How I became "just a mom"

I went to college, like a lot of young women, and didn't give much thought to anything other than working at the job I was training for.

And then I had a baby.

I went on a job interview when I was about 8 weeks pregnant and I cried all the way to my car out of the fear that I might get the job and have to leave my baby for 8 or 9 hours in the care of someone else.  

I didn't get that job, thank goodness.

My husband and I never discussed whether or not I would be a stay-at-home mom, or whether he was willing to make the sacrifices necessary for a one-income family to survive.  Heck, we barely knew each other when we got married.  I held my breath and tip-toed around the issue for a while and to my great relief, he felt exactly the way I felt: I should be the one to raise our children, not day care providers or grandparents.

*DISCLAIMER: Young girls, I do not recommend that you marry a fella you've known less than a year like I did.  I lucked out!  He turned out to be a wonderful, trustworthy man but all I knew of him, really, was that he was handsome and he hadn't missed a day of work in all the time I knew him (except for once, we both played hookie while we were dating to see the airshow but that was partly my fault).  

Here we are now, 10 years later and I have never, not once, regretted that I didn't work full time.  I'm not going to tell you that this is God's best, original plan for how the family should function.  It's the way my family functions best (and it happens to be the way families functioned for a millenia before our generation--who knows everything about everything, amiright?--came along) but I also know that we live in a great big world with all kinds of people living all kinds of lives and there's room for us all.  

If reading about how to make SAHM life work is not your cup of tea, that's all right.  

I don't think that makes you less of a mom than me.  But I also don't think that me choosing homemaking over a professional career makes me less of a woman than anyone else.  The internet has given me this platform so I'm going to sing it from the rooftops (er...well, the front porch of my audience of family and friends):  YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORK.  

I grew up post-women's lib and I've come to believe that the movement to get women out of the kitchen and into the workforce has been incredibly destructive to the fabric of our society.  This is a very complex issue and I'll get into it in future posts and again, we are allowed to disagree, but it has taken me years to be comfortable with myself as "just a mom."  That is a shame.  

Nuthin' wrong with that!