The Stay at Home Moms vs Working Moms War has Nothing on Us...
I love reading. Everything from articles from science journals, fantasy, romance, comedies, thrillers, mysteries, sci-fi, blogs, magazine articles, poetry, whole series of books... EVERYTHING pretty much. I love the written word. Lately though, I have noticed amongst the blogs and articles side of the literature world a war going on. The moms of society have been in an on going battle since the dawn of feminism and seem to be at constant odds of who has it harder or who does more or which is better- Stay at home moms versus working moms. Moms are categorized into these two groups so much that society has even created acronyms for each group. SAHM- Stay At Home Mom and WOHM- Working Out of the Home Mom/WM- Working Mom... Well, I want to add into these discussions the undervalued side of the moms who stay at home but also work full time.
Part of playing an active role in the community to help with networking for my business, I am a member of multiple local "mommy" groups. Most of these groups exist solely on social networking sites, some actually do have meet-ups, moms' night ins and schedule play dates where members are invited to someone's house or a local park so the moms can hang out while their little ones play... I have never personally been able to make it to one of these "play dates" but I imagine them to be much like one of the scenarios in "The Three-Martini Playdate" by Christie Mellor, a book I found in a random kitchen drawer in my house when I moved in, obviously left behind by the previous owners who I imagine to be really cool people based off their reading material (hilarious book by the way).... but back to subject... I don't ever get to go as they are always scheduled about mid morning on a week day, which is about the time I am serving up morning snack to 10 pint sized preschoolers. I imagine a bunch of stay at home moms gossiping about other moms, sharing couponing and parenting secrets, arguing breast vs bottle, etc... All while their kids go insane on the playground playing together under poor supervision as the moms are too busy enjoying being out of the house for a change and getting to interact with someone who cares about adult issues instead of which princess or super hero is better than the other.
Then there are the moms' nights and I have been to a few of those as they are normally scheduled on Friday or Saturday evenings after working hours. These usually consist of no kids or just the few that live in the house with the mom who is hosting. These, I am guessing as I have never been to the other, consist of WAY fewer moms, just a tiny group, as the majority of the moms invited are either too busy trying to juggle dinner & bedtimes after they get home from work or are just too exhausted from working that they'd rather curl up in front of the TV instead of going anywhere (this I know from experience). These moms usually drink and laugh as though they don't have responsibilities awaiting them once they get home because this is one of the only times in months they've gotten out of the house on personal time kid-free.
Within each of these two groups I rarely ever meet moms who work full time at home. There are the occasional SAHMs who sell make-up, candles or jewelry via companies like Scentsy, Avon, etc... part time on the side. Which I think is great and all, but its EXTREMELY rare for me to meet ones who truly work full time. If someone looked at my time logs, I can easily put in 60 hrs a week and that is not counting any after hours work I do with paperwork, cleaning, prepping, advertising and planning out my class's curriculum. It takes a lot of work to run your own business full time. But here is the part that only working SAHMs get to boast about. Not only do we work to bring in income and we get to have that whole experience of working a job (one that produces a pay check) but we get to do it all while doing all of the other work, and yes it IS work, that SAHMs do too. And just because I feel like being a pompous ass at the moment, working SAHMs who do child care/preschool have it harder than a huge majority of moms out there. And I am going to tell you why...
1. Not only are we juggling our 40-75 hrs a week we spend on the work clock, we are also running the household and juggling our own kids' schedules, spouse's schedules and IF we are lucky, we get that hour of me time to watch our favorite show once a week... that we have to watch online... after it aired.... after the chores are done.... after the kids are in bed.... sometime around midnight when we should be using that hour to sleep as we have to start over again in a few hours....
2. Yes, I get to be home to see my kids to /from school and be there for my youngest which is wonderful! My youngest sat in her bouncy seat in my classroom watching me teach my students when she was a baby and I don't have the dreaded mom guilt of my kids going to a sitter because I have to work. But because I work from home and have usually more kids than there are car seats (unless you have one of those "church vans" and commercial auto insurance-which I do not), you cannot go anywhere. This means that you better hope your children's extracurricular activities take place after working hours, the weekends, around your spouse's work schedule or that your kids' best friends are doing the same thing and their parents are willing to give your kids a ride, otherwise you have to tell your children again that they can't participate because of schedule conflicts.
3. I am constantly cleaning my house but you can NOT tell... When I worked out of the home, I thought to myself that if I stayed home my house would stay spotless. When I started staying home I realized my house was really clean before as no one was home during the day to mess it up. But when you stay home and provide childcare/preschool, you not only have your family there but you have up to 10 other children in and out. SAHM think just there kids can leave a trail of destruction- HA! Try having 10 kids running around on top of your own brood making just as much of a mess if not more because many of those kids apparently don't have the same expectations put upon them at their homes as you put upon your children and it shows. I could have my whole house vacuumed and mopped at 6 a.m. and by 10:30 a.m. you'd think I never clean my floors. I run my dish washer 2-3 times a day. Not only am I cleaning up all my students' messes but I am still trying to keep up with just my regular household chores- IT NEVER ENDS!!!!
