Ladies, Are We REALLY Putting Our Children FIRST？ ⧸⧸ Stay-At-Home Mom Shares Her Thoughts...
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
155.01395
Summary
In this episode, I talk about the importance of putting your child first and why you should be a stay-at-home mom if you re a woman in the workplace. I also discuss the benefits of being a mom and why it s better to stay at home with your kids.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello Classic Crew and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about
00:00:11.360
If you are new to my channel, here we talk about classic living and traditional values
00:00:15.200
and I would love if you would consider subscribing and hitting that notification bell.
00:00:18.760
If you want access to a ton of exclusive content including my book club, my AV club,
00:00:23.540
my weekly podcast, as well as a monthly Zoom girl chat, make sure to head over to classicallyabby.substack.com.
00:00:32.300
Now a series I've been doing on my channel for a little while is kind of like a motherhood chat
00:00:37.640
and I started doing these when I was pregnant and now I'm doing them as a mama.
00:00:43.660
And it's really a place for me to kind of share my thoughts, share my feelings as I'm going through
00:00:49.860
Now I'm really not trying to change anybody's mind here, I just want to talk about my thoughts
00:00:55.680
and feelings as I'm navigating life, as I'm navigating motherhood, as I'm navigating being
00:01:03.240
And I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments too.
00:01:05.780
See if anybody feels what I feel or thinks what I've been thinking or even if you disagree,
00:01:12.280
I would love if you would consider doing it in a more respectful way despite the fact that
00:01:17.040
what I'm talking about today may not be super popular.
00:01:19.140
So I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, but let's get into today's video.
00:01:24.320
So I have been thinking a lot of things going through motherhood.
00:01:33.620
He'll be six months old in just a couple of days.
00:01:40.820
My thoughts and feelings about motherhood have changed so much.
00:01:45.160
And what keeps going through my head is, put your child first.
00:01:52.400
So something that I've been thinking a lot about is women's place in the workplace and
00:02:02.100
I used to feel like, oh, if you choose to work, you choose to work.
00:02:08.020
And if you choose to go be a stay-at-home mom, be a stay-at-home mom, do what works for you.
00:02:14.620
But ever since becoming a mom, I have really started to question that.
00:02:20.220
I've started to question why we put work ahead of motherhood.
00:02:33.060
And I could not justify being a girl boss instead of being at home with him.
00:02:44.680
One thing I want to interrupt myself to say is, not only does he benefit from me being
00:02:58.500
I think that I'm in a position where I can say that, where I can feel it, where I can express
00:03:06.320
But I don't think that it's just my personality.
00:03:08.760
I think women love raising their kiddos and being home and enjoying them.
00:03:18.140
But we live in a society where if you put being a stay-at-home mom ahead of pursuing a
00:03:28.100
career, you're not living up to your potential, which I hate.
00:03:37.380
I hate that your potential can only be lived up to through a job, through a career, through
00:03:44.480
a position in a workplace, as opposed to the one job that you are completely irreplaceable
00:03:54.640
I don't know that I think that women being in the workplace is more important or even
00:04:02.300
as important as them being at home with their kids.
00:04:05.700
And that is a really unpopular opinion in today's day and age, saying that I think that
00:04:22.500
There's a reason that God allowed us to feed our children through our bodies.
00:04:27.380
Now, that's not to say if you're in a position where breastfeeding didn't work out for you,
00:04:31.200
you're any less of a woman, not talking about that.
00:04:33.420
But biologically, women were built to feed their children, not through a bottle, none
00:04:42.240
And we were also built to feed them regularly, which is why if you stop pumping or if you
00:04:51.380
If you're separated from your baby for too long, your supply goes down.
00:04:55.120
I think we were biologically built to be around our kids when they need us.
00:05:02.960
And we are really not meant to spend those formative early years away from our kids.
00:05:24.080
I've been feeling really alone since I've started having these thoughts.
00:05:32.120
I can't say what I think, which is that women are better off with their kids than going out
00:05:41.500
And I don't think anybody will say it because we're so trained to believe that women have
00:05:52.800
I mean, the fact of the matter is that if you're in a family where both parents need
00:05:57.680
to work to support that family, that is not what I'm talking about here, right?
