The Perils of Life As a SAHM

Just when I thought I had made peace with my temporary status as a stay-at-home parent, along comes another article to make me groan inwardly and reach for the wine bottle. Writing in Salon, full-time parent to school-age children Jessica Stolzberg describes her upset at being asked by a mom at the bus stop: 'Can I ask you what you do all day?'

To my mind, it's a fair question. If you are an able-bodied adult without childcare responsibilities between the hours of about 9am and 3pm, then you can't be too surprised if someone wonders what you do all day. Maybe you do the gardening. Maybe you blog. Maybe you train for a marathon. It's entirely your own business but you can't be too surprised to get that question now and again.

Stolzberg didn't see it that way, however. Instead she felt that she was slighted, bullied even, by this fellow mom at the bus stop, who asked her a couple of more times after that about her day as an at-home parent. Stolzberg says that her 'blood boiled at being asked', that she felt her value as a SAHM , as a person even, was being questioned. 

This is not meant to be overly critical or belittling. Jessica Stolzberg has had her article published in Salon, after all, which is more than I've achieved after a couple of years of scribbling. This is meant to be a personal account in which the author openly admits that she is not at peace with her SAHM status and is overly sensitive about it.

What struck me about the article, however, is how self-involved it is. The article is full of 'I's and 'me's and 'my friend' and 'my life'. It even starts out as 'I think of her as...'. It is more like a journal entry than a magazine article written for an audience.

This is a great example of how life as a SAHM shrinks your world. It's easier to become self-involved when you don't have to deal with the world of work. Sanctimommies say that being a SAHM is the greatest act of self-sacrifice a woman can ever make, of course, to live for your children and martyr yourself for their needs. Nonetheless, life at home full-time, out of the workplace, away from other busy adults, does infantilize one somewhat. Instead of having to just get on with things, you have time on your hands to mull things over, nurse slights and ponder comments.

It's not that SAHMs have a lot of free time but there is a lot of empty time in the day. A spare ten minutes here and there is not enough time to build a career or do anything that requires focus but it is precisely enough time to worry whether that other mom at the bus stop hates you or not and if she does why she does and who she thinks she is anyway with her working-from-home career and her attitude.

This is one of the main reasons that I am keen to return to working outside the home in some form as soon as I can. The idea that one day, a decade hence, I might wake up to find myself nursing petty schoolyard (or bus stop) slights as outlined in Stolzberg's article is terrifying. Forget all the financial arguments and dire warnings of future bankruptcy: when you find yourself smarting over minor comments and wallowing in your sense of grievance, it's time to get re-acquainted with indeed.com.