Are stay at home parents sacrificing?

I am the stay at home mother of five children, four of whom are biologically mine. I’m asked quite often how the heck we get by. I almost never give an honest answer. To do so would only make the person asking the question feel belittled and make me sound superior and that’s not what I would ever want.

When I look at the world around me today I see so many lost little faces. Little people feeling disconnected and big people feeling like they missed out on something but knowing not quite what. I have friends who work fifty to sixty hours a week. They take two vacations a year and have two new cars. Their children all have the best video games and computers. They are very stressed people. I know parents that only work forty hours a week. Both parents mind you. They also have at least one new car and massive credit card debt to get their kids the latest games and phones and computers. They are very stressed people. The thing I find amusing is where these children can be found. Not where the brand new computers are, ours is many years and many repairs old. Not where the latest video game equipment is, we don’t own even one, wait I might still have an Atari. Yep, you guessed it, they’re all at my house, lamenting about their horrid math teacher or gushing about the hot guy in 3rd period while I’m stepping over a toddler and a husky (my pound rescue and my comic relief)trying to fit 2lbs of pasta into a pot designed for much less because my 5 year old is using the big pot for a homemade “science experiment.”. The children wandering in and out of our home range from 18 months to 20 years. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We live comfortably, no new cars, no state of the art electronics but we’re not walking or taking the bus and we have cable. How we manage to get by is very simple, we prioritized. I’m not sacrificing anything by staying home to raise my children. Even if I did have to take the bus, have no TV and do without meat in my meal plans 6 of the 7 days a week it still wouldn’t be a sacrifice. (If that sounded a little specific, it was, we have had to do those things and I’d do them again, happily. Ooooh, there’s a word not used very often in conjunction with doing without.)

One of the little ones spent the night a while back. She was about 4 at the time. We got up on Saturday morning and took inventory. The only thing in the house we had enough of to feed us all was the makings for French Toast. She asked to call her mother about half way thru, I said sure and overheard her call. She had called home absolutely amazed that there was another way to make French Toast. Mom. she said, did you know that some French Toast is made with bread and eggs? Aunt Becky didn’t even put it in the toaster! Sacrifice? Please. My children will be raised with my beliefs and morals, not whoever the daycare center has making minimum wage pretending to give a rats ass about my children. I’ll know them well enough to see warning signs of future trouble and they’ll know me and my expectations. It occurs to me that instead of asking how much a person would sacrifice to be a stay at home Mother/Father, the question should be do you know what you’re sacrificing by not being a stay at home Mother/Father.

As I sit here writing these things I know that I’m sounding a wee bit defensive. Yeah, I said wee bit, problem? Huh, well, Huh? OK I keeed, I keeed! This comes from a part of me that has listened to women in our government as well as media and business people that make raising ones own children sound like a job that’s not worth the time of a well educated, motivated individual. Like by choosing to take complete responsibility for what I have brought into this world is somehow hurting the the cause known as Womens Rights. I for one don’t think getting out from under a big hairy knuckled thumb to replace it with a dainty well manicured one is what the original bra burners had in mind.

Becky Parr has started The Ordinary Woman at rltopreviews.com . If you like what you have read here please take the time to browse through the web site. It is a place to submit any DIY tips or stories, be they funny or disastrous. Currently there are several pages dedicated to small repairs that are traditionally way over charged for that can be done with minimal tools and no special skill. Thanks for your support, Becky.

My wife is a stay-at-home Mom, and has been for 6 years. This was by her choice, and we are both very happy and seem to have raised a very well-adjusted kid. The arrangement has been beneficial for my work situation, because my wife takes care of the house and kids, which leaves me with more flexibility on the job— which ultimately has translated to better jobs, better salaries, and ultimately a better life for all of us. No sacrifice at all.

I’ve been staying home since my eldest was 6 months old. It has its ups and downs, but we are committed to it unless my husband takes early retirement, in which case I will go back to work while he stays home. (The kids would be in high school at that point.)

I think it strengthened our marriage, because we had to join forces more, trust him with the money, trust me to manage the home.

I was a lawyer, and very cerebral. It still drives me nuts not to have sufficient intellectual outlets, but I do have some, and I am willing to say “not now”. And on a lovely day when I’m doing something outside with the kids instead of being in an office, I am the most grateful mom in town.

I sort of assumed that if I stayed home, my kids would be above average. They are really not prodigies of any sort. And one of them has ADD. Some of the working moms I know seem to have well-mannered, smart, talented kids. They must be doing something right. On the other hand, because I stayed home and made raising my children my vocation, I know my children very well, and I have time to learn about child development, parenting, etc. My ADD kid does not take prescription meds for it because we are managing or ameliorating it in other ways. I would not be up to speed on this if I were practicing law full-time.

As to foregoing private school, well I believe parents are the primary educators of children. Our public school is very strong academically, and follows the Josephson Character Counts system of teaching values, but where they miss something, we fill in the gaps. And where the kids get a biased presentation of history, we are there to present the real story. Our views do really matter to our kids, thus far. The private schools near us can be expected to present much the same biases, even the Catholic schools, and they are not free of gossips, snobs and bullies, either. So we are in a California public school, and staying there until further notice.

“In every act of selflessness, of loving sacrifice, of compassion,...we seem to be giving something away, to be robbing ourselves. The truth is that such acts enrich us and make us grow; this is the only way that leads forward and upward......Love alone gives life meaning. That is the more capable we are of loving and surrendering ourselves, the more meaningful our life becomes.” from Reflections by Herman Hesse

There's something drastically wrong with that quote. I don't see supporting my kids as being selfless, nor being sacrifice (though certainly a tradeoff). Nor would I ever have dreamt of surrendering to my kids.

Nor do I accept the 'Love alone gives meaning' idea. Love who or what you want, it's what you do that gives meaning. Love the grizzly bear from distance is ok, but meaningless. Do something stupid like try to be a grizzly and your meaning becomes a joke.

I know how you feel. We put the oldest through a fairly cheap (as far as private schools go) school for two years and had our second child in private kindergarten at a different school. Neither was expensive, but it took a big chunk out of our savings to do it.

We so need vouchers in this country, but that won't happen in our lifetimes with these communist bastards running the show. The only thing you could do is home school and the restrictions in California are probably not friendly in that respect. The next suggestion would be to move and I know that's easier said than done too.

Good luck--I know it's not easy for parents like us that don't want to go along with the flow and indoctrination.

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