Housewife? Who's a housewife anymore?

Since I stopped working outside the home in February of 2004, I've had a chance to examine several of my own, and others', attitudes about being a SAHM. Here are a few:

1. What do you do to fill all those hours?
2. Gosh, you're really lucky.
3. Wish I could do that, but [valid reason]
4. Well, I can't do that because...[defensive reason]
5. Silence (they really can't imagine my life, so they don't know what to say).

First, a word. This is a topic that provokes strong reactions from other women who work. Many times the stay-at-home-mother is greeted by the reaction that her lot in life must be either an expression of license (my husband is richer than your husband) or an object of pity (the poor thing is a prisoner in her own home). The conversation dies, just like that.

In response, I have developed the attitude that "our circumstances may be different, but it's just as hard for both of us--only in different ways." What I mean is that we all expend a certain amount of effort to live a lifestyle that makes us most comfortable. And I don't mean just materially comfortable, but mentally and psychologically and emotionally comfortable, too.

Some people are willing to expend incredible amounts of effort to be around other people most of the time because they are psychologically uncomfortable being alone. Some women think they can't be good mothers unless they work--they are emotionally uncomfortable with the challenge of being with their kids all day. Some women crave the intellectual stimulation they get from a career so much that they are mentally uncomfortable dealing with only mundane matters on a daily basis (the newsletter, in fact, is my attempt to seek relief for this problem).

Therefore, it doesn't necessarily follow that either woman--the mom that works, or the mom that stays at home--should feel superior or inferior to the other. They are simply seeking to fulfill the needs they've placed as their highest priority. There is nothing wrong with this, but one thing you will notice me emphasizing from time to time is the importance of goals and choices, and taking responsibility for your choices. The mother who works because she is running away from the need to learn to manage a household is no more liberated than the woman who stays at home out of fear, and experiences endless stress and chaos. They have chosen their priorities, but not consciously. Therefore it is impossible to take responsibility for those choices. On the other hand, the mom who works knowing she is meeting a goal should feel comfortable talking with the organized housewife who knows her worth.

So, with the sound conviction that there is nothing unavoidably horrible OR inherently sublime in the state of the SAHM, let's dive in:

ATTITUDE #1: So what DO you do all day?

I thought I would have empty, endless hours ahead of me as a stay-at-home-mom. I was assured by other SAHM's that this was a myth. I wasn't so sure. Then the baby came, and I discovered they were right. Suddenly I was a 24-hour-a-day milk machine. Despite my fatigue, however, I was driven to do things other then sleep when I put my baby down, because that was the only time when I wasn't stuck to the couch with my boobs exposed.

Incredibly, as the baby got older, I developed a standard of productivity unknown in my pre-baby life. I became a whirlwind of activity and efficiency. Suddenly there were all these projects around the house that needed doing. And since I hadn't spent that much time at home before, I didn't notice that I hated the backyard, or that I longed for different-colored walls in my bedroom. I also didn't notice the running toilet, the cracks in the wall, or the leaky faucet. My days are devoted to the necessary "business" of life--baby care, housework, and bills--but I also have ample time to fix up the house and do many things to improve its value that I wouldn't have had the time for had I gone back to work. I am confident that I am making this house a real investment, increasing its value by the many (mostly little) things I do to maintain and spuce it up.

The other thing I do with the extra time is what I call Reading the Fine Print. If I was working, I would be too exhausted to examine bills and receipts for mistakes or hidden charges or ways we could save money. Granted, even though sitting down with a fat insurance contract with my turkey sandwich isn't the most fulfilling thing about staying at home, it is an eye opener. I've since made several changes that will save us hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the future. I find I do have one time advantage that many other SAHM's probably don't have. Since my husband is gone most of the time, I have far less housework, cooking, and laundry to do, which saves more time that I can devote to other projects.

In fact, in the year that I've been a stay-at-home mom I have found that not only can we afford it, but after caulking all our financial leaks and evaluating my own earning potential, I have come to believe that, unless circumstances were radically different (if my husband were to become disabled, for example--God forbid--or if, due to unprecedented bad economic conditions, he was limited to working at Wal-Mart), I far prefer staying at home and filling my hours doing things that benefit my family's goals.

The Catholic Angle

When I conceived the idea for a newsletter for stay-at-home-moms, I wasn't thinking of making it religion-specific. I wanted to have as large an audience as possible, and since my premise is that SAHMs are a relatively small number to try and reach, I didn't want to shoot myself in the foot by shrinking my audience even further. "After all," I reasoned. "If I can't find enough SAHMs to make friends with, there can't be THAT many out there" (Actually, if I were really honest with myself, I would admit that I don't need to know twenty SAHMs to fill my social calendar--I know only 3, and that seems to be enough for me. However, it does seem strange that we don't really connect the way I assumed SAHMs would. Is it time, or different values? More on this later). The newsletter would also involve the collaborative services of a friend from college (and SAHM) who happens to be an editorial genius, and who also happens to be religious, but not Catholic.

