and “using” my degree, but who is working hard to stay home in about a year some time after baby #2 arrives, I encounter this very often.
When I tell people my plan to leave the workforce, stay home and eventually *gasp* homeschool my children, some people are very supportive. But most, even if they ultimately respond with something supportive, flash a look on their face like I’m crazy.
One of my old friends actually asked me, “What? Really? After working so hard to get where you are?” (I’m in management.)
Yes. If anything, climbing the corporate ladder only strengthened my resolve. All of it feels so meaningless in comparison to raising my children.
I’m going to try to not qualify my response once I’m a SAHM. While I’m proud of my achievements and glad I’ve had the experience, I don’t want to use it as a way to try to prove I’m intelligent or accomplished, or make my choices easier to understand.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. It’s always refreshing to hear from other moms who consciously chose to leave full time work to stay at home. It makes me excited for when I can finally do the same.
Loved reading this. I think many more women would make the choice to be home with their kids (provided that it's financially feasible) if it weren't so stigmatized. Thank you for reading and for sharing!
I became a Mother in 2009. At that point I was doing what I thought (and was told, essentially) was going to be so empowering + rewarding for me as a woman: climbing the ladder of a corporate career.
Once I gave birth, I couldn’t wait to leave it all behind. Call it divine intervention or just plain ol’ clarity that my body gifted me post giving birth (or perhaps they’re the same thing, ha), but I’m not exaggerating when I say that, I knew immediately and wholeheartedly that maintaining any sort of status at a job away from my baby was not going to be the thing that I do; it felt like an absolute nightmare.
Before the end of my maternity leave I was making a plan to stay home with my baby and that took well over a year to form before my husband and I could afford the decision.
More to the point, though—my new outlook confused and shocked me the most I think, because of everything that I had been taught up to that point by society and what it means to be successful as a woman, and by “feminism” in general. I received much external judgment for my decision as well, which was also confusing and frustrating for that very reason on understanding that it is about choice.
Today, I feel it is incredibly and increasingly important to share as women how mothering is of the utmost importance, and that our society has sold us pure shit on what it means to be successful and to create a rewarding life.
I have not once regretted leaving work outside of the home behind me to be at home with my children over all these years. It is by far one of the best decisions I will have made for myself, my children and our family as a whole, and for our life all together—along with the sacrifices that my husband and I choose together as the result of me leaving that job behind no less. We’ve only aligned more deeply with values that actually center family wellbeing.
In personal convos with fellow stay at home Mamas, I’ve/we’ve reflected that, perhaps it’s not as much about being embarrassed by being a stay-at-home Mom (I personally have more than otherwise felt like more than enough as a Mother at home with my children, even when I’ve happily pursued part-time interests over these years that earn my family some income) as much as it is about sorting through and not absorbing all the projection from others about the active decision to stay home and serve our families. Because this projection happens often and it can be confused internally as something to be embarrassed by—and people are quite prone to (subconsciously, I believe) convincing SAHM’s of that, especially when they witness how much happier you are, consistently, and they are not.
I say this with much compassion: I sense that many mothers (I’m not implying all, but many more than we’ve been led to believe) who are working primarily outside of the home, and for many reasons, are not as happy with those circumstance as they were told they would be. And frankly, the easier way to deal with those complicated feelings is to, more or less, judge and project onto other women who’ve decided differently than them—and in the face of so-called feminism. Because it is a whole thing to allow ourselves as women to really look at how we’ve been manipulated by many current aspects of feminism, but more so by our consumerist/materialistic culture as a whole, which has relentlessly stripped away the sacredness of mothering and all the value that mothers hold for society, and in the name of keeping women working away from their babies and their homes to benefit consumerism and materialism. There’s SO much anger and grief there to be felt.
Yes yes yes yes yes. Thank you for sharing—I echo and relate to it all.
I especially loved this part of what you wrote: “It is by far one of the best decisions I will have made for myself, my children and our family as a whole, and for our life all together.” So often being at home is framed as what’s best for the *kids,* and it’s absolutely been my experience as well that is has been holistically best for everyone, myself included, and yes for the life we are building together. This needs to be talked about more! I also appreciated that you pointed out the sacrifice it often takes, because there is so much talk of it being a “privilege” and that it’s “impossible” to raise kids on one income. To my intuition this type of talk feels like a socially acceptable cover for what’s really more true: that women (or men) simply don’t want to do the work of an at-home parent and/or don’t desire to change their current material lifestyle. Of course finances can make it challenging and sometimes impossible, but I think it could be done way more often than it seems from this common rhetoric.
