Tag Archives: Feminism

The Stay-at-Home Feminist

Image from Strawberry Mohawk

Growing up, I thought that being a stay at home mom meant you weren’t a feminist. It meant that you were suppressed. When I heard about the fight for women’s rights in our country, I was outraged. I became more outraged as I heard more about women earning less and getting less promotions. I was convinced I would rise above all that. I would put family last on my long list of things I wanted to accomplish. I would work outside of the home when I had kids long after my career was in place. I would break the barriers. Life obviously had other plans for me.

I think that a lot of people have that same opinion–that stay at home is somehow anti-women’s rights. Every once and a while, I come across a Facebook post from one of my friends saying they feel “so 50′s housewife” because they cleaned the house and had dinner on the table when their husband got home.

We’re told as we grow that we can one day have it all. We can have a career and a family and everything will be happy and hunky-dory. We will be fulfilled from our careers and happy from our children. We can be executives that work 60 hours a week and come home to happy kids and a clean home and even volunteer on the weekends. We’re never told that this is the best case scenario. That if you’re working 60 hours a week, it’s hard to find time to see your children, let alone clean your house or get in some “me” time. I remember being thoroughly insulted when a representative from some school came into my medical anatomy and terminology class in high school and told me that I could possibly be an OBGYN because I wouldn’t actually be into my career until I was 33 and how would I possibly have kids?

Of course I don’t speak from experience, but based on what I’ve heard from other moms, working away from home isn’t exactly a piece of cake. You have all of your deadlines and expectations at work, then you come home to kids who haven’t seen you all day and so they want your attention and a house that needs cleaning. Something’s gotta give.

Back to feminism.

Feminism is about choice. There were days when every woman, by default, had to do what I am doing right now. Staying at home to take care of the kids and clean the house and feed the husband. Those of us who wanted something different weren’t given the option. All of the leaps and bounds we’ve made are so that women can have that option. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to work outside of the home. Just as there is nothing wrong with wanting to work inside of the home.

I am lucky to have the choice to work outside of the home, but I’m not working against the cause when I choose to stay at home. I am not somehow a lesser woman. I can still be fulfilled. It is a feminist choice to stay at home, because it is a choice that I am allowed to make.

Staying at Home in a Two Income World

I choose to be the one that raises my daughter. Don’t get me wrong—working moms are not bad people. As I’ve said many times before, you choose what’s right for your family, I choose what’s right for mine. In this particular case, staying at home with my Peanut is what’s right for me. I’m all for working outside of the home and plan on doing it one day when she doesn’t need me so much. My problem is the fact that I’m practically forced into working just to survive.

My husband and I are looking into buying a house. We’ve been living in my in-law’s basement for over a year and a half now and while I really struck it rich when it comes to the in-law lottery, you can only live with people for so long before things start to go downhill. We need our own place and I think that’s a reasonable thing to ask.

Originally we were planning on renting, but a local money fair turned us to the idea that it may be better to buy a home even if we only live in it five or so years before selling it. There are tax benefits and of course the equity and honestly the idea of calling something so immense ours really strikes my fancy. So we dived in and started the house search.

We searched much lower than what we were approved for (well actually, what my husband was approved for because the bank man decided that there wasn’t a benefit of putting a non-working spouse on the application… grumble grumble) and we put an offer on a house yesterday. Only after we did the offer did we actually sit down and work out our new budget with the house payment and utilities in there.

Oh my.

As a pretense, my psychologist said that what we went through was a pretty common thing called “sticker shock” where you say “ZOMG I’m buying a house I can’t do this!!!” Now we’re thinking that we can probably figure things out, but it’ll be tough for a while.

Anywho, we did our budget and were actually in the deficit with buying a house and barely making ends meat if we rented instead. Of course we’re paying a lot less for living space at the moment, but really that much less? How does this work out? How can we afford a house? Do I have to get a job? I don’t want to be away from my Peanut!

Of course we’re budgeting as much as we can and we’re going to be spending less on things like going out to eat, but really I think we’ll pull through this. I’ll continue to go to school (which is already too much time away from Peanut IMO) and I don’t think I’ll have to get a job. We’ll have to decrease our food bills, but I won’t do it by buying crappy, unhealthy food. I’ll buy things in bulk and make things from whole foods which I’ve already been doing. We’ll figure this out, but why do we have to fight so hard just because I want to be the one to raise our children?

I’m all for feminism, but it’s backfired for the women who don’t want to work outside of the home. Since all the women went out the work, prices of things inflated accordingly and now it’s impossible to survive on one income. How is this fair? Why do I get punished because I want to be there for my Peanut’s milestones? Why do I get punished for being the one to teach my daughter the ways of life rather than some stranger?

Simple answer: life isn’t fair.

Just a Stay at Home Mom

We’ve all heard the story of the woman who is wasting her education being just a stay at home mom. I can’t tell you how offended I feel when people say I’m just a stay at home mom. I don’t understand the purpose of that word. Why do people feel the need to downgrade what I do? Yet even when I feel this way, I find myself slipping at calling someone just a stay at home mom. Being a stay at home mom is so much more difficult than people realize, but I already make noise about that particular subject too often. I want to examine where this word just comes from.

When people think of the word feminism, they likely think of women who want to be treated like men. There are many stereotypes of the woman with short hair who wants to work in manual labor or be in the army. What you don’t probably realize is that feminism is actually about choice. Once upon a time, women couldn’t get an education. Women couldn’t work outside the home. The only option for women was to stay home and take care of the children and the home. Feminism came about because some women wanted to do more. Emphasis on some.

Don’t get me wrong, I do want to work outside of my home one day. I also want to be the one to raise my children. I never want to look back and regret that I was working instead of watching and helping my children grow. Being a mother and wife is my first career. The majority of people change their occupation multiple times throughout their lives. This is just my first occupation–and the most important of them all.

Back to feminism. While there were women out fighting for the right to chose what they do with their lives, there were women in the background that were happy with staying at home. Not to say that they didn’t want a choice–it’s just that if they were given the choice, they would still chose to stay home. The purpose of feminism is having the choice.

In our society, young girls are brought up being told that they can be anything. You could be a doctor! You could be a lawyer! You could be The President! So what do you want to be? How often do you hear a little girl say “I want to be a mommy!”? Almost all little girls do, but they don’t see it as a career choice. They just assume that they’ll be a mommy and have a career. No one thinks of being a mother as a career. What other hobby do you do that takes your whole heart, requires your full attention 24 hours a day, and make you want to pull your hair out? If anything, it sounds like a job to me.

So please, try to make an effort to stop saying just a stay at home mom. Being a stay at home mom is so much more than sitting on the couch watching TV. As for those women who are “wasting their education” being a stay at home mom, did you ever stop to think that part of parenting is being educated so that you can educate your children? Also, having a degree means you’re more likely to make educated decisions about regarding your children–which I believe is a very important part of parenting. There is nothing just about being any kind of parent–especially a stay at home mom (or dad for that matter).