4. Socializing is a pain in the ass. Because of my hectic schedule, my socializing is limited to my family, social media and a few close friends who never actually expect me to go out except on a rare occasion and are totally fine with stopping by for a cup of coffee while its nap time. This is why I am probably so chatty with parents picking up/dropping off their kids as I don't get much adult interaction other than chatting with my assistant or husband when he is home. I am just always working... Plus when I do get to go out and socialize and meet new people and they find out what I do for a living, and especially if they have kids who may be old enough to attend my class, I feel like I am constantly under a microscope and can't relax. Care providers and teachers are given such scrutiny because society expects us to be perfect model citizens since we tend to children we are limited in relaxing and just being ourselves. If I am at a friend's casual get together on a weekend and I want to relax and have a drink or I slip the f-bomb while having a conversation with other adults- I am instantly deemed unfit to care for children in some parents' eyes and frankly, I think that's bullshit.
5. To closely follow up with socializing- birthdays... My free time is just that. Mine. I will fight for it to stay that way with tooth and nail. I work all day and am expected to keep up with everything else like a SAHM so yes I am available to help my kids in the afternoon when they get home from school with their homework, all while I play games of Simon Says or Musical Chairs with preschoolers. But my hours off the work-clock are limited so I am spending it having dinner with my family, trying to catch up on chores (laundry mountain in the hall outside of my kids' bedrooms will eventually be nonexistent), running errands and if I am lucky, having down time to do something fun with my family, have a date night or just be a couch potato. So when my kids get birthday invitations and I have never heard of the kid in any conversation between me and my child, the invite goes in the garbage (and yes, I make sure to know who my kids' friends are). Or if one of my students invites me and my kids to their birthday party, which is common as my youngest is now 3 so she is the same age as many of my students, I often don't go. It's not to be mean but I spend more conscious hours with many of these students than their own parents and honestly, I just need a break from them. Usually at birthdays, I get roped into supervising the children attending as I am introduced around as "the day care lady" or "preschool teacher" as it's expected, for some reason I am unaware of, that I wouldn't mind babysitting the kids at the party often by myself or with another parent who seems to have no interest in having a conversation with me while all the other parents talk and hangout. I want to hang out too.... It's not that I don't like the kid or their parents (not going to lie as it has been that on the extremely rare occasion- anyone who has ever been around someone else's children can agree some kids are just brats), but majority of the time, I just want to spend one on one time with my own kids without someone else's kid up my butt too.
So there are a few tidbits to add in addition to the both the SAHM and Working mom's lists which in-home day care/preschool providers get to claim too as to why their work/life is harder...
Part of playing an active role in the community to help with networking for my business, I am a member of multiple local "mommy" groups. Most of these groups exist solely on social networking sites, some actually do have meet-ups, moms' night ins and schedule play dates where members are invited to someone's house or a local park so the moms can hang out while their little ones play... I have never personally been able to make it to one of these "play dates" but I imagine them to be much like one of the scenarios in "The Three-Martini Playdate" by Christie Mellor, a book I found in a random kitchen drawer in my house when I moved in, obviously left behind by the previous owners who I imagine to be really cool people based off their reading material (hilarious book by the way).... but back to subject... I don't ever get to go as they are always scheduled about mid morning on a week day, which is about the time I am serving up morning snack to 10 pint sized preschoolers. I imagine a bunch of stay at home moms gossiping about other moms, sharing couponing and parenting secrets, arguing breast vs bottle, etc... All while their kids go insane on the playground playing together under poor supervision as the moms are too busy enjoying being out of the house for a change and getting to interact with someone who cares about adult issues instead of which princess or super hero is better than the other.
Then there are the moms' nights and I have been to a few of those as they are normally scheduled on Friday or Saturday evenings after working hours. These usually consist of no kids or just the few that live in the house with the mom who is hosting. These, I am guessing as I have never been to the other, consist of WAY fewer moms, just a tiny group, as the majority of the moms invited are either too busy trying to juggle dinner & bedtimes after they get home from work or are just too exhausted from working that they'd rather curl up in front of the TV instead of going anywhere (this I know from experience). These moms usually drink and laugh as though they don't have responsibilities awaiting them once they get home because this is one of the only times in months they've gotten out of the house on personal time kid-free.