Still relevant in 2024! Even since you wrote about all this and I quit the nonprofit, I just say “I’m not working outside the home right now.” It feels better bc it validate I’m still working. Honestly I was so burned out that I still shudder when I consider working outside the home so I think that makes it easier for me.
I think having lots of Mom friends also staying home raising their children full time helps a lot. I'm an electrical engineer with a master's degree and I counted down the months until I could stay home with my daughter. I had a 15 week maternity leave and then worked full time until she was 2.5 and my husband finished grad school.
It was definitely a big adjustment, you just don't get the same external validation for changing diapers and making dinner that you do turning in engineering designs and presenting to customers.
It's not easy, but I feel very blessed to get to stay home with my children. Working in an office I could do Kingdom building work indirectly, in how I treated people and how I performed my responsibilities. Now, I get to do Kingdom building work directly, raising children and hosting community dinners and listening to God with children in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Atrium. I've been freed to do more important work! The world has never understood the priorities of Christians, they certainly don't now.
“I wish I liked Catholics more.”
“They seem just like other people.”
“My dear Charles, that’s exactly what they’re not–particularly in this country, where they’re so few. It’s not just that they’re a clique–as a matter of fact, they’re about four cliques all blackguarding each other half the time–but they’ve got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people. They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time. It’s quite natural, really, that they should.”
We went to a Halloween party with a bunch of Catholics and someone was dressed as a character from Brideshead Revisited, which we had never read. We didn't know who he was supposed to be. A spunky friend said, "You haven't read Brideshead Revisited?! Are you even Catholic?!" We went home and picked up a copy right away!
After reading it, we found Brideshead Revisited so impactful we named our first child after a character from it!
It's the gayest Catholic novel you'll ever love. Just read it and then watch the 80s miniseries which is the best book to movie translation I've ever seen in my life. Don't watch the more recent movie version, I heard it missed the entire point of the book.
"Well, I can't say I've noticed it. Are you struggling against temptation? You don't seem much more virtuous than me."
"I'm very, very much wickeder," said Sebastian indignantly.
“I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?”
“Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.”
“But my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.”
“Can’t I?”
“I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”
“Oh, yes, I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.”
“But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.”
“But I do. That’s how I believe.”
-Brideshead Revisited
(Imagine four wealthy British siblings who live in a Downton Abbey-like manor house in the 1920s who fall away from God in different ways; the book tells the story of God making a twitch upon the thread to pull them back.)
Sidenote: love love love CGS. Volunteered for a while two years ago with the first and second graders and my kids have loved (and learned so much in CGS.
CGS changed my life and brought me to deep healing in Christ! I'm in the Atrium for my own prayer life. The children don't need me, the only teacher in the atrium is the Holy Spirit. I'm only there to support their prayer and work as needed. It's a monastery for children. Any way you can get involved in supporting the atrium, I recommend it!
It’s taken me to three babies to let this go. I wasn’t raised in a Christian family and I was the first in my family on both sides to go to uni. I have a Masters in Clinical Psychology that I pursued through having two babies—my husband was also studying and we cobbled together flexible schedules to care for our son.
When I had my second, the child health nurse could not believe that I was taking extended leave to look after them. She was like, “but you’re a clinical psych!” (She read my file, I didn’t tell her).
When I went back to work and was trying to find part-time, my Dad said, “no one is going to hire you two days a week. Just put your kids in daycare and go back to work.” (I did find a 2 days a week job). I honestly think I went back in part because I was worried I was wasting my education and I still had three thousand hours of supervised practice before I could be registered.
But it took us a long time to conceive our third baby and it just made the work seem hollow. I regretted the hustle with my older two. All I wanted was to be in that season. Work will be there later. I love what another commenter said, “I’m not working outside the home at the moment.”
Thank you thank you for sharing your experience here💞 It’s just so true that work will always be there. Our babies are small for a handful of years. But it’s difficult to know this, as our culture is one of hustle 24/7/365 and so people have very little awareness of seasons (of life).
