The REALITY Of Being A STAY-AT-HOME Mom in 2024.
Episode Stats
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Summary
Abby talks about why it s so hard to be a stay-at-home mom in the modern day, and the practical problems that come with being a mom in today's society. She also talks about the benefits of homeschooling vs. going to work.
Transcript
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Let's talk about stay-at-home mom life and why it's gotten so hard.
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If you are new to my channel, my name is Abby and here we talk about common sense commentary,
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where I break down things that I think are obvious and clear but have somehow become
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controversial in today's day and age. So for today, I want to talk about being a stay-at-home
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mom and how it has become so difficult, why it's so hard nowadays to embrace this role.
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For a whole host of reasons, I could break this down in a ton of different videos and I probably
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will, but I kind of want to start off here, which is how did we get here? How did it become so kind
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of off the beaten track to be a stay-at-home mom for a lot of women and how it feels so hard? Now
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when I say it's hard to be a stay-at-home mom, I don't actually mean that the day-to-day of being
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a stay-at-home mom is hard, although I think that it can be depending on your situation,
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but I'm talking about the practical problems with being a stay-at-home mom in the modern day.
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So I'm really excited to hop into today's video. As a stay-at-home mom myself and as someone who
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never thought I would be a stay-at-home mom, I think it's really important to break this down
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and to have a really good conversation about it because I know that there are times that I have
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felt isolated. I'm sure if you are a stay-at-home mom, unless you are in a community of other stay-at-home
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moms, you probably feel isolated too. So let's just hop right into today's video.
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The concept of the nuclear family is one that I think has become really confusing for a lot of
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people. Many people think that the nuclear family is a positive term because it means a family with
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a mother and a father and children, but what it actually means is a family divested from the rest
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of the extended family. And so the concept of the nuclear family, which kind of came around in the
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1950s, was the idea of like a husband and a wife moving away from their families, raising their
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kids on their own without any extra support. Well, as a stay-at-home mom, this is a really big problem,
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right? Because you don't have extended familial support. You don't have grandmothers and aunts coming
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over and helping. And if your kids go to school, then what is your job? You can take care of the
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household and see your children in the morning and the evening, but for the most part, you don't really
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mother feel productive. And I think that's one of the issues with the stay-at-home mom culture we
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have today, which is women were put in a position when the nuclear family arose of being told to take
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care of the family on their own. The husband would go to work. There was no other women around.
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They would have to find a community of other women who are also stay-at-home moms. But over time,
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as Betty Friedan released The Feminine Mystique, you had women going out of the homes. And so you
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had not only women divested from their families and their support systems, now you had the women
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that they may have hung out with in an afternoon with their kids on the block, everybody hanging
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out together. Half of those women, 75% of those women, are now going off to work as well. So the
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stay-at-home mom is even more secluded, even more isolated, because she doesn't have other stay-at-home
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moms to spend her time with. Without help, without support, and completely lonely, being a stay-at-home
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mom becomes a really unattractive proposition. The idea of, okay, you're doing this on your own. You're
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not going to have any help. You're not going to have any friends. And on top of that, once your kids
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start school, you're going to have nothing to do all day, because your role as a mom is really just
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limited to the morning and the evening. And the rest of the day, okay, you're taking care of chores. Now,
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don't get me wrong, that can take a while, especially with a big family, but you're not in
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it with your kids all day, and you're doing it alone, and you're home by yourself. I think that
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makes being a stay-at-home mom sound really difficult and doesn't give you the same sense of
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importance that it would if you had a lot of other women doing the same thing, and if you had your
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kids at home with you, homeschooling. Now, am I saying that everyone needs to homeschool their kids?
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No. I would say almost everyone I know doesn't homeschool, but I think there is an element of
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homeschooling and having your children at home with you that gives a stay-at-home mom a sense of
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purpose. The truth is we weren't meant to mother in a vacuum, and I think that's what has made
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being a stay-at-home mom so hard in our modern culture, is that women are completely divested
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of all of the socialization that makes being a mother fun. We don't have our own mothers at home
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because maybe they're still working. We don't have our sisters coming over because they're working.
