Ep.122 MOM CHAT: The Dark Side of Being a Stay at Home Parent w/ Courtney & Jennifer

Show Notes:

Our MOM CHAT episodes are something special! Ever wonder what it’d be like if moms recorded the conversations they have when they get together? There’s just something so real about talking through things over coffee, a glass of wine, or while out on a walk. We wanted to bottle up that vibe and share it with you. So, we invited two of our amazing HER Circle friends, Courtney and Jennifer, to have an open, casual chat about a topic that matters.

In this episode, we discuss the topic of the Dark Side of Being a Stay at Home Parent. Together we untangle the challenges of being a stay-at-home mom (SAHM). We explore the emotional and financial dependencies on partners, the loss of identity, and the societal perception of SAHMs. Jennifer and Courtney share their experiences, highlighting the financial impracticality of daycare and the lack of tangible income for SAHMs. They discuss the emotional burden of managing household tasks and the guilt of not contributing financially. The conversation emphasizes the importance of recognizing the value of SAHMs’ work and the need for better societal understanding and support.

• Deciding to Stay at Home: Jennifer’s & Courtney’s Experiences (0:01)
• Financial and Logistical Considerations (3:23)
• Emotional and Identity Struggles (7:54)
• Household Dynamics and Workload (13:11)
• Loss of Identity and Societal Perceptions (15:02)
• Uplifting Messages and Final Thoughts (24:51)

Episode Notes and Resources:

HER Circle: https://www.herhealthcollective.com/membership

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TRANSCRIPT

Crissy  

Yay. We’re so excited to be here with two of our HER Circle moms. This is our mom chat. It’s a newer type of conversation that we’re having once a month where we bring a couple of our her circle moms together and just have a friendly little mom chat, discussing a topic that is relevant to moms. And it’s just kind of like we’re sitting down having a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, just chatting. Very casual. Jennifer just held up her I’m assuming it’s coffee. It’s 10:15am when we’re recording this, if it’s not no judgment!

Jennifer  

Definately coffee!

Crissy  

 So today, we are very happy to be here with Jennifer, who you just heard speak. And Courtney. Courtney, go ahead and say hello so everyone can hear your voice.

Courtney  

 Hi!

Crissy  

Courtney, I’m actually going to turn it over to you, because you texted me and you said, Have you ever done a podcast or talked about this topic? And I was like, no, actually, I don’t think we really have. So tell us what you text me what your topic suggestion was.

Courtney  

So I texted you and asked if you had ever done a podcast on the dark side of being a stay at home mom and I specifically in the moment, I was thinking about how we have to be somewhat dependent on a lot of factors, right? But specifically our partners who are working outside of the home and bringing in money, and how that can seem, I don’t know, all kinds of things. It can seem scary and at times, kind of like deprecating, I don’t know, like having to be dependent on a man. Love it. Don’t love it.

Crissy  

Yeah, absolutely. What does that bring up for you? Jennifer, do you have any thoughts?

Jennifer  

100% Yeah. It’s it kind of goes against what we’ve been taught. Like you’re an independent woman, you need to be able to take care of yourself, yeah? So the idea of having to be dependent on someone else, especially a guy, for your family’s, you know, basic needs, survival income, yeah, kind of it makes you feel kind of bad like you don’t want to be dependent on someone else you especially when you know you’ve been used to supporting yourself for many years, up until having children. Yeah, it’s definitely a hard adjustment to make going from being an independent woman, an independent working woman, to someone who’s relying on someone else’s income.

Cindi  

When we come to the decision to stay home with our kids, there’s a lot that we take into consideration, and it doesn’t fit for everybody. I stayed home with our kids until they started school, and then, of course, by that time we started HER Health Collective, and now we have a business. What were some of the thoughts and ideas and things that you had to process through to make this decision with your partner? And how did it decide that it was you that stayed home and not him?

Jennifer  

So when we had my oldest daughter, it was during COVID, and I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sending her to daycare in the middle of COVID. It just, you know, that idea freaked me out. And then on top of that, when we had my son, like the cost of daycare was just prohibitive. You know, my husband and I discussed it, and we were like, why would we pay for you to work? You know, it didn’t make financial sense for us to pay more for daycare than I was bringing in as an income from being a teacher. For all that says about what we pay teachers, of course, oh yeah, but in the hours of daycare weren’t going to work out for either of us. Either. I had to be at work at seven. My husband worked a varying schedule and yeah, so drop off wasn’t even going to be early enough for us at the options that we had around. So yeah, there was a, there was a lot of factors for sure.