THANK YOU for resharing this. I have had a very similar journey to yours-attended an excellent university, have a Masters, was an English teacher. Also got burned out (one of the moments I realized this was my husband observing that my mental health seemed to have improved as a sleep deprived first time Mom from what it was as a full time teacher) and discerned staying at home with my kiddos. Also periodically struggle with guilt about not working in some capacity/“wasting” my education. Also qualify what I do in the ways you described at the beginning of the piece. And it has been such a journey realizing how much I’ve been affected by a specific narrative of what success/ambition look like, and being grateful I get to be at home with my kids especially in these early years, when so many big milestones are happening.
Yes yes yes. I knew I couldn't teach full-time and be a parent. I put too much of myself into my work that I needed to step away to be able to take on the role of mother. I was also burned out. I'm thankful in that regard - I didn't have to step away from a huge career I was really into; I was kind of done anyway. If I was really into my career, I don't know if I'd have been able to do it, the full-time-at-home thing. It's interesting to reflect on that possibility. I should really dig back and write about those years.
What you said - "realizing how much I've been affected by a specific narrative of what success/ambition look like"- I think that is more real than most of us know. I'm still unpacking it, honestly.
Teaching is something that takes so much out of you, and so many of the same things out of you your own kids need. Especially with the increasing expectations of being always on/taking work home. And I can understand that, if I was longer/further into teaching and really had that groove going it would have been harder. And I see the difficulties of careers that are investments/things people enjoy with some of my friends now and it is so tough for them/seeing how they are torn between two callings.
I think the frustration (at least for me) is in the qualifying of it-- why can it not be an acceptable choice? Why must women feel the need to quality it to (mostly) other women? I think it's rooted in the idea that our identities are in our status. I have a highly educated mother who gets a significant amount of pride out of her Doctorate and loves to hold it over other people's heads (her sisters, who might have bachelors degrees or masters degrees are "jealous," other people are "ignorant" or "uneducated." The degree is used as a way of gaining status and differentiating herself from others). When your identity is rooted in something besides your inherent worth as a child of God, you'll be in trouble. And I think this kind of thinking paralyzes even the more spiritual of us by way of Manifest Destiny and Prosperity Gospel.
Do you know what else I think happens to the more spiritual of us? We get told by church ladies platitudes like "it's the most important job in the world" but then see the disrespect of women and mothers in those same churches. I'm thankful I don't experience this anymore as a Catholic, but I know that was part of my angst as well. Plus, those comments seemed to always come from women I didn't really connect with.
Staying home with your babies is one of the greatest blessings you can give them! Who cares what the world and feminists have to say or think. They aren’t responsible for your babies, nor do they love them or you.
Respectfully, this comment feels dismissive. I appreciate what you're saying, but this tension was very real for me and is for many women. It's also normal to care about what people think, especially when we're younger and are building our lives.
Speaking more broadly, it's not really a matter of what "feminists" think; it's more a matter of the messaging of (mainstream) feminism and how insidious it can be. I think it's important to bring that to light, and also to wrestle with what advocacy for women should look like.
I loved this essay. I’m approaching my fourth and final month of maternity leave and I’m dreading bisecting my day between work and baby. I get to work from home (🙏🏼), but trying to figure out my new schedule feels like I’m about to begin working two jobs back-to-back. And everyone keeps asking me when I’m going back to “work.” I’m a lawyer and many are shocked to hear I’m still not “working” but I’m, you know, doing all the work involved with raising my first baby — I hope one day I can say my only job is Mom. Thank you for sharing this 🩵
This is something I've found myself considering a lot recently. I've come to the thinking that modern feminism is less about choice and more about independence. Independence and security in the abscence of men. There's an incorrect conflation between independence and choice in feminist rhetoric. It results in the choices we make that decrease our independence and increase our reliance on a man/our family being viewed as not all that feminist. I'm definitely guilty of it myself, pre-kids I held thoughts about stay-at-home parents that are very much in line with your article - 'it's her choice' but also 'it's not a choice I'd make' 🙈 and now I spend most of my working day trying to figure out how I can afford to spend less time working an more time parenting 😅
Yes. Love this - thank you for sharing with us!
About the same time you originally wrote this article, I had an important conversation with my grandfather. He had always given me well-meaning but unsolicited advice about how I was "wasting my potential", and how I was "too smart" to stay home and homeschool my children.
One day, he was giving me the usual spiel about how I should really go back to school and finish my degree.
I asked, "And what would I do with a college degree?" He grinned, thinking he was about to deliver the killshot, "You could do anything you want!" I replied, "Pawpaw, I'm already doing that."
That was the last he ever said to me on the subject.
