The weeks after a baby’s birth can come with a sudden revelation for some mothers that, contrary to all expectations, they want to “stay home” with their baby instead of returning to the work force. For other moms, the necessities of paying for childcare in high-cost-of-living areas or managing the needs of multiple children or older children with special needs makes staying home for a time a practical decision. Then, of course, there are women who aspire to make raising children their primary occupation and plan by choice to opt out of full-time, outside-the-home work.
Whether arrived at by choice or seeming necessity, staying at home with young children can be a dramatic adjustment depending on the lifestyle you’re used to. Sadly, the sudden change in lifestyle and roles can contribute to feelings of isolation, depression, and despair. A lack of extended family and community support have perhaps played a role in the alarming rise of alcoholism among mothers of young children (“mommy’s sippy cup,” anyone?). Is such misery the latest instantiation of the curse of Eve? Is being frazzled and miserable simply the birth right of mothers everywhere?
A culture of unhappiness
Jokes abound about yoga pants, lack of showers, and the utter meaninglessness of life at home with small children. The good news is, it doesn’t have to be all bad. A growing number of entrepreneurial women are shining a light on the upsides of being a “full-time” mom. While, of course, every mother is a mother all the time and no one is really “off-the-clock,” there is a certain intensity that comes with being the primary caregiver for your children in day-to-day life. While not all mothers can or would want to make a part-time job of selling meal planning kits, cleaning schedules, and offering styled inspiration for moms online, all mothers can learn worthwhile tips from the “mompreneurs” selling the dream: enjoying your life and your children while you raise them.
There’s a myth that women are either “mother types” or not. Certainly, nurturing and stereotypical mothering tasks may come more easily to some women than others, but it’s a mistake to think that you’re born either to make children the center of your universe or you’re created to work in the corporate world. The reality is that most people are quite a bit more flexible than that. Listening to the stories of many a happy mother reveals that essential tasks like scheduling, cleaning, and virtues like patience and perseverance did not come naturally to many mothers.
What, then, are the secrets to avoiding the many pitfalls of #momlife and thriving as a round-the-clock mother to young children? Across the many personality preferences of seasoned stay-at-home moms, there are common themes and key ingredients to success that are worth replicating to increase your chances of moving beyond unshowered chaos and creating habits of being that benefit not only you but the children you are sacrificing so much to raise.
Reexamining our assumptions about motherhood
Cultural critic and gadfly Milo Yianopolis has made a career of more-or-less repeatedly pointing out that studies show a precipitous decline in women’s happiness over the past half-century. The rate of childlessness among women aged 40 to 44 is 15%, meaning 85% of women in that age group became mothers. Those numbers are projected to remain constant or rise, as the overall fertility rate is down but the percentage of women having children is going up. Precisely when women’s economic and social opportunities expanded in an unprecedented manner, women have become less satisfied.
The reasons for this are, of course, manifold. We could simply classify the phenomenon the way public health officials do when they lack an adequate explanation and safely file it away as “multi-factorial.” However, there are noticeable trends in cultural beliefs and practices that have surely contributed to the current state of affairs, and by looking at some of these we can begin to see how going on three generations of women find it a struggle to get out of bed in the morning to face another day of life in one of the most prosperous and comfortable civilizations in human history.
A noticeable change is the shift toward what has been termed intensive parenting. Parents, often primarily mothers, are tasked with closely managing what could be called a highly successful childhood. Such an endeavor involves several extracurriculars in addition to high academic achievement and numerous accolades and awards. Addressing the full menace of intensive parenting and its discontents exceeds the scope of this particular article. For now, here are a few pointers for the mother treading the perilous path of wageless work.
Aim for Type-B
Girls are relentlessly pushed to recognize their “type-A” personality. If a girl performs well on tests and has an inclination to color-code her pencil erasers, she’s led to believe she’s a perfectionist and totally type-A personality who can’t handle when things aren’t meticulously planned and under her control. For many type-A women, there may be a good bit of conditioning, and perhaps a bit of the lies of Satan, involved.
To successfully face the nitty-gritty of life outside the classroom, a more relaxed, adaptive, and calm demeanor goes a long way. Seeking to control all variable while raising small children is like trying to carry water in a sieve. Opening up the possibility of mediocrity in the less important matters of life and accepting the limits of control unlocks a world of newfound possibility.
Routines for success
Life in the home does not translate well to rigid timeframes and schedules for most people. However, rhythms of life can provide stability and reassurance for small children as much as for adults. To the extent that mothers can resists the trappings of the showerless athleisure lifestyle and establish predictable waves of order, the better chance of health and thriving they have. Eating, sleeping, tidying, and washing all should occur regularly; setting them up to occur with some predictability lightens the burden.
Friends and influence
Ultimately, one of the most powerful forces determining how you feel and how you perform in the role of mother will be the voices of the women around you. This is not because external forces exert an outsized persuasive power on your actions, but because when adjusting to a new role, the attitudes of those around us can be especially influential.
If you stay in touch with all the teacher friends or office coworkers who were once your colleagues, you may feel estranged from yourself, lazy to be staying home and generally confused. On the other hand, if you befriend the first stay-at-home mother you encounter, you may wind up with a circle of lazy, bored, uninteresting women who encourage you in vice. Yours is a countercultural lifestyle and seeking out the women who have lived it well can be a wellspring of hope and inspiration.
In sum
The decision to leave the traditional workforce to focus on raising children is one fraught with cultural baggage and a history of unhappiness for so many, sadly. It does not have to be so. It is eminently practical for a dedicated, round-the-clock caregiver to devote herself to the care of children, whose needs are varied and immense. All the more does it avail everyone involved to have the woman who birthed the children and feeds the youngest out of her own body to stay in close proximity and foster the profound biologic bonds that already exist.
Staying home with young children can seem radical, but it is anything but. Such an arrangement for many mothers is a matter of good sense. The bonus is that they can do it without succumbing to substance abuse, despair, or boredom. All that is required is a bit on ingenuity.
