stay-at-home-moms (sahm) everywhere take a lot of flak for their decision to stay at home and raise their kids. why? because internet. anyone with the ability to tap keys and form a (mildly) coherent sentence can share their opinion. the more polarizing the better.
i usually don’t pay much mind but a recent xojane article that went viral really irked me. a one-time sahm stated, in her unpopular opinion, that being a sahm is not a job. honestly, i was so pissed i 1) had to stop reading or else i would have punched my laptop screen 2) won’t even dignify the article by adding to their clicks, so i’m not going to link to it. she called it a hobby. a fucking hobby. are you kidding me??
whatever, i get it. haters gon’ hate. but why you gotta drag me down though, aren’t we all supposed to be in this together? this reproach by bluntmoms.com sums my feelings up more succinctly than i can (at 12 am during a thunderstorm after fighting a squirming baby to sleep for an hour and a half).
you can apply twisted logic to anything. this is the reality of it.
deciding to be parents may be a personal choice, but if we didn’t have children, the human race wouldn’t survive. so… i guess i’m selfish but you can thank me for contributing to the continuation of the species. i’m altruistic, goddamnit. my life is for her. stay at home or not, everything i do, i do so that she can have / be better. in turn, she doesn’t something good for the world. it’s win-win. duh.
just because you’ve wanted and yearned for them your whole life doesn’t make the decision to stay home a hobby. you can’t toss a kid out if you do something wrong like you might a messed up model plane or burnt tray of muffins. there’s a hell of a lot more pressure from family, friends, and society in general to get this kid right the first time around.
the world doesn’t move to make room for the sahm, we have to squeeze our strange new selves into it, all while trying to keep a smile on our face because society says motherhood is a gift (and pointing the “you asked for it” finger) and we have to be grateful for every motherloving minute of it or else we’re the worst people on earth.
yes, i consider myself privileged because i get to stay home and watch her grow up. i’ll stay at home with the next one too. granted i try to bring in some money through freelance work, but we struggle and sacrifice for the “luxury” of me staying home. not every woman is lucky enough to get to do this, and not every woman wants to – which is fair. i can’t fathom leaving her upbringing to a stranger. think of all the “firsts” i would miss…
if we (in general) spent as much time parenting our children as we did writing insultingly high-brow blog posts bemoaning semantics and serving up backhanded compliments in the guise of honesty, the world would be a much better place.