Love iiiiit. Thanks for sharing
As a mom who is currently working full time and “using” my degree, but who is working hard to stay home in about a year some time after baby #2 arrives, I encounter this very often.
When I tell people my plan to leave the workforce, stay home and eventually *gasp* homeschool my children, some people are very supportive. But most, even if they ultimately respond with something supportive, flash a look on their face like I’m crazy.
One of my old friends actually asked me, “What? Really? After working so hard to get where you are?” (I’m in management.)
Yes. If anything, climbing the corporate ladder only strengthened my resolve. All of it feels so meaningless in comparison to raising my children.
I’m going to try to not qualify my response once I’m a SAHM. While I’m proud of my achievements and glad I’ve had the experience, I don’t want to use it as a way to try to prove I’m intelligent or accomplished, or make my choices easier to understand.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. It’s always refreshing to hear from other moms who consciously chose to leave full time work to stay at home. It makes me excited for when I can finally do the same.
Loved reading this. I think many more women would make the choice to be home with their kids (provided that it's financially feasible) if it weren't so stigmatized. Thank you for reading and for sharing!
I became a Mother in 2009. At that point I was doing what I thought (and was told, essentially) was going to be so empowering + rewarding for me as a woman: climbing the ladder of a corporate career.
Once I gave birth, I couldn’t wait to leave it all behind. Call it divine intervention or just plain ol’ clarity that my body gifted me post giving birth (or perhaps they’re the same thing, ha), but I’m not exaggerating when I say that, I knew immediately and wholeheartedly that maintaining any sort of status at a job away from my baby was not going to be the thing that I do; it felt like an absolute nightmare.
Before the end of my maternity leave I was making a plan to stay home with my baby and that took well over a year to form before my husband and I could afford the decision.
More to the point, though—my new outlook confused and shocked me the most I think, because of everything that I had been taught up to that point by society and what it means to be successful as a woman, and by “feminism” in general. I received much external judgment for my decision as well, which was also confusing and frustrating for that very reason on understanding that it is about choice.
Today, I feel it is incredibly and increasingly important to share as women how mothering is of the utmost importance, and that our society has sold us pure shit on what it means to be successful and to create a rewarding life.
I have not once regretted leaving work outside of the home behind me to be at home with my children over all these years. It is by far one of the best decisions I will have made for myself, my children and our family as a whole, and for our life all together—along with the sacrifices that my husband and I choose together as the result of me leaving that job behind no less. We’ve only aligned more deeply with values that actually center family wellbeing.
In personal convos with fellow stay at home Mamas, I’ve/we’ve reflected that, perhaps it’s not as much about being embarrassed by being a stay-at-home Mom (I personally have more than otherwise felt like more than enough as a Mother at home with my children, even when I’ve happily pursued part-time interests over these years that earn my family some income) as much as it is about sorting through and not absorbing all the projection from others about the active decision to stay home and serve our families. Because this projection happens often and it can be confused internally as something to be embarrassed by—and people are quite prone to (subconsciously, I believe) convincing SAHM’s of that, especially when they witness how much happier you are, consistently, and they are not.
I say this with much compassion: I sense that many mothers (I’m not implying all, but many more than we’ve been led to believe) who are working primarily outside of the home, and for many reasons, are not as happy with those circumstance as they were told they would be. And frankly, the easier way to deal with those complicated feelings is to, more or less, judge and project onto other women who’ve decided differently than them—and in the face of so-called feminism. Because it is a whole thing to allow ourselves as women to really look at how we’ve been manipulated by many current aspects of feminism, but more so by our consumerist/materialistic culture as a whole, which has relentlessly stripped away the sacredness of mothering and all the value that mothers hold for society, and in the name of keeping women working away from their babies and their homes to benefit consumerism and materialism. There’s SO much anger and grief there to be felt.
Whewy. Thank you for sharing and also reading.🙏🏼🌿
Yes yes yes yes yes. Thank you for sharing—I echo and relate to it all.
I especially loved this part of what you wrote: “It is by far one of the best decisions I will have made for myself, my children and our family as a whole, and for our life all together.” So often being at home is framed as what’s best for the *kids,* and it’s absolutely been my experience as well that is has been holistically best for everyone, myself included, and yes for the life we are building together. This needs to be talked about more! I also appreciated that you pointed out the sacrifice it often takes, because there is so much talk of it being a “privilege” and that it’s “impossible” to raise kids on one income. To my intuition this type of talk feels like a socially acceptable cover for what’s really more true: that women (or men) simply don’t want to do the work of an at-home parent and/or don’t desire to change their current material lifestyle. Of course finances can make it challenging and sometimes impossible, but I think it could be done way more often than it seems from this common rhetoric.
