How Do You Know if You Should Stay Home Full-time?
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How do you know if you should stay home full-time? A reader wrote in with this question, one that I thought could benefit from a range of perspectives and answers. I’d love to hear your advice for this young mom on how you decided to become a stay at home mom or why not.
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I would like to know how you knew that you were meant to be a stay at home mom. That one moment that made you know that without a doubt that your calling was to be a stay at home mom.
I have a 7-year old and a 4-year old. My husband and I both work full time trying to make ends meet and still barely make it. I would love to be a stay at home mom, and my husband does not support the idea. As he sees it ,we will never be able to make ends meet or get caught up on bills.
How Do You Know if You Should Stay Home Full-time?
This is a hard thing, to want something that seems like a financial impossibility. I can’t say that at the beginning there was a moment when I just knew. I think those early years were peppered with doubts and struggles. It was only after we got experience (and a few hard knocks) that I “knew” it had been the right thing for our family.
There were a few things that have helped me get to this place over the years.
Get the finances right.
It sounds like finances are the sticky point for your husband, and reasonably so. If you’re both working and money’s still a struggle, well, how in the world would you do it on one income?
We didn’t get the finances right until we were 10 years into it. We thought we had it right at the beginning, paying off student loans and building a reserve. Unfortunately, we didn’t know what to do once you spent the reserve.
We hadn’t figured out how to budget or live within our means, and that kinda blew up in our faces. After a lot of hard work and going without things we thought we needed, we were able to pay off the debt and get right side up.
That’s a round-about way of saying, I was home with my kids, but we didn’t have the finances right. We weren’t truly “making it” because we had debt.
My going back to the work place might have been one solution, but it’s not one that we wanted to choose. The emotional investment outweighed our financial inadequacies. To stay home full time meant that I would be the primary caregiver to our kids, something that was really important to me.
When I was pregnant with baby #5, I started freelance writing and by the time baby #6 came, we had learned to budget. Those two things helped us finally get a handle on our money. It only took 10 years of winging it to get there.
While we now rely only on my husband’s income, technically, we both “work”. My income gives us a little breathing room, else things would be pretty tight. One income can pay the bills, but there’d be no new clothes or dinners out.
There may be things that you can do to get your finances in a different place. You didn’t share specifics so I’m not sure what “making it” looks like at your house. We don’t have a lot of money going into retirement or college funds, so for us, it means simply staying in the black and paying as we go.
Find fulfillment in being home.
I know for some women, to stay home full time means more than just getting the finances right. For some, it means giving up a career they love or one that they’ve worked hard to create and don’t want to lose.
While I didn’t really care about leaving my job, I still struggled to transition out of the work place. I knew that being a mom and homemaker was “enough”, but it took me awhile to realize that and to really “feel” it. My early years as a SAHM were peppered with projects and hobbies that consumed me, to the detriment of my responsibilities at home.
I think it’s good and healthy to have outside interests and hobbies independent of your life as mom, however I wish that I hadn’t squandered my time with my littles thinking I was bored or needing to justify spending my days with them.
Be united.
Be united.Being united with your spouse is so important! This is easier said than done sometimes. I know that some couples really struggle on this issue.
To have a parent at home can seem like a luxury, but it was something that we agreed on in the hypothetical before we were ever married. For us, we were willing to make sacrifices — and a lot of mistakes — for me to be home.
It’s really important that you be on the same page for this, particularly if there will be sacrifices and/or mistakes. I would see if you can talk about your longterm goals and finances as well as share your feelings about your wishes and fears. Maybe it can’t happen next week or next month, but maybe next year. I think being open to discuss longterm strategies is really helpful on both sides.
Every couple is different; every family has different life circumstances. I don’t think anyone can make that decision for you guys, but certainly it’s good to hear how other people have come to their own decisions
What advice can you offer this mama?
Are you a stay at home mom? Have you wrestled with this question and found the right answer for your family? Share your experience in the comments.
As always, I trust that you’ll focus on sharing your experience and how you came to your decision rather than criticizing others who’ve made different choices.
What’s your question?
Have you got a question you’d like to ask? Want feedback from other moms on an issue that affects your “life as mom”?
Shoot me an email: jessica at lifeasmom dot com.
I LOVE working part-time (except when i have to work during nap time). My kiddos spend three mornings a week at preschool, and I get to work towards finishing my PhD. The options really don’t have to be work OR stay-home- lot’s of moms are finding that hybrid options are a win-win for their families (like Jessica :)). I encourage you to look at other potential options besides your current work situation. T
The solution may not be obvious right away, but there are a lot of non-traditional ways to continue to work part time. Good luck!
I always wanted to stay at home, but when my first was born it would have been hard financially for me to become a full time SAHM. So, I compromised. I left my long-hours, stressful job for a part-time job that was flexible and close to home. I generally work two days a week, at the office. I get adult time, and my kids get to interact with others at daycare. It was supposed to be temporary, until I could afford to stay home full-time. However, I actually love it and after almost 6 years I have no intentions of leaving. I am a better mom when I’m at home because I can re-charge at work (I’m very much an extrovert and need to be with people). It doesn’t have to be all or nothing!
Also – You may also be able to take a leave of absence from your job for a couple of months to try out being at home before you make a decision.