However, when I found out about the excellent services available on Blogger.com, there seemed to be no obstacle to creating a personal blog for my own writing that either doesn't find its way into the newsletter, or needs an airing before we spend bucks to print it. Why didn't we conceive the idea as a web-based publication? Well, because:

1. I am intimidated by all the technogeek stuff involved
2. It would be problematic (but not impossible) to find a server home for our creation, as well as more expensive
3. I felt I would be giving up too much control over my "baby" if I had to farm out too many services beyond the two-person partnership that was developing
4. Publicizing and distributing a paper newsletter has a certain appeal when you're not sure how many readers you're going to have--if the newsletter is in their hands, reading it is instant gratification, unlike trying to get someone to go online and find and navigate your web site, and never really knowing your readership
5. It is more intuitive to charge for a subscription to a paper publication (since people have the product in their hands) than to a web-based one which may involve electronic payment methods and other technogeek gobbledygook stuff that would probably cost more money but, since web-based publishing appears to be cheaper, we wouldn't be able to charge as much (to say nothing of the fact that I have never paid money to subscribe to any service available on the Web, many services being available for free).

This brings me back to the Catholic angle. When I was dreamily saying to myself, "There should be a newsletter for stay-at-home-moms, just like the Tightwad Gazette," I immediately thought of The Catholic Housewife as a title, and immediately dismissed it. As much as I feel it fits my perspective the best, I felt the word Catholic would alienate way more people than the word Tightwad. And the word Housewife doesn't cover the SAHM angle. But since this blog is a personal venture, I feel the title carries some advantages in the online world.

There seems to be no shortage of faithful Catholics wandering the Web looking for stuff they can relate to. And since none of it seems housewife-specific, I may be filling a small, but important, niche. In fact, it may be easier to find Catholic housewives on the Web than in my parish. And, if it seems that SAHMs in general are underserved, how much more underserved are Catholic SAHMs? Oh, I know there are many wonderful "family" web sites out there for Catholics. I'm sure in time I'll come to visit them and mention them here. But I'm betting they don't contain the internal perspective of the actual women around whom these families turn.

In conclusion, it simply dawned on me that I would never be able to share my faith, as a Catholic, in the newsletter. Am I talking about hard-hitting apologetics or evangelization? No, unfortunately I don't have the time or the resources to aim so high, and there are already excellent blogs and web sites out there covering this (like Catholic.com and jimmyakin.org). No, I'm talking about housewife stuff, like how cleaning cloth diapers can be kind of like working out your purgatory in this life. I guarantee you won't find insights like that anywhere else!

THE UNEXAMINED LIFE

I consider the Stay at Home Mother (SAHM) to be an endangered species.

What? you say. What about all those moms on the Dr. Phil show? Isn't there currently a resurgence, or renaissance, if you will, of the oft-maligned and mysterious occupation of the SAHM? It's true the media seizes on this topic from time to time with all the curiosity of a paleontologist contemplating a bone fragment. They usually have an air of shocked disinterest as they trot out a raft of recent polls and hold up a couple of specimens of "proof" that women still do this.

In truth, aside from the head-scratching of pollsters and pundits, I believe there are many more SAHM's out there than make the news. But what is unclear is whether these moms have chosen the lifestyle or if it has been thrust upon them. Less than half the SAHM's I know seem to be more-or-less permanently invested in staying at home by choice (they have religious convictions about it, and/or more than two kids). The majority are actively seeking work, or taking courses with the intent to seek employment outside the home. The most common reasons I hear cited are financial problems, boredom, or the husband is not pulling his end of the load (I don't mean to exclude single mothers, but I include them in the working mother category, for obvious reasons. They need a newsletter, too.).

I am in the first category, both for the reasons I mentioned, but also because I find myself suited to this occupation by talent and temperament. Also I am set apart by the fact that my husband is away from home the majority of the time; thus we have a radical division of labor in our marriage that puts us in the permanently dedicated category, unlike SAHM's who have daddies who come home at night. Simply stated, I said to my husband, "If you're going to be gone so much, SOMEBODY's got to be at home, to give our kids some stability." My final reason is that I can't earn enough to justify the added expenses of daycare, transportation, etc.

Some mothers who might be interested in the newsletter are women who currently work (I have met a few of these), and wish they could stay at home, but are scared off by several myths common to the SAHM:

1. We live on beans and bread and feel incredibly financially deprived
2. We run a psychological hazard of being bored to death or driven crazy by our kids
3. We are destined to gain horrendous amounts of weight
4. We are all religious zealots and somewhat unbalanced
5. We run the risk of becoming mindless devotees of Dr. Phil, or [insert the soap opera of your choice]
6. We will become lonely and uninteresting to other people

I will consider these in subsequent posts. I have found that only reasons 5 and 6 hold any real danger to the SAHM, because of the social isolation I explained in my initial paragraph. These are also the complaints (coupled with financial problems) most often cited by my friends who are SAHM's looking for work, and the reasons cited by some working moms I've met who claim that their jobs save them from the inevitable cabin fever. It is not my intent to stand on a soapbox and try to convince or exhort mothers who want to work outside the home that they should not do so. But I would like to explode some myths and give them a peek at how we do it and why it is worthwhile.