Oh my heart, thank you for your response and further reflections! I’m nodding yes yes yes just as well!🙏🏼💛
Still relevant in 2024! Even since you wrote about all this and I quit the nonprofit, I just say “I’m not working outside the home right now.” It feels better bc it validate I’m still working. Honestly I was so burned out that I still shudder when I consider working outside the home so I think that makes it easier for me.
That's a great way to put it. Because my GOODNESS are you still working!
I think having lots of Mom friends also staying home raising their children full time helps a lot. I'm an electrical engineer with a master's degree and I counted down the months until I could stay home with my daughter. I had a 15 week maternity leave and then worked full time until she was 2.5 and my husband finished grad school.
It was definitely a big adjustment, you just don't get the same external validation for changing diapers and making dinner that you do turning in engineering designs and presenting to customers.
It's not easy, but I feel very blessed to get to stay home with my children. Working in an office I could do Kingdom building work indirectly, in how I treated people and how I performed my responsibilities. Now, I get to do Kingdom building work directly, raising children and hosting community dinners and listening to God with children in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Atrium. I've been freed to do more important work! The world has never understood the priorities of Christians, they certainly don't now.
“I wish I liked Catholics more.”
“They seem just like other people.”
“My dear Charles, that’s exactly what they’re not–particularly in this country, where they’re so few. It’s not just that they’re a clique–as a matter of fact, they’re about four cliques all blackguarding each other half the time–but they’ve got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people. They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time. It’s quite natural, really, that they should.”
-Brideshead Revisited
Beautiful; thank you for sharing. Our parishes are getting Catechesis of the Good Shepherd this fall and I'm so excited!
Tell me about Brideshead Revisited!
We went to a Halloween party with a bunch of Catholics and someone was dressed as a character from Brideshead Revisited, which we had never read. We didn't know who he was supposed to be. A spunky friend said, "You haven't read Brideshead Revisited?! Are you even Catholic?!" We went home and picked up a copy right away!
After reading it, we found Brideshead Revisited so impactful we named our first child after a character from it!
It's the gayest Catholic novel you'll ever love. Just read it and then watch the 80s miniseries which is the best book to movie translation I've ever seen in my life. Don't watch the more recent movie version, I heard it missed the entire point of the book.
"Oh dear, it's very difficult being a Catholic."
"Does it make much difference to you?"
"Of course. All the time."
"Well, I can't say I've noticed it. Are you struggling against temptation? You don't seem much more virtuous than me."
"I'm very, very much wickeder," said Sebastian indignantly.
“I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?”
“Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.”
“But my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.”
“Can’t I?”
“I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”
“Oh, yes, I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.”
“But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.”
“But I do. That’s how I believe.”
-Brideshead Revisited
(Imagine four wealthy British siblings who live in a Downton Abbey-like manor house in the 1920s who fall away from God in different ways; the book tells the story of God making a twitch upon the thread to pull them back.)
Ok wooow that sounds wonderful. *adds to cart*
Sidenote: love love love CGS. Volunteered for a while two years ago with the first and second graders and my kids have loved (and learned so much in CGS.
CGS changed my life and brought me to deep healing in Christ! I'm in the Atrium for my own prayer life. The children don't need me, the only teacher in the atrium is the Holy Spirit. I'm only there to support their prayer and work as needed. It's a monastery for children. Any way you can get involved in supporting the atrium, I recommend it!
It wasn't about choice, it was about status.
https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/its-embarrassing-to-be-a-stay-at
Oooh, saved that to read later! Thank you!
It’s taken me to three babies to let this go. I wasn’t raised in a Christian family and I was the first in my family on both sides to go to uni. I have a Masters in Clinical Psychology that I pursued through having two babies—my husband was also studying and we cobbled together flexible schedules to care for our son.
When I had my second, the child health nurse could not believe that I was taking extended leave to look after them. She was like, “but you’re a clinical psych!” (She read my file, I didn’t tell her).
When I went back to work and was trying to find part-time, my Dad said, “no one is going to hire you two days a week. Just put your kids in daycare and go back to work.” (I did find a 2 days a week job). I honestly think I went back in part because I was worried I was wasting my education and I still had three thousand hours of supervised practice before I could be registered.
