Why Stay Home? The Pros and Cons of Stay-Home Motherhood

Women's role in society has greatly changed, and women today are empowered to educate themselves and move forward in their careers. While dual income families have become increasingly common over the last few decades, many moms are beginning to rethinking their priorities. Working moms with full time jobs are usually still the main caretakers and housekeepers as well, making for a very hectic lifestyle. Many of today's mothers are choosing to stay home rather than work due to childcare cost and inadequacies, time-management issues, and to spend more time with their kids.

Mothers who work do it, in part, to make a better life for their children. Some mothers work only for that reason, so that they can go to better schools or have nicer things than they might if the family did not have mom's income. However, some working mothers are finding that their income really is not the asset they may have thought it was. This is mainly due to the high cost of childcare. Daycare is a huge expense for working parents. In the delta, costs of daycare average $800 a month. If you are late picking up your child, there are very large fees. Add to that the special equipment, like nap mats, and gasoline to travel to and from the center each day, and the cost is even higher. There are also other ways that childcare can add stress to the family. Parents often wonder what and who their kids are exposed to all day, especially those parents with babies and toddlers who cannot talk or cannot talk well. While most daycare workers are responsible and conscientious, the news media is filled with horror stories of daycare accidents and abuses inflicted on children while in childcare facilities. Even if nothing has ever happened to your child while in a daycare, the possibility still haunts parents. Also, these facilities are germ breeding grounds. Children in daycare get sick a lot more often than other kids.

One of the main obstacles for working moms is time-management. The struggle to balance their careers, love-life, children, and household chores is a big factor for women who have decided to put their careers on hold, perhaps for good, in order to focus more of their time and energy on their home life. Moms with full-time jobs outside the home are usually still the main caretakers of the children and take on the majority of household work. The old adage "a mother's work is never done" is not lost on this lot. With so much on their plates, these mothers can begin to feel that they are so overwhelmed with everything that they cannot excel in anything. Their work performance may begin to suffer, their homes may never be clean, and they may not be as big a part of their family as they'd like to be. Also, hobbies that they were once passionate about easily become nothing more than fond memories, as their time is spent before the day begins. If this happens, the mothers could understandably become disappointed in themselves and their lives, leading to depression. While many working moms take pride in being able to juggle these different aspects of their life, and build motivation and momentum from the pressure, other's prefer to reduce the stress level of their lives by choosing to stay home and raise their family.

The biggest reason mom's are deciding to stay at home is simply to spend more time with their kids. Without work, moms are free to play a bigger role in the lives of their children, instead of feeling like they are being raised by their daycare provider or after school program. Taking kids to their extra-curricular activities, helping with schoolwork, shopping or cooking together are luxuries that stay-at-home mom's get much more often than working mothers. Because they get to spend more time with their children, mom's who stay home often feel much closer to their kids emotionally and feel like they know them better. Children grow up so fast, and working parents worry that they are missing important milestones in their children's lives. Many moms work to improve the lives of their children, and many moms stay home for that same reason.

While most mothers begin their journey through motherhood with "supermom syndrome", wanting to be the best in their career field, the best mother, and the best wife on earth, many are learning that it is better to focus on what is really important. Focusing on their loved ones and passions, stay home mothers are happier and less stressed than mom's who are struggling to balance all the separate aspects of their lives.