I have long believed that ‘staying home’ is the wrong word to capture or accurately describe prioritizing childrearing over ‘careering.’ In a society that pushes and promotes career and financial success above all else, the decision to forgo an income and put one’s career aspirations aside, if only for a time, is perhaps one of the hardest decisions women must make. And yet, roughly one-quarter of mothers find themselves doing it.
I recently googled the definition of ‘stay’ and it became abundantly clear why the term ‘staying home’ feels so limiting and it also illuminated exactly why that path never worked for me personally, even though I tried (and failed) to make this title fit for years.
Stay (verb): to stay is to remain or wait in the same place. To not move away from or leave a situation. To stop going forward, to pause, to linger, to suspend or delay.
I am fairly certain that ‘staying’ anywhere, especially with a young kid in tow during the hunter gathering era would’ve resulted in death. In fact, movement is a fundamental aspect of life and a proven survival tool throughout history. And yet, we have chosen to define roughly 25% of American mothers in this way.
I’ll be the first to admit I am not someone who enjoys standing still or remaining in the same place, in fact, simply reading this definition is actually triggering to me. So how exactly did I end up doing it for so many years?! Why didn’t I google that definition sooner?! How did I fail to acknowledge that the path I was on was holding me back rather than propelling me forward?!
The truth is, I have always been a bit of an achiever, and at times ambitious to a fault. One of the many reasons my corporate career failed is because the introduction of kids brought an unexpected stall in my well-worn ladder climb toward the top. In the absence of moving and striving to get a leg up in my career, I quite honestly wasn’t sure who I was and this is when the cracks in my foundation formed. This is when I realized that the career I had built wasn’t built for motherhood. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work, but my work was no longer working for me. I realized that the parts of my job I loved did not align with my life as a mom and despite my best attempts I could not fit my new-mother self into my pre-kid life.
The career I had built wasn’t built for motherhood. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work, but my work was no longer working for me.
And so, with few options left and after years of trying to make it work, I quit. I did what so many of us do, I took myself off the hamster wheel, I hung up the ladder, and I tried to convince myself that all the striving and climbing wasn’t what I needed. I let go of my career, my paycheck, my ambition, my office, and my last sliver of my pre-kid identity. I didn’t exactly choose to stay home, but I guess you could say that staying home chose me by default.
A bit like fitting a square peg into a round hole, I desperately wanted to jam myself into that little square box and make it work. But as much as you can take the engine away, my drive and dedication was still there, buried but very much alive. As much as I tried to quiet my ambition and make myself fit into my new life, my desire to grow conflicted with my time staying home. Why couldn’t I embrace this chance?! Why couldn't I enjoy this time?! What was wrong with me?! Why couldn’t I just accept the monotony?!
We are sold a narrative that motherhood is selfless work and that staying home is what’s best for our kids. We are told that our careers, our independence, and our mental health are less important than our children. But my desire to be everything for my kids was quite honestly taking me further and further away from myself. I willingly stayed home for years not because it was the life I wanted but because it was the one that worked best for my family. I thought the sacrifices I was making in the name of motherhood were in their best interest and so I made it work.
I swallowed my ambition, I ignored my own longing, I quieted my desire for more, and I fought hard to remain exactly where I was. But the more I threw myself into motherhood, the more I craved my independence. The more my kids needed me, the more I longed for my own autonomy. The more I ignored myself, the more blurred the line became between them and me. And here is the thing that hurt the most, my decision to sacrifice myself and my own well-being to be more available for them meant that everyone got a piece of me, everyone but me.
The more I threw myself into motherhood, the more I craved my independence. The more my kids needed me, the more I longed for my own autonomy.
I did not yet have the self-awareness necessary to reconcile exactly what I needed, but I realized I was counting time, willing the years to fly by so that my kids would eventually need me less and I could finally focus on me more. They say motherhood is a gift, and that staying home is a privilege. To be able to witness my kids growing up before my very eyes should’ve felt special and yet all I could think about was how I could speed up time. I was waiting, I was suspended, I was exactly as the definition had said I would be, more than anything I most certainly wasn’t being me. As hard as I tried, I could not force myself to accept this identity.
It took me years of trial and error and more than a few failed attempts to finally admit to myself that the path I found myself on was not the right path for me personally. To fully understand why this path, this detour, this pause toward parenting routinely felt like failure to me, or was it that I was somehow failing my kids, either way something was off and my nagging feelings wouldn’t stop.
Carl Jung once said, “the greatest burden a child can bear is the unlived life of a parent.” Was it possible that this is why I couldn’t quite accept ‘staying home,’ was there more life inside of me that I needed to live, not just for myself but for my kids?!
In retrospect, I believe staying home didn’t work for me, not because I don’t love my kids but because I do. The version of me they received while I was standing still was not my best and quite possibly my worst. I realized that I wanted my kids to know the real me, the full me, not some tiny sliver that I was pretending to be. The point I am trying to make is that staying home simply wasn’t me.
Staying home didn’t work for me, not because I don’t love my kids but because I do.
However, I believe staying home was necessary for me, I needed to (repeatedly) try this identity on for size, I needed to try and fail to make it fit. I needed it not to work in order to figure out what would. I needed to live out of alignment with my own values to fully accept and identify what they were. As much as I wanted to love staying home with my kids, I didn’t. And the braver choice was not to ignore my own knowing but to accept what was and get to work figuring out what needed to be.
It was only through being honest with myself about who I was and what I needed that I was finally able to unlock the parts of myself I had been keeping hidden, the parts that secretly felt trapped, the parts that desperately wanted me to quit staying home, the parts that longed to take their power back. I do not believe there is a right way to mother and my experience ‘staying home’ may be very different than your own, but I hope that these words allow you to meet all of the parts of yourself. This is not to say that staying home is bad or wrong for everybody, more so to offer you an opportunity to check in with yourself. There are infinite ways to be a mother and I believe the only way that matters is the one that allows (you) to stay true to you.
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The Latest Self/ish Posts:
#70 Mirrors: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
#69 Strength: May your struggles help you find your strength.
#68 Transformation: Change is inevitable, transformation is a choice.
#67 Incubate: All good things take time.
#66 Decide: One day or day one, you decide.
#65 Joy: Identify what brings you joy and choose that over everything else.
#64 Non-negotiables: Make time for the things that matter to (you).
#63 Help: Nobody is coming to save you, you must help your self.
#61 Visualize: Visualize your best self and start showing up as her.
#60 Clarity comes from engagement, not thought.
#59 Money: Women deserve to be paid.
Full archive here.
This articulated everything that has been grating on me since I saw Barbie (sorry I guess we’re still there). There’s a line at the end where Rhea Perlman says mothers stay or stand still so our daughters can see how far we come. And it has been a WTF/hell no for me since. Skip past the mothers not parents/daughters not children part and what we’re saying with just those word choices. And then you get to the part where moms stay, stop moving, stop growing. You just put words to what is wrong with that and beautifully.