00:06:01.320
Because that is a situation where your responsibility is to keep your family clothed and fed.
00:06:06.280
And if that means that mom goes to work and dad goes to work, that's what you do.
00:06:09.980
But I'm talking about the privilege that we live in of women who want to pursue their careers
00:06:17.960
as girl bosses as opposed to stay at home with their kids.
00:06:28.160
Or have mom do a job that earns a little bit on the side, but can be done in flexible hours
00:06:35.140
and doesn't require that the kiddo needs to go to daycare or something like that.
00:06:45.080
I think that motherhood is something that we can be good at, we can research.
00:06:52.620
So much of motherhood is taught to be something we wing, like you're winging it,
00:06:58.720
instead of something you can hone as a craft, like how to help your child developmentally
00:07:07.060
reach their milestones, how to give them the right foods, how to prevent them from becoming
00:07:13.260
Like, those are all things we can research and learn as opposed to just winging.
00:07:21.300
And on top of that, we can treat homemaking as a craft.
00:07:24.300
That is a totally lost art and one that I'm constantly trying to teach myself.
00:07:29.000
When I think of homemaking as a craft, as something I could get really good at,
00:07:32.840
it's so exciting to me as opposed to thinking of all of the things that I could do at home as chores.
00:07:41.800
If I could hire someone else to do it, I would.
00:07:44.500
As opposed to something I could hone and learn how to do and be really fantastic at.
00:07:49.340
That's where I could funnel my potential, is being a good mom, being a good wife,
00:08:06.360
but it only is ever done in the context of my baby or my husband not needing me in that moment.
00:08:18.780
And by blessed, I mean we made the choice to live near family
00:08:24.080
The other part of this is that staying with your kids
00:08:26.780
and helping them grow and raising them and being a homemaker,
00:08:29.740
that can be lonely if you aren't set up for it.
00:08:33.860
If you aren't in a community, if you aren't close to family.
00:08:36.320
And the reason that happens is because we encourage people to go and leave home
00:08:40.580
and then you get these nuclear families in the negative sense
00:08:45.060
where everyone is so atomic that they don't have the support that they need
00:08:48.960
of their extended family and motherhood is not supposed to be done in a vacuum.
00:08:53.080
If all women were homemakers, if all women stayed at home
00:08:57.260
and we all lived in communities that supported us,
00:08:59.480
if our families were near us, it wouldn't be lonely.
00:09:03.520
We would all hang out and hang and teach our children as a group.
00:09:06.700
A lot of these thoughts came out of reading Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
00:09:17.000
If you haven't read his book, you should check it out.
00:09:19.060
But Expressive Individualism is the idea that you need to know yourself internally,
00:09:25.360
like your definition of self is an internal one
00:09:28.960
as opposed to contextualized by who you are in the context of others,
00:09:35.100
who you are as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, as a friend, in society,
00:09:39.780
which is a much more important way to view yourself.
00:09:50.420
We are only ourselves in the context of others.
00:09:52.660
And so when we tell people to go out and explore themselves, find themselves,
00:10:00.400
they leave home and they leave that context of others.
00:10:12.240
but then they get slowly more lonely and separated from the people who could help.
00:10:16.120
I just think that motherhood is the best gift that God has given women
00:10:22.320
that women would love it if they knew they could,
00:10:26.840
that children would benefit if their mothers treated it like something that was important
00:10:32.760
as opposed to something they did because they wanted to on a whim,
00:10:36.960
that families would benefit from mothers taking care of the home with love and care
00:10:44.440
and not treating it like they were constantly having to do chores.
00:10:57.080
And when kids are old enough where they're in school
00:11:00.560
or when you have a few hours where the kids are asleep,
00:11:05.180
you could do the work that you want to do outside of that.
00:11:12.120
it's not the only thing that makes you live up to your potential.
00:11:20.480
I'd really like to know your thoughts on all this.
00:11:23.220
I'd like to hear because I'm working through it myself.
00:11:39.220
Please subscribe and hit that notification bell
00:11:41.320
and make sure to head over to classicallyabby.substack.com.
00:11:45.220
And if you'd like to follow me on social media,
00:11:47.260
it's at Classically Abbey absolutely everywhere.