What I wish I could say to working Moms…
I’ve been sitting on this post for quite a while. I haven’t been brave enough to post it for fear of offending some of my friends who work and read this blog. But- I’ve decided to go ahead anyway. I want to be clear, this isn’t a smack down of working moms or anything. If you work because you want to or feel that you financially need to, then this isn’t directed to you. But that’s not the reason for working that I get from lots of Moms. I can’t tell you how many times I hear working Moms say to me “I have to work because I could never stay home with my kids all day- they’d drive me nuts. I can barely handle being home with them on the weekends. I don’t know how you do it.”
Here’s what I wish I could say, but never have the courage to say.
Being a stay-at-home-Mom and being with your children every day, all day, day in and day out, is waaaay different than when a working mom is home with her kids on the random snow day or weekend. The majority of working moms I know spend the weekends at home trying to catch up on a weeks worth of house cleaning and laundry and quality time with their kids. But it’s different when you’re home all the time. Here’s a couple myths I’d like to dispel.
1. It’s not all day drudgery of housework, laundry and more housework. Because you’re home all week, you do the housework a bit at a time, whenever you have an extra minute. It’s a rare day that I spend more than 30-45 minutes TOTAL doing all housework. I usually do one load of laundry a day and stay pretty caught up. I throw a load in the laundry at some point during the morning. I switch it over sometime in the afternoon. I fold it in the evening while I’m watching T.V. with Kip. I probably don’t spend more than ten minutes total on laundry.
2. It’s not a whole long day of nothingness with your kids. If you work and you end up being home for a snow day or something- it’s different. Probably you don’t have a large network of other stay-at-home moms to call on. You’ve got all day home and the kids are going stir-crazy. But when you stay home regularly, you’ve usually busier than you’d expect. Add in MOPS or some other Moms group every other week, a weekly playgroup, another day visiting at a friends house or having them over and a day or two when you are out running errands or taking the kids to lunch and you haven’t been home all day for the entire week. This is something that I’ve really been struggling with lately-being gone away from home too much- you know, the whole Titus 2 and teaching the younger women to be “keepers at home”- but that’s a whole ‘nother post.
3. It’s not hour upon hour of “quality” time with your kids the way most people think of it. I don’t spend all day, every day doing puzzles, coloring, reading and playing on the floor with Mary and Nathan. I know that when my sister was working when The Biscuit was little, she felt so guilty for being away from him all week that she spent ALL weekend doing kid stuff with him. But if you’re a SAHM, there’s just no need to do that. You’re with them all the time. I’m here to say, Mary and Nathan do play on their own quite a bit. Do I do kid stuff with them? Sure- I try to do some every day. But it’s certainly not an all day affair.
Also- I dislike this whole notion of “quality” time with your kids doing just fun kid stuff. It almost feels to me like something to be checked off the day’s to-do list. Quality time reading with Mary? Check. Quality time playing trucks with Nathan? Check. UGGH! This is not the way we do things here. How about incorporating the kids into YOUR life instead? So, when I empty the dishwasher, they put away the kids utensils, measuring cups, etc. If I fold laundry, they match socks. If I sweep the floor, they hold the dustpan. We’re doing the work together. I really think this sends a different message to kids- instead of a feeling of Mom needs to spend time with me, doing what *I* want to do- it’s a feeling of of being a part of a family, working together, that Mom enjoys spending time with me because she includes me in her day and chores, my contributions are important to the family… It just seems very different to me.
This doesn’t mean that we never do things separately- there are plenty of times that they play out on the deck while I chat on the phone with a friend or they might watch the “bulldozer” video while I read a book.
4. I don’t know this for sure, but I think it’s different for the kids too. When kids who are in preschool/daycare are home on the weekend, I would imagine it’s a bit of a wild time- doing what you want to do all day instead of constantly being directed like at the preschool/daycare, playing with toys you haven’t played with all week, a different schedule/routine then the rest of the week. I don’t know, but I’d guess that they’d be pretty wound up. When you’re kids are home all week, there’s nothing “new” to play with that you’ve missed all week. You’ve got a pretty regular routine/schedule for being at home. I think the wild and crazy factor would be less. Now, a lot of that may also be discipline and parental expectations too, but I still think being at home daily may play a part in wildness/calmness.
Hope I haven’t just horribly offended anyone- and this post is NOT towards anyone in particular.