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We don't have our neighbors coming over because they're working. Mostly the women around you who
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would also be in it with you, like in the trenches of motherhood with you, are working now. So you
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have a lot of stay-at-home moms feeling really lonely. I know that I've felt that for sure. And I
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want to note before I proceed that the term stay-at-home mom is also misleading because the truth is that
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you don't have to stay in your house. Like I know for me, I go out and about all the time with my
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kids. I spend not very much time home at all, and that helps because then I run into other moms when
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we go to the park or mommy and me classes. But even with that, I would say that when I go to the park,
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I would say about 75% of the kids there are with nannies. So I'm happy to hang out with their nannies.
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They're wonderful women, and we have a good chat, but I'm not seeing other stay-at-home moms.
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One of the things about being a stay-at-home mom that I think is tricky, and I think it would be
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tricky, is if you didn't start off being a stay-at-home mom. I've been thinking a lot about
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lately kind of how so many things have to start from the beginning to make sense and to make life
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easier. If you've ever seen someone try to discipline their 12-year-old child and they didn't
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really implement discipline when they were younger or they didn't have kind of rules in place for that
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child, then it's going to be a lot harder to discipline them when they're 12 than if you have
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always had systems in place. And when they are now 12 and doing something disrespectful,
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you can kind of refer to how they've been raised to get them to do the right thing. I think the same
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idea principle applies when it comes to being a stay-at-home mom. I was thinking about this,
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that if you start being a stay-at-home mom, start off being a stay-at-home mom, like I did,
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then for me, I've never felt like being a stay-at-home mom is boring. I mean, yes, there are
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times, right? Small here and there times. But I feel like there are so many women that I talk to
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who did not stay at home, who worked, who when I say I'm home with my kids or that I'm interested
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in homeschooling are like, oh, I could never spend all day with my kids. And I get it because if I
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didn't do this from the beginning and didn't know what the day-to-day looks like and didn't know kind of
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how things go, I might be bored and I might be like, what do I do with my kid? What do I,
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what am I supposed to do with them all day? But if you've never known anything else, then this is
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just what you do. And I think that's one aspect of modern female culture that puts women at a
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disadvantage because if they want to stay at home with their kids, they have this fear of like,
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I don't know what I would do with them. And there is so much to do with your kids, but if you've never
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done it, then it's a lot more difficult. It's a lot more intimidating. One of the really complicated
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elements of this whole conversation is that the more women work, the more women will work because
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there's no community. If every mom was home with their kids, you would have a more communal living
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situation where people would spend time at each other's houses, people would cook together, people
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would clean together. I mean, that's what we envision when we think of like the village, right? The village of
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mothers who are all coming to help you. But as women start to go out of the home and start to work
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outside of the home full time, then what ends up happening is women who would have considered being
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stay at home moms are now pressured into going back to work just because they want that social
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aspect of their lives. I know that I felt that. I felt like, hey, maybe I should be going to work
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because my friends go to work. And then maybe if I was at work, I would have more friends and I would
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see people more often. And that would be good for me because I don't have a lot of stay-at-home
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mom friends in my neighborhood. So I don't have somebody who can just pop over every afternoon
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and chat while our kids play. We have some of that, but not a ton of it. And so I think there's a push
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to go out of the home because other women are out of the home, as opposed to if more women were
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staying at home, then you wouldn't need to go to work to be social. As well, as more mothers work,
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the less present they can be as grandmothers, which their daughters need. So if you are working
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into your mid-60s, into your 70s, you're not going to be a very present grandmother and your daughter
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may need you. And that's an interesting thing too, because now we're, again, as women work,
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we're removing the support systems that we get from each other. And I think that's a really sad reality
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is that we're losing support from the women who should be our support systems as moms because we're all
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really pressured to work. Unless you have to, right? Unless you need to get food on the table.
