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.