Stay-at-home Mom vs. "Working" Mom

I thought long and hard when developing the angle of this blog because a site dedicated to the "working"mom could be any mom. Being a mom is work, no matter how you slice it. However, I only know what I know and I've had a full-time job the whole time I've been a mom. I do often wonder though, why do we make such a distinction between the two. Are our mommy worlds really that different?

I don't know where all the competition started. Maybe it started in the industrial age when women went to work to provide for their family while the husband went to war. Society gave a false embrace to the new role of "the mom" in the workplace making it more acceptable to deviate from the prior Joan Clever type role for women. Maybe it's even more recent than that.

My generation is the "I want it all and I want it all right now!" We want to have college degrees, careers, equal status with our male counterparts, but we also want a family and the white picket fence - including having all the little ducklings at home. Women now tend to feel like we have to give things up to become a mom, instead of in our mother's and grandmother's day where it was the goal, it was just what they did. We now tend to try more to just fit motherhood into our schedule and hope for the best.

It seems the decision to stay home with your kids is harder to make these days as well. Taking the whole financial part out of it, it's hard to walk away from something you worked hard for, something you trained for, something that defines a little piece of you. We're told our whole childhood that we can be what we want, be a doctor, a teacher, a lawyer, etc...but when it comes down to it having a family doesn't really fit into those worlds well. Even now, some employers still place a stigma on moms, it's a hassle for them that you have a child to care for and they don't often make it easy on you.

On the contrary, if you had a certain lifestyle before you had kids and certain financial responsibilities, its hard to walk away from a pay check. It's hard not to want to maintain a certain lifestyle for your children. Not to mention the current economy, which has forced more moms back into the work world without much choice.

My point is either way is it's hard. It's hard to give every ounce of yourself up to dedicate your life to raising kids, missing out on adult interaction and self fulfillment. It's also hard to leave your precious little one every day to be raised by someone else and miss their first smile, their first words, their first steps. You never get those moments back. Yet, either way as moms we do it. We do it because we love them, we do it because we're moms!

So we're not at war with each other, none of us have the better deal. We're all just making it work for whatever reason we have to make it work. And as a working mom, trust me I don't judge the stay-at-home mom, I am envious of all the precious moments you get with your little ones. I am envious that you had the courage to say, no matter what my little one is my life now.