But it took us a long time to conceive our third baby and it just made the work seem hollow. I regretted the hustle with my older two. All I wanted was to be in that season. Work will be there later. I love what another commenter said, “I’m not working outside the home at the moment.”
Thank you thank you for sharing your experience here💞 It’s just so true that work will always be there. Our babies are small for a handful of years. But it’s difficult to know this, as our culture is one of hustle 24/7/365 and so people have very little awareness of seasons (of life).
THANK YOU for resharing this. I have had a very similar journey to yours-attended an excellent university, have a Masters, was an English teacher. Also got burned out (one of the moments I realized this was my husband observing that my mental health seemed to have improved as a sleep deprived first time Mom from what it was as a full time teacher) and discerned staying at home with my kiddos. Also periodically struggle with guilt about not working in some capacity/“wasting” my education. Also qualify what I do in the ways you described at the beginning of the piece. And it has been such a journey realizing how much I’ve been affected by a specific narrative of what success/ambition look like, and being grateful I get to be at home with my kids especially in these early years, when so many big milestones are happening.
Yes yes yes. I knew I couldn't teach full-time and be a parent. I put too much of myself into my work that I needed to step away to be able to take on the role of mother. I was also burned out. I'm thankful in that regard - I didn't have to step away from a huge career I was really into; I was kind of done anyway. If I was really into my career, I don't know if I'd have been able to do it, the full-time-at-home thing. It's interesting to reflect on that possibility. I should really dig back and write about those years.
What you said - "realizing how much I've been affected by a specific narrative of what success/ambition look like"- I think that is more real than most of us know. I'm still unpacking it, honestly.
Teaching is something that takes so much out of you, and so many of the same things out of you your own kids need. Especially with the increasing expectations of being always on/taking work home. And I can understand that, if I was longer/further into teaching and really had that groove going it would have been harder. And I see the difficulties of careers that are investments/things people enjoy with some of my friends now and it is so tough for them/seeing how they are torn between two callings.
I think the frustration (at least for me) is in the qualifying of it-- why can it not be an acceptable choice? Why must women feel the need to quality it to (mostly) other women? I think it's rooted in the idea that our identities are in our status. I have a highly educated mother who gets a significant amount of pride out of her Doctorate and loves to hold it over other people's heads (her sisters, who might have bachelors degrees or masters degrees are "jealous," other people are "ignorant" or "uneducated." The degree is used as a way of gaining status and differentiating herself from others). When your identity is rooted in something besides your inherent worth as a child of God, you'll be in trouble. And I think this kind of thinking paralyzes even the more spiritual of us by way of Manifest Destiny and Prosperity Gospel.
Do you know what else I think happens to the more spiritual of us? We get told by church ladies platitudes like "it's the most important job in the world" but then see the disrespect of women and mothers in those same churches. I'm thankful I don't experience this anymore as a Catholic, but I know that was part of my angst as well. Plus, those comments seemed to always come from women I didn't really connect with.
Yep, agree re: status. Someone actually shared a piece in the comments above called "It's embarrassing to be a SAHM" -- I can't wait to read it, and the 113 (and counting) comments! https://open.substack.com/pub/becomingnoble/p/its-embarrassing-to-be-a-stay-at?r=22tzy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
"When your identity is rooted in something besides your inherent worth as a child of God, you'll be in trouble" - bingo!
Thanks for sharing and for writing that post that made me think of this one! :)
Staying home with your babies is one of the greatest blessings you can give them! Who cares what the world and feminists have to say or think. They aren’t responsible for your babies, nor do they love them or you.
Respectfully, this comment feels dismissive. I appreciate what you're saying, but this tension was very real for me and is for many women. It's also normal to care about what people think, especially when we're younger and are building our lives.
Speaking more broadly, it's not really a matter of what "feminists" think; it's more a matter of the messaging of (mainstream) feminism and how insidious it can be. I think it's important to bring that to light, and also to wrestle with what advocacy for women should look like.
I loved this essay. I’m approaching my fourth and final month of maternity leave and I’m dreading bisecting my day between work and baby. I get to work from home (🙏🏼), but trying to figure out my new schedule feels like I’m about to begin working two jobs back-to-back. And everyone keeps asking me when I’m going back to “work.” I’m a lawyer and many are shocked to hear I’m still not “working” but I’m, you know, doing all the work involved with raising my first baby — I hope one day I can say my only job is Mom. Thank you for sharing this 🩵