Cindi  

So then you had to take into consideration early drop off, which is a another cost that you had to incur, perhaps late pickup, which is another cost.

Crissy  

Or every time you have a teacher work day or a sick kid, or how many times there’s they don’t do them anymore, but early release days, or, you know, all these different things that come up with, particularly school as the kids get older. But that’s going to be a factor too. That makes it really hard to manage a job, in addition to having a kid a traditional nine to five job in particular. 

Jennifer  

Sure, absolutely. I mean, I have a sick kid home right now, and that’s why I’m hiding outside. 

Cindi  

With your adorable hat. That’s awesome. Thank you. And you’ve already mentioned that you’re a teacher, and we know that teachers were recording from North Carolina, that teachers, specifically in North Carolina, don’t get paid very well, and I’m sure that that was part of the decision making process in you staying home versus him staying home. Is that correct?

Jennifer  

It was yes, my husband got paid much better than a teacher gets paid, so it made sense that he was going to be the one to continue to work. I definitely could not have supported the four of us off of what I was making on my my amazing teacher income. And I’m sure people do it, and I, gosh, I tip my hat to those people, because that’s the stress of having to support a family on that incomes gotta be immeasurable. 

Cindi  

Yeah, we’ll definitely get to that in just a minute, like the financial burden of going down to one income. But I’d like to hear from Courtney on answering the question that I asked, because I’m super interested. 

Courtney  

So our situation was a bit different going in. So I had a child when I married my husband, and I had been a single mom, supporting both of us for a few years, several years after I got married and I got pregnant with my second I was actually working for a nonprofit that supports new mothers and in the perinatal field, and they were only going to give me three weeks unpaid maternity leave, and this is An international nonprofit that literally advocates for Mother’s rights, and I just didn’t feel good about that. So our plan was for me to take an extended maternity leave in late 2019 and then find something different in 2020 and we all know what happened in early 2020 so then I had one school aged kiddo who was going from home, and a newborn when the pandemic hit. And I couldn’t I couldn’t find something new in that moment. And so I transitioned to being a stay at home mom and homeschooling mom for a bit, and yeah, and then we decided to have our third and after that, as Jennifer said, like, it just didn’t make financial sense for me. I mean, my background is in nonprofits, and as with teachers, like you’re not making a ton of money, not to mention the gender gap in income, my husband was making a lot more than me when I left my established position. Through me trying to find something new, there’s no way I could have supported all five of us on that type of income.

Crissy  

Yeah, you raise a lot of interesting points with that Courtney. First, we would often hear from so many people that it’s a privilege to be able to stay at home, that you know, we’re in this financial position because there’s a partner that is able to support the family and you’re able to stay at home. What feeling does that leave with you when people say that?

Courtney  

I feel a lot of things, when people say that like I do recognize my privilege. You know, I am a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman. I have privilege, and I recognize that, and I’m grateful for that. I do feel grateful to be able to stay home with my children. I was not able to do that with my oldest when she was young, and I feel like I missed a lot, so I was excited, like, Oh, I get to be the one doing things with them. But also, people don’t realize that there’s a lot to it. Like, yeah, I didn’t realize when I was a working mom, you know, I would have said things like that in my head, not out loud, yeah, yeah. But it does also, I don’t know guilt is what came up like initially, it’s like, oh, I should feel so happy and blessed and privileged and lucky to be home all the time, but I don’t. I don’t feel that way all the time.

Crissy  

On the same token, I guess what people say in response to that… We hear a lot that the statistics of and I should have pulled them up so I could actually cite something. But you know that the amount of hours that a stay at home mom works, and they, like, calculated out the financial contribution that it is to the family, and it was something like $130,000 or something like it was a huge amount like that you’re contributing to your family and the time, the amount of hours that you put in, and the meals that you cook, and all the things that you do to keep your child out of daycare, and you are financially contributing to your family. What feeling does that leave you with? Do you internalize that? Or is there like a barrier to absorbing that message? 

Cindi  

For me, there was a barrier to absorbing that message. What do you all think? 

