On Becoming a Stay at Home Mom

If you had asked me as a teenager what would I be doing with my life by my late 20s/early 30s, stay-at-home motherhood would not have come up. Discussions in my household growing up included things like becoming a flight attendant as a way to travel and see the world. My parents lived an international life between Germany and the US for their first several years together. We traveled to Germany and other places as a family when I was a kid. As a teen I grabbed every chance to travel more independently: a high school exchange to Germany, an environmental education trip to Kenya, and a semester traveling and camping throughout the Southeastern US with the Audubon Expedition Institute. I imagined this pattern would likely continue into adulthood.

Then a funny thing happened. I fell in love with a local boy. I really got to know and fell in love with the region that as a teen I only imagined leaving and trading it for bigger and better, more worldly places. Even so, my local boy and I started traveling together (St. Croix, Ireland, Paris). We moved cross country together, to Los Angeles, to pursue a masters degree and a law degree. These adventures, though great fun, only made us appreciate our little corner of Vermont more and we knew we wanted to come back.

Upon moving back, with a fresh masters degree (in urban planning) in hand, I married my local boy. We got jobs with steady incomes. Jobs that allowed us a new adventure of buying a ramshackle house and totally renovating it. We worked all day at our jobs, ate a quick takeout dinner in the conference room of my office, then went to work on our house in the dark, and freezing cold winter temperatures for a few hours each night and every weekend. It was quite romantic actually.

When the house was done we decided we wanted a baby. But by then it was fall of 2008 and the Great Recession started. I lost my job. I  looked for new work but was conflicted. Conflicted about interviewing for jobs I didn't know if I would keep because I didn't know what kind of mother I wanted to be. My mother was a stay at home mom, and so were many of my friends' mothers growing up, so it was a familiar path. Yet, I had just recently gotten my degree and felt like I had better use it. The economic crisis wasn't making finding work easy so I found a part time, temporary job while I was pregnant. When my son was born it just felt right to be home with him. I didn't want anyone else raising him. I didn't want to miss all his firsts. The decision was made.

I have been a stay at home mom for 3 years now and it has been so rewarding to watch my son and daughter grow. Difficult and grueling at times too, but worth it. I have tried to always keep one foot in the professional world. I did some consulting for a former employer, and I also serve on my town's planning commission and zoning board. There are times that I worry about re-entering the workforce, will my skills still be relevant, who will hire me after so many years of "not working." There have been times when I'm the only stay at home parent in the room and I do feel less valued because I don't have my own paycheck and any office stories I have to add to the conversation are 4 years old. Still, I wouldn't trade this time with my kids. The memories we are making are absolutely priceless. A free-spirited friend of mine from college told me "We are more than what we do to earn our daily bread." I think this is true. I have a very fulfilling life raising my children, and a very important job guiding them to be conscientious, intelligent, and caring individuals. There will still time for another professional career someday, and time for family travel adventures.

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