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Now there is a different discussion to be had here of what does it mean need to work? I think that we
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are accustomed to a certain level of living. And so a lot of women will say that they need to work
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to maintain that level of living when scaling back is an option. But if you legitimately need to work
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to get food on the table, then that is of course the priority. The last thing I think that makes being a
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stay-at-home mom so hard in today's day and age is just that it has so little honor. I know it's,
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you know, a big trend on reels, on TikTok, is this idea that women are complaining about being at home
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like, oh my kids did this and did that and like I'm waiting for my husband to get home because my
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kids are so hard and my days are so hard. And I remember when I was watching that content, I was
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sort of starting to fall into that thought process and it was making me really like sad and down.
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And I had to kind of sit down with myself and be like, hey, why are you doing this? Because there
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are days, many days, where being a stay-at-home mom is so fun. Like it's not always easy, but there are
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times that it is easy and there are times that it is fun. So why do I feel like I have to complain
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about it all the time? And I realized that there was a part of me that felt like I needed to complain
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to prove that it was a real job. That if I wanted people to take seriously, that being a stay-at-home
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mom is not just mooching off your husband, I needed to complain to show that it was that difficult.
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And that's a real mistake. And I think that's a productivity issue that we have, you know, in our
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culture, honestly, is that like to show that you work hard, you have to complain a lot as opposed to
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saying, well, I love my job and I don't have to work that hard and that I can still be absolutely
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successful without it being so hard I have to complain about it. The same thing is true of
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motherhood, that I don't have to complain to prove that being a mom is a worthwhile effort and use of
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my time. I can just say that being a mother is fun and easy and lovely sometimes. And other days,
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it's really difficult and it's a lot and I'm tired. And those two things can coexist and I don't have to
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generally be complaining and looking at it through a negative perspective, a negative lens.
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So with all of that in mind about stay at home mom culture in today's day and age,
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how can we fix it? Number one, and I know that some of these are going to be unpopular. Okay,
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so let's get that out there. But number one is encourage moms to stay home. Now, I'm not saying
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that every mom can, but I think that if you can, we should be encouraging women to stay home with
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their kids because then their kids have access to mom, especially in those first three years,
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which need to be prioritized. And they have access to each other and the support that that
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can create. And especially as we build communities and live in communities, living closer to family,
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living closer to other stay at home moms, all of that makes being a stay at home mom a lot more
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feasible and a lot more doable. Look, I know that the first three months after I had my second son,
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I would not have been able to do what I did if my mom and my mother-in-law had not been there for me.
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I had my 20 month old at home with me and I had my newborn. And those first three months,
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you cannot do alone. I don't know what women do if they have both children at home. I know most women
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put their older child in daycare, so they don't even have to deal with that question.
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By moving closer to family, by being in a community that had a meal train for me for a few weeks,
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that all made such a big difference to me being able to continue being a stay at home mom with both
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children at home. Finding a real support system as a stay at home mom is just non-negotiable. And I
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think that's what would make the stay at home mom movement grow more is if we felt like we had the
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village we need. And that's why when people say, you know, there was that joke for a while, like,
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where's my village after you have a baby? Where is my village? They always say it takes a village to
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raise a child. Where's my village? You have to put those things in place. And maybe that's not only
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true of individuals of like moving near family or moving near friends. Maybe it's true as a society.
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Maybe as a society, we need to create villages by encouraging women to support other women by being
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there, by being available. And if those women are at work nine to five, they're not available. If your mom
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is at work nine to five, she isn't available. And from the most practical perspective, as a stay at home
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mom currently living in the day and age that we are, creating schedules, setting up playdates, going out and
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about and not being a stay at home mom sequestered by yourself without friends, but being a really
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sociable, fun, present mom out and about, that's what's going to make being a stay at home mom a lot
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more fun. So that is how we got here. These are my thoughts about how we can maybe address this stuff
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nowadays. And I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Make sure to say what you're
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thinking. I know that being a stay at home mom in today's day and age isn't always easy because of
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the nuclear family and because we are removed from those support systems. But do you think that
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there's any way that we can, we can fix that? I would also love if you watched till the very end
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of today's video for you to leave a, just a face emoji, like your most used face emoji, whether that
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be the like smiling face, the one with hearts. I want to see which one do you use the most? Because I
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think mine is the one with the little hearts around the face. Thank you so much for watching.