Jennifer  

Oh, there’s a barrier, for sure, because there’s no tangible that you’re bringing in. There’s, there’s no check deposited in your account that you can, you know, say you’re accountable for I mean, as a stay at home mom, I don’t even have contributions to my retirement account that I’m able to make, and that’s super frustrating. 

Courtney  

Yeah, and to piggyback on what Jennifer said, my husband and I are fine, right? But I do have this catastrophe mentality sometimes, like, what if something happened? What if, I don’t know, he ran off with a 20 year old? Not gonna happen. But, you know, like, I don’t know, I think about these things. And you’re right. I don’t have a safety net that’s mine. I don’t have a nest egg that’s like, just mine. And it’s not like he’s hoarding the money away somewhere, but it still feels, I mean, like he’s the one bringing it in. So I don’t know. I worry about these things or what if, you know, worst case scenario, something were to physically happen to him, like, what? What does that look like? What happens? I don’t even, I don’t even know how a lot of the bills get paid. Is that bad?

Crissy  

Not at all. It’s a big fear. And I think that’s the situation in a lot of relationships, where one person pays the bills and knows what card is on, what and what Bill Pay, everything is set up to and attached to, and I’m with you, Courtney, that’s a constant fear and thought in my mind as someone prone to anxiety. So you’re definitely not alone at that catastrophizing.

Jennifer  

My husband lost his job shortly after we had our second child, and so that was incredibly stressful to be reliant on that single source of income, and all of a sudden it’s not there. I mean, that’s another scary factor. What do you do when that single income is suddenly gone? 

Cindi  

All of the things that you said, I 100% agree with, it was difficult for me to go out and buy things that we even needed because I didn’t know if I could, not permission wise, but how our bank account was looking and whatnot. Yeah, it was also the separation of asking him to do things around the house, like when I was really staying home, not, you know, working the business, along with, you know, also having the kids at home, but when they were home, 100% of the time, he would come home from work and would be tired, and I felt like I had to pick up on everything, whereas, kind of the, it wasn’t an argument, but I think something that we would discuss a lot was I didn’t shut it off, and he got to shut off from work, but it was still work for me, and plus, doing work around the house was hard because then that meant that the kids were back on me, and that was my job throughout the entire week, like I never had a break. Was it hard for you all to separate all of that?

Jennifer  

 100% Yeah, even when my husband wants to go out and mow the lawn or do do something to contribute to the household that involves me taking care of the kids on a Saturday or when he’s home, I am like, Please, no, please no, don’t leave me with them again. I’ve, I’ve had them all week in the middle of the night. You know, you never clock out, right?

Courtney  

 Yep, it’s 24/7 and and I got really bad about, well, this is my job. This is my job. You know, my job is to watch the kids. My job is to keep the house clean. My job is to cook the meals, and so where we had like this division of labor, household labor, when I was working outside the home, that all went out the window because, I mean, and I’m I take responsibility for part of that. Oh no, this is my job. This is my job. But then my job now is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and yeah, even like the drive, like he gets to drive. I mean, he drops our oldest off every day, but between school and the office, he’s alone and a car. How out right there. There’s no one else with him and walking from like he works downtown, so he gets to walk alone downtown, between the walking cross. This is silly, right? It’s a few minutes, but it’s more minutes than than we get.

Jennifer  

Absolutely. And heaven forbid they get to go out of town for work. Oh my gosh, I get so jealous on those rare, I mean, the rare occasions that my husband goes out of town for work, but when he does, I am like you stayed in a hotel with children, you went out dinner. 

Courtney  

Yes, my husband’s gone one week a month, so one Monday through Friday every single month he’s gone, and I am solo parenting, which is a whole other challenge. But yes, I get so mad, like, you just you were able to sleep alone in a hotel, and you got to eat, and you got to, like, choose who you had dinner with, and where and what time. And

Crissy  

I had a very small window of time where I would consider myself a stay at home mom when my daughter was first born. And one of the things that I would consider the darkest side of stay at home mom life and the biggest struggle for me was the feeling of a loss of identity. And I feel like that happens for all moms to some degree. But I think for a lot of moms, when they have their baby and then they go back to work, there’s a return of some sense of prior life, prior normalcy, and a return to yourself in some way. And I think that as a stay at home mom, from what I’ve seen in my own experience, and talking to other moms and you guys share if this feels the same for you, but that was a really big struggle, this loss of identity and not really knowing who I was in the world and in this space around me anymore. Did you feel that?