Within each of these two groups I rarely ever meet moms who work full time at home. There are the occasional SAHMs who sell make-up, candles or jewelry via companies like Scentsy, Avon, etc... part time on the side. Which I think is great and all, but its EXTREMELY rare for me to meet ones who truly work full time. If someone looked at my time logs, I can easily put in 60 hrs a week and that is not counting any after hours work I do with paperwork, cleaning, prepping, advertising and planning out my class's curriculum. It takes a lot of work to run your own business full time. But here is the part that only working SAHMs get to boast about. Not only do we work to bring in income and we get to have that whole experience of working a job (one that produces a pay check) but we get to do it all while doing all of the other work, and yes it IS work, that SAHMs do too. And just because I feel like being a pompous ass at the moment, working SAHMs who do child care/preschool have it harder than a huge majority of moms out there. And I am going to tell you why...
1. Not only are we juggling our 40-75 hrs a week we spend on the work clock, we are also running the household and juggling our own kids' schedules, spouse's schedules and IF we are lucky, we get that hour of me time to watch our favorite show once a week... that we have to watch online... after it aired.... after the chores are done.... after the kids are in bed.... sometime around midnight when we should be using that hour to sleep as we have to start over again in a few hours....
2. Yes, I get to be home to see my kids to /from school and be there for my youngest which is wonderful! My youngest sat in her bouncy seat in my classroom watching me teach my students when she was a baby and I don't have the dreaded mom guilt of my kids going to a sitter because I have to work. But because I work from home and have usually more kids than there are car seats (unless you have one of those "church vans" and commercial auto insurance-which I do not), you cannot go anywhere. This means that you better hope your children's extracurricular activities take place after working hours, the weekends, around your spouse's work schedule or that your kids' best friends are doing the same thing and their parents are willing to give your kids a ride, otherwise you have to tell your children again that they can't participate because of schedule conflicts.
3. I am constantly cleaning my house but you can NOT tell... When I worked out of the home, I thought to myself that if I stayed home my house would stay spotless. When I started staying home I realized my house was really clean before as no one was home during the day to mess it up. But when you stay home and provide childcare/preschool, you not only have your family there but you have up to 10 other children in and out. SAHM think just there kids can leave a trail of destruction- HA! Try having 10 kids running around on top of your own brood making just as much of a mess if not more because many of those kids apparently don't have the same expectations put upon them at their homes as you put upon your children and it shows. I could have my whole house vacuumed and mopped at 6 a.m. and by 10:30 a.m. you'd think I never clean my floors. I run my dish washer 2-3 times a day. Not only am I cleaning up all my students' messes but I am still trying to keep up with just my regular household chores- IT NEVER ENDS!!!!
4. Socializing is a pain in the ass. Because of my hectic schedule, my socializing is limited to my family, social media and a few close friends who never actually expect me to go out except on a rare occasion and are totally fine with stopping by for a cup of coffee while its nap time. This is why I am probably so chatty with parents picking up/dropping off their kids as I don't get much adult interaction other than chatting with my assistant or husband when he is home. I am just always working... Plus when I do get to go out and socialize and meet new people and they find out what I do for a living, and especially if they have kids who may be old enough to attend my class, I feel like I am constantly under a microscope and can't relax. Care providers and teachers are given such scrutiny because society expects us to be perfect model citizens since we tend to children we are limited in relaxing and just being ourselves. If I am at a friend's casual get together on a weekend and I want to relax and have a drink or I slip the f-bomb while having a conversation with other adults- I am instantly deemed unfit to care for children in some parents' eyes and frankly, I think that's bullshit.
5. To closely follow up with socializing- birthdays... My free time is just that. Mine. I will fight for it to stay that way with tooth and nail. I work all day and am expected to keep up with everything else like a SAHM so yes I am available to help my kids in the afternoon when they get home from school with their homework, all while I play games of Simon Says or Musical Chairs with preschoolers. But my hours off the work-clock are limited so I am spending it having dinner with my family, trying to catch up on chores (laundry mountain in the hall outside of my kids' bedrooms will eventually be nonexistent), running errands and if I am lucky, having down time to do something fun with my family, have a date night or just be a couch potato. So when my kids get birthday invitations and I have never heard of the kid in any conversation between me and my child, the invite goes in the garbage (and yes, I make sure to know who my kids' friends are). Or if one of my students invites me and my kids to their birthday party, which is common as my youngest is now 3 so she is the same age as many of my students, I often don't go. It's not to be mean but I spend more conscious hours with many of these students than their own parents and honestly, I just need a break from them. Usually at birthdays, I get roped into supervising the children attending as I am introduced around as "the day care lady" or "preschool teacher" as it's expected, for some reason I am unaware of, that I wouldn't mind babysitting the kids at the party often by myself or with another parent who seems to have no interest in having a conversation with me while all the other parents talk and hangout. I want to hang out too.... It's not that I don't like the kid or their parents (not going to lie as it has been that on the extremely rare occasion- anyone who has ever been around someone else's children can agree some kids are just brats), but majority of the time, I just want to spend one on one time with my own kids without someone else's kid up my butt too.
Comments