Contributed by Ayo Iyiola-Olumide
This is the series from last week on the age old discussion on stay at home versus working mums continued.
Many women work for different reasons. If your parents were divorced and you watched your mum raise seven kids alone with little or no support from your dad, then you will probably grow up with a mentality not to depend on any man, not even your husband. You will want to earn every penny you can and give your kids the best and avoid your mum’s plight as much as possible.
Some cultures do not support or invest in girls’ education and if you are lucky to escape from one of these oppressing cultures, get a college scholarship and then a great job; you will not want all that effort to go to waste and as a result you will feel driven to work outside the home.
Many women fear that their husbands will not provide adequately for their needs and their kids so everyone is trying to stash away funds in an escrow account, start up a business or earn their own money just in case the rainy day is here.
So, never compare yourself with anyone, you never know what issues they are struggling with or what odds are against them. Stay focused on what your priorities are and give your best at it whether you choose to join the rat race or slow down and ‘tend the nest’.
There’s no wrong or right answer and the SAHM should not judge the WM as if she’s made a wrong choice and versa. You can share your own convictions but not to demean or make people feel inferior. We are all driven by different things and have different life situations and that will determine what drives us. I guess at the end of the day it is only our kids who will be able to affirm in the end if we made the right choices or not.
As a SAHM, be thankful, your hubby can take care of you all and allow you the privilege to stay in the nest with the chicks. Others have a double income and still cannot pay their bills. A WM should look for opportunities to serve or support others than spend all her income on her family alone.
Being a stay-at-home-mum is exhausting, demanding but rewarding. Most times you will feel you are losing your mind but you can look back over the years, I hope and see rewards for your effort. A number of stay-at-home-mums are educated compared to what people think but have made some different choices. They prepare their kids lunch bag instead of their kids eating at the school’s café.
They want to do school drop offs and pick ups rather than send the nanny and driver. They want to ride their bikes and swim with their kids after school instead of keeping them late in after-school clubs. They want to read a bedtime story and tuck them in for the night instead of a babysitter doing that.
It just depends on your priorities, what are your values and what legacy do you want to leave behind. A close friend of mine told me while she grew up, her mum got her all the toys money could buy, they also had traveled overseas every now and then but they have an estranged relationship now she is an adult.
Imagine after working all those years to give your kids the best in life and now in the ‘evening’ of your life, you’re lonely as no one calls or visits you, you even yearn to see your grandkids but everyone is too busy for you.
A SAHM struggles with a lot of jealousy, looking out at her friends’ being able to afford much more than her, she may begin to feel insecure. As a result, many who decide to stay at home are pressured to go back to work after a few years because of this inferiority complex
When ladies meet up for a drink, the first question is ‘What do you do?’ Many are happy to say they manage a firm or run their business but a few will say they are just at home because the society looks down on them. Many women are confident or have a good self-esteem because of what they do.
Most WM’s leave home while kids are in bed and probably return when kids are in bed for the night but they console themselves that they’re available weekends and holidays full time and try to do all they can to ‘make up’ for lost grounds.
A number of WM’s complain they are just working for nothing as more than half of their pay goes to pay for private crèches, babysitters and all the support while they are away. When you retire or you are asked to go, all that’s left is your family and whatever you had tried to build over the years.
Even with more women in the workforce, men are not taking up the roles of women and so we have shortchanged ourselves by accepting less than our values by delegating our most important role to grandparents, babysitter, drivers, nannies etc.
As a SAHM, you can still hire nannies and babysitters to take off some house chores off their to-do list. You don’t want to busy all day making meals, folding laundry and no quality time with your kids. The most important thing is spending quality time with them and you don’t have to spend 24hrs entertaining them, decide what you want to do each day that they will cherish.
The SAHM suffers from regular burnout; she has an endless list of tasks to complete day-in day-out. You must take a day off or a few hours each week to get a massage, see a movie, and eat out with your girlfriends. Guess what those clothes and dishes can always wait but you need to recharge your batteries to continue to support your family
A brown shoe is first and foremost a shoe irrespective of its color. If all the shoe does is sit still in a rack all year round then one might have to question whether it’s really a shoe or not. Everyone sees it’s brown only when it’s worn with a matching or contrasting dress.
More working mums ‘work’ more than the time they spend doing mum duties and sooner than later they will likely see the effect of completely abandoning their kids to chase a career on Wall Street.
Other mums who even claim to be SAHM, ‘stay at home’ and spend very little time being mums. They make sure their kids are signed up for all the activities in town giving them the time to stay at home alone to sleep, eat, catch up on their favourite reality TV shows or their hobbies. Truth be told there is really nothing wrong with all that in moderation but not at the expense of your kids.
So, whether you’re a SAHM or WM, make sure you are more of a mum than ‘working’ or ‘staying at home’.
photo source:Â thoughtswithaccent.wordpress.com