Courtney  

Oh yeah,

Crissy  

they’re both nodding.

Cindi  

I think everyone’s kind of processing that, because the loss of identity is for real. I mean, everything overtakes you that is focused on the kids like that becomes your one and only thing. And I think that when you are a stay at home mom, and you’re looking at parents who work, you’re like, oh my gosh, that sounds really hard, but when you’re a stay at home mom, it’s really hard! People, I don’t think people realize how hard it really is. So you know, looking at both sides, it’s difficult, and there was definitely a loss of identity to where, I mean, we started HER Health Collective, Crissy and I did, because we recognized all the things that moms aren’t getting, I guess, is a big part of it, and we were trying To give them that outlet. What about you all? 

Jennifer  

100%. I previously really identified myself by my career, by what I did for a living. So once you take that away, it’s like, Well, who am I now? And the answer to that is, I’m a mom. But it’s frustrating to have that be your entire identity. There’s you know, there’s more parts to you than being a mom. You know you you want to have a be a friend, you want to have an artistic outlet. You You need more than just identifying as a mom to feel completely fulfilled and feel like you have a an identity outside of your children.

Crissy  

You make a really interesting point, too Jennifer, when you said that you identified as your job as a teacher, and I think that’s true for most of us, but it that’s so culturally influenced, like in our society, you go to a party, and the first question out of anybody’s mouth after they ask your name is, what do you do and like that’s such a integral part of our culture, and I think that, in and of itself, is problematic, because I think every person in our society is so much more than our job, right? But it is such a core piece of how we identify ourselves and how we relate to other people, and so I think that’s a really interesting point. I remember reading a book about, I don’t know, like having great conversations with people or something, and it really advocated against that question, asking, what do you do? Because there are so many other layers. And you’re right. We are a mom and we are a friend, but our society tells us that that work role that we play is so important, it’s the number one thing that people want to know about us. So of course, that’s going to be like a hit to our identity. Of course that’s going to feel like a blow and kind of leave us with this question of who we are and how we fit in this landscape of our world. So I hate that question. Let’s change it.

Jennifer  

I totally hate that question, because it’s always followed up, or frequently followed up. Do you work or do you stay at home? And that’s the one that was really a knife to the heart, because. I usually say, Yes, I work 24 hours a day, seven days a week as a stay at home mom that that is work. Those two are not mutually explosive. One’s just paid and the other is not paid.

Crissy  

Paid in hugs and slobbery kisses and tears, all the tears. Courtney, how about you? 

Courtney  

 Yeah? Well, like you said, our society tends to focus on, what are you contributing? What are you contributing? Like, if you’re not working in a, I don’t know society’s definition of a worthy, worthwhile position. I don’t know it’s a blow to to your to my self esteem and my self worth, and that plays in my head a lot, like I should be contributing to society or contributing to the world, and I am. I am raising amazing humans. But like, Jennifer said, like, I don’t know that that look, there’s a look.

Cindi  

Yeah! There’s a look!

Jennifer  

There’s a look!

Courtney  

You get when people ask, Oh, what do you do? I’m a stay at home mom, there’s a look.

Jennifer  

There’s a Oh, that must be so nice.  Yeah, right!

Courtney  

There’s an assumption. Yeah.

Cindi  

Do you think that that would be different if stay at home moms got paid? Do you think we would look at ourselves as contributing more with more of a value, with more of an identity, if we were actually getting paid?

Jennifer  

That’s a good question. Um, I think I would feel better about it if I was, you know, bringing income to my family. But I don’t know, society, they may, they might still continue to look down on somebody like, well, what? What are they doing to earn that like? I think there’s still this idea that stay at home moms are sitting on the couch eating Bon Bons and watching soap operas, as opposed to, you know, doing actual very difficult work all day.

Cindi  

Emotional coaching of the kids, physically coaching them, taking them places. There’s just mental labor, yeah, endless lists of things to do.

Courtney  

I’m a short order line cook. Like, I never leave my kitchen unless it’s to go to the laundry room,

Cindi  

Right? And how much throughout the day are your hands wet? Like you have to wash your hands bazillion times a day. My hands were always wet. 