To the original question:
I had to go back to work after my first was born, and it wasn’t what we had planned. It was HARD. I spent most of that first year in a very negative head space because it wasn’t how it was “supposed” to be, even though I knew it was the only logical option.
Fast forward another year, and I got my dream of being a SAHM. The first 6-9 months were fantastic. Then, for many reasons, it became a worse situation than me working. Yikes!
For me, I needed to learn to be content regardless of my circumstance and trust that where I was at any given point in time was/is right for that moment. That doesn’t mean to not pursue alternate options, but more that I needed to choose to be content where I was at.
For far too long, my attitude while I was working put far more of a strain on my marriage than the fact that I was working. Contentment still doesn’t come easy, but has far more of an impact on the health and happiness of my family than where I spend my daytime hours.
(And not saying that you’re not content – solely throwing out my personal experience in case it’s helpful to someone!)
For me and me alone. Being at stay at home works for me. I have went back into the work force and I always end up back home. You think a second income would help with bills, we would have more money. Not in my case we were no further ahead finicially if I stay home or work. We only have our youngest at home and she start high school. I would like to find a part time job no nights no weekends and no holidays. So I prayed and when I follow what Gods saysit always works out. Yes moneytight but that ok.
In the interest of being respectful and kind, as you ask, Jessica, can I point out that this kind of comment makes working moms feel awful? We are all raising our children, whether we have jobs or not.
“From the moment I learned I was pregnant, we knew (my husband agreed) that we didn’t want anyone else to raise our child so I would stay at home with him.”
You make a good point. I had not thought about that comment in that light. I paid a proofreader to go over it and neither of us caught that.
I have never paid for my children to be in day care so I honestly do not know what that experience is like. However, I was in daycare myself from 3 months of age to 3 years. My understanding is that my mom quit her job at that time with that sentiment. She had been a kindergarten teacher and felt she had been investing in other people’s children more than her own.
I knew that if I continued teaching (and spending the hours after school needed to do a good job) someone else would be doing the bulk of the childcare. My statement was particularly about my own situation and my own family.
It wasn’t intended to be a blanket statement about all parents who work. My apologies for the ambiguity. It’s a tough subject to talk about without coming across wrong to someone. We make different choices based on who we are and the families we have.
Jessica,
I think Ellen was actually quoting my comment. I apologized to her (as you can see).
I’m afraid this is a good example of the limitations of the written language–there’s no body language, tone of voice, etc., to help clarify the “speaker’s” intentions. (I should know better too–I spent my professional career as both a proofreader and an English teacher.) It’s also an example of good intentions gone awry–my hope was to encourage others through my story. I’m sorry that some found it discouraging/offensive instead. Mea culpa.
Ellen,
Please be assured that I meant no offense to anyone. I completely understand that many women have no choice in the matter. (My mother-in-law was widowed when my husband was only two years old, and she had to work outside the home from that point on–my father-in-law had a heart condition that precluded him from getting any life insurance, and she chose to never remarry. There was a period of time when my mother also had to work outside the home due to circumstances beyond her control. I have the greatest respect for both my mother and my mother-in-law, and I miss them both dearly now that they’ve passed. They were amazing women.) I don’t even guarantee that I will never go back to work. This past year has shown me that a great deal of life is beyond my (or anyone else’s) control, and it’s generally not wise to say “never.” Only God knows the future.
I also know that many women choose to work outside the home because they want to–they enjoy what they are doing, they feel they are doing something valuable, they want to put their educations to good use–the personal reasons are myriad. That’s fine too. Many of my friends work outside their homes, and we all agree that the choices we make for our own families are the best choices at the moment.
As I prefaced my comments, this is an emotionally loaded topic and I’m not trying to suggest that the choice we have made is the “best” choice for anyone else–it was just the choice that we felt was right for our family and our circumstances. Perhaps if we hadn’t had to wait so very long for our son we would have felt differently. Who knows? All moms (stay-at-home, work-at-home, and work-outside-the home) have an incredibly challenging and important job to do.
Please forgive me if my story (or the way in which I shared it) was offensive; it was not intended that way.
Hi Ellen,
I’ve been a SAHM, WAHM and working-outside-the-home mom. I wasn’t offended by your comment, but the whole “someone else is raising my child” bit is always a hard one to hear. I understand the sentiment behind it, but as someone who’s been on both sides, I can say that I am the one “raising” my children just as much when I’m home with them all day as when they’re in daycare. I’m not sure the best way to word it so that it’s not inoffensive to anyone, but it is one I have to consciously remind myself, “they didn’t mean anything against you by saying it” (at least most people don’t!).
My children are both thriving in daycare by having someone that is not me provide input in their day. And I’m still by far their favorite person (much to the chagrin of their Daddy many days!). I still interpret babbles better than anyone else in the world. But some behavior issues that I’d been working on daily for months with my older son (as a SAHM) were gone within two weeks of him being in full-time daycare. He’d reached a point where he could hear it from someone else better than me.
There are far more inputs in our decision process than I could get into in a blog post comment, but both my husband and I are convinced that at this point in our lives, the best thing for our family is for me to be working full-time and have the kids in daycare. That may change at any time, and we reevaluate regularly.