Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Stay at Home Mom? Really?
Wow — there are a lot of women who stay home with their kids. I know this because I saw about 10,000 of them at the Milwaukee County Zoo today, half of them pushing aircraft carrier strollers that double as food trucks for tots. Juice boxes, little baggies full of Cheerios, sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
So this is where all the good moms went while I was going to work. Who the hell knew?
Now, I was at the Zoo for an actual reason. I’m training for an Avon Walk for Breast Cancer which means in September I will have to walk 26 miles in one day (and 13 the next). Tired of the same old trek through the neighborhood, I decided to go to the Zoo where I walked furiously for at least 15 minutes before finding shade and checking my messages. That’s why they call it training — working on longer periods of time between message checks. Anyway, I had plenty of time to observe – both while walking and checking.
Every 10 feet there was another knot of mom and kids. I watched them and thought, “That’s what I should’ve done.” I thought about how I could’ve been all athletic-looking with a baseball cap and a ponytail. How I could’ve been bouncy and good humored and have a lot of PATIENCE. More to the point, how I could’ve had enough confidence, brains, or chutzpah to not have practically my entire identity tied up in work. How I could’ve been a relaxed, fulfilled adult woman satisfied to put career plans on hold for the higher priority of raising children. Sure.
Who are these women anyway? Are they happy? They look happy. They look happier than I used to when I took my kids to the Zoo (on Saturday). They have the look of people who aren’t always thinking about something else. They’re actually thinking about being at the Zoo.
So my question is this. How are they ok with this? And why are some women ok with it and others aren’t? Do you have to have an extreme level of self-esteem to be a stay at home mom or be an ambitionless dishrag of a person? I just don’t know.
I can’t imagine doing it. I guess that’s my problem. It really seemed appropriate to be observing all this at the Zoo. So foreign.
2 Comments on “Stay at Home Mom? Really?”
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I just came across this and had to reply. I never thought I would be a stay at home mom, but I am. The reason? I was a TV reporter and if I stayed in my current job I would have literally never seen my son, except on weekends. I was gone from the house at least 12 hours a day and my husband also has a very hectic job. We also don’t have any family in the area that could watch our child. I wanted to go part-time, but my station wouldn’t go for it. They wanted all or nothing. I love that I’ve been there for all of the milestones in my son’s young life, but it is hard. I am ambitious and so are most of the stay at home moms I know. Staying at home doesn’t mean you don’t have your own goals or that you’ve given up. It also doesn’t mean you have rocket high self-esteem. You deal with the cards you are dealt.
I’m glad you replied. I admired women who stayed home with their kids and seemed so together. My work/child raising life was really hectic and I often wonder how things would have been different if I had felt less pressed to be in the workforce/making a career. I didn’t have the inner self-esteem I don’t think to pull it off – which sounds crazy maybe but I think stay at home moms need to be very ok with who they are. Anyway, I probably overstated. Thanks for reading/responding.