Crissy  

Well, I think there’s also this expectation if you’re a stay at home mom, that it’s not just the parenting you’re doing, it’s also the home making. So if you’re staying at home, you’re also cleaning, you’re also cooking, you’re also grocery shopping, you’re also taking care of ordering the light bulbs. And you know, if we look at the book fair play, you’re holding so many of those cards, whereas, if in a house where there are two people working, when they both come home, they’re probably splitting those cards up, hopefully a little more fairly, even then it’s still not fair, like we know that most probably falls in the hands of a mom, but it’s so different when you’re a stay at home, there’s like this added extra expectation, whether it’s from your partner or the kids, because they’re so used to seeing You all day, every day, there’s just this added layer of you’re not just taking care of the kids, you’re also taking care of the house and the family life and the calendar and just everything as a unit. And I think that’s really overwhelming to not have a partner to tag in those efforts of the house. So I think that’s a struggle. Now we are getting ready to wrap up, and I don’t want to leave this episode feeling really like super doom and gloom, so I would like to leave on just like a slightly more uplifting note. So I guess while this is looking at the dark side of being a stay at home mom and there are a lot. There are a lot of struggles. I do feel like we are starting to hear more people say things like what I mentioned earlier, if they were receiving a salary. This is what stay at home moms are contributing to their family and society, and being a stay at home mom is one of the hardest jobs. There is out there. There are more of this messaging out there. What type of message would you want to add to that? What? What is a messaging about stay at home mom, or maybe a misperception about stay at home? Mom, life and role and job that you would want to share with the world?

Courtney  

That’s a hard one.

Jennifer  

It’s a hard one. It’s hard.

Courtney  

I do think that we are doing super important work. I do think that being with your children and getting to contribute to who they are fundamentally in such a big way is a beautiful, amazing, wonderful thing. And I do want other stay at home moms to feel that, even if, even if I don’t always internalize it. Jennifer, you’re doing a beautiful job, and you’re raising amazing humans, and your work is worthwhile. 

Jennifer  

Thank you as well. Courtney, you as well. Yeah, just piggybacking off what Courtney just said I would just want people to understand that we do work and we do important work, because what could be more important than raising up the next generation of good people, of leaders, of people who are well adjusted, hopefully, people who will hopefully contribute to society in positive ways. And I’m not at all saying that working parents don’t do that, because of course they do, but we get such a hands on effort in shaping our kids in a way that not everyone has the time and the energy of doing.

Crissy  

I think that I would want to add that stay at home moms are so much more than moms, and I think that’s going back to the conversation about how we identify with our job. And you know, when you are meeting someone and they do say, I’m a stay at home mom, that’s an opportunity to find out how they make their children’s life magical every single day. And you know what great lessons on being a great parent you can maybe impart from them, because they’re doing it 24/7, they’ve got a lot of practice, like, let’s learn something from them. And also, it’s a great opportunity to ask them something about completely nothing related to motherhood, because there are so much other layers to them. Just because they’re a stay at home mom doesn’t mean that’s all that they are. So you know, what are their hobbies or passions or stuff that they love to do outside of raising their kids? Because I think that we when we focus on that part of a person, we can learn so much more about them and see what a beautiful, well rounded individual they are. So that would be my message. How about you, Cindi?

Cindi  

My parting message to the moms out there, especially to the moms that are staying at home, is that even though you are not quote, unquote, in the workforce, meaning like out at a job, it does not mean that you’re not building immense, extraordinary skills that are contributing in an immense, extraordinary way. So when and if you decide to go back out to an outside job, outside of the home, you will have a lot of gifts to offer. And the other thing would be, if you are deciding to become a stay at home mom, one of the things that I wish I had done with my husband, prior to us bringing a child in the world and me saying, “Okay, I want to stay home with our child,” is to sit down and designate and talk through the different roles to make sure that they’re more clear for us and our family. It was just “okay. I’m taking on all the household tasks,” okay, but that goes into a lot of little, tiny things that you know don’t have labels and that you might automatically put on yourself to do so, have that talk, have that discussion with your partner, you know, before you make the decision to stay home. Thank you so much, Jennifer and Courtney for diving into what can be a difficult conversation. I feel you know so thanks for being honest and open and sharing, and thank you for the great idea, Courtney.

Courtney  

Yeah, thank you!