The unfiltered truth about staying home with the kids
Real talk about motherhood, cultural noise, and making choices that suit you
I have to admit their photos are gorgeous. When I checked out the trad wife influencers I’d been hearing about, I was treated to a pretty tableau of hearth and home.
The trad wives sure make full-time motherhood and housewifery look worthy of aspiring to. (Though frankly, one could argue that a trad wife influencer isn’t pouring all her energy into family and home since curating all that content amounts to running a small business.)
Of course, if you dig a little deeper, the trad wife lifestyle involves more than pretty pictures. It’s the manifestation of certain forces in the culture that are hyping the merits of a return to a way of life last seen at large in the 1950s.
There’s nothing wrong with being a trad wife if that’s what you choose of your own free will. I’m not here to try to talk anybody out of it.
But I also recognize that cultural forces in the wind like these can play on the minds of people, usually young women, who are trying to sort out how to balance their professional ambitions with their desire to have a family. I still remember how difficult that was.
So, for what it’s worth to those pondering how they’re going to design a life that truly suits them, there are two important things I think your mom or someone should tell you.
Thing #1: Staying home with the kids mostly doesn’t resemble what the trad wives are showcasing
When my second child was born, I decided to give up my full-time corporate job to stay home with the kids. Though I loved my job, I was ready to get off the 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. treadmill of carefully choreographed weekdays and absolve myself from any of the guilt I sometimes felt about being a working mother.
Given all of the mythological tales I’d heard about the unique satisfaction of devoting all of your energy to your offspring, I imagined that life as a stay-at-home mom would bring me as close to heaven as I was ever going to get on earth. After all, what more holy occupation could there be than mothering people full-time? It turned out that I was in for a whole lot of holy alright—though holy shit was more like it.
My euphoria carried me through the first couple of weeks after Susannah’s arrival. Relatives and friends were thrilled to meet the new baby; people came bearing gifts and home-cooked meals, and my husband was around to help.
I wasn’t even nervous when it came time for my husband to return to work. Two-year-old Cassie was scheduled to go to the child care center she’d been attending two days a week for a month so we’d both have time to adjust to our new situations. I planned to use those two days to get ahead on household tasks and get some sleep while my newborn baby napped.
In actuality, even though Susannah was a very easy baby, those two days proved to be catch-up time at best, and I struggled to understand how sometimes I hadn’t managed to cross even simple tasks like getting the laundry folded off my list by the end of the day.
I was equally amazed that I spent the weekdays when Cassie was home constantly trying, but not managing, to dodge the giant time sucks that were now a routine part of my days.
Though I had managed to thrive and exceed expectations in the fast-paced world of international marketing, I felt like an underachiever when it came to the mundane demands of motherhood. How was this happening? As best I could tell, there was no overt collusion between my newborn and my toddler, but somehow, they and their various needs seemed to stymie me day after day.
My days were so busy that I couldn’t imagine adding tasks like dressing the kids in cute little outfits, composing wholesome tableaus, and making bread from scratch to my to-do list like the trad wives do. Caring for two small children was challenging enough.
Though I always had plenty to do, somehow at the end of each day, I felt like not much had happened. Where was all of the fulfillment and bliss I expected to feel? Maybe I was doing it wrong or missing something?
Desperately seeking an answer, I turned to an in-house expert–my own mother, who had never seemed overwhelmed or dissatisfied while she was at home with my brother and me. How had she coped with it all? Her reply was simple: “Who remembers?”
Though my mom’s answer was unsatisfying at the time, looking back, it was accurate. Those years of intensive parenting are often a blur–they go fast, but the days are long.
Gradually, I found some hacks and developed some routines. I eventually got more proficient at hands-on parenting and making those days I spent at home with the kids as satisfying as they could reasonably be. But I also came to the conclusion that I wasn’t cut out to devote myself entirely to staying home with the kids.
I didn’t want to get back on the hamster wheel of working full-time, especially now that I had two kids to juggle. But fortunately, I was able to work out an arrangement in which I consulted for my former employer two days a week while the girls went to the child care center we all loved.
Though a blend of working part-time and staying home with the kids part-time proved to be the right combo for me, the choices I made may or may not fit you. You’re the only one who can determine that.
The purpose of my telling you all this isn’t to throw cold water on the idea of staying home with the kids. I am grateful that I figured out how to spend more time with the kids when they were little, and if I had it to do over again, I would still make the same choices.
My reason for telling you about my experience is so that you have more than just the trad wife version to go on when considering what life at home with kids really looks like.
Thing #2: Whenever a chorus of voices seeks to influence your life choices, you should carefully consider whether what they’re promoting aligns with what you truly want
Having been a full-time working mom and then a part-time stay-at-home one, I will say that there’s no denying that professional ambitions and motherhood are often on a collision course. Muting your work ambitions to turn full attention to hearth and home can seem like a simple solution.
But the reality is that life choices like these are complex, and they can be made more complicated because there will always be voices out there trying to encourage you to do what they believe is best.
If you read the history books, there was a big push to get all the Rosie the Riveters back into the home again to make room in the workplace for returning servicemen after World War II. Voices in the culture encouraged women to return to child rearing and homemaking.
In the 80s, when I was in college, the dominant narrative was that you could be a woman who had it all. Feminism had gained a lot of ground in the 70s, and some were eager to see as many foot soldiers as possible remain in the workplace even after we reproduced, so we wouldn’t lose any ground. (Of course, it was on us to find suitable child care arrangements and figure out how to juggle all the tasks that come along with having whole other humans you’re responsible for.)
Now, here we are, a quarter of the way into the 21st century, and trad wives are trying to influence women to forego the workplace and focus on their families and domesticity. Some contend that the trad wife lifestyle is just what we need to help to reverse America’s declining fertility rate.
In the face of any movement that seeks to influence your life choices, it’s wise to recognize that the voices may have a vested interest in promoting a particular lifestyle, which may or may not align with what you really want.
Your ultimate goal should always be figuring out the combination of work and parenthood that’s right for your family. Here are some things to consider:
Beware of making any life choices based on the highlight reels someone else posts on social media.
You already know that the life someone presents on Instagram or TikTok doesn’t always match the messier realities offscreen. Staying home with the kids is nowhere near as glamorous as portrayed by the trad wives. Neither is all of the striving and work hours required to become a girl boss.
It is unwise for anyone to make career choices without evaluating how those choices fit with the rest of their life.
In his book, The Search, Bruce Feiler notes that the idea of separating your life from your work is a legacy of a time when the workplace was dominated by men and someone else took care of the laundry, the kids, and the aging parents. According to Feiler, the happiest people understand that their lives are inseparable from their work.
Thus, family responsibilities are a valid factor to consider when making work choices. In fact, as a result of his research, Feiler concluded that the single biggest influence in people’s decisions about work–from what jobs they sought to what jobs they accepted to what jobs they quit–was their lives outside of work. (You can learn more about The Search, which was featured as a TYMSHTY Book of Wisdom a few months ago, here.)
If having a family is on your bucket list, the best thing you can do for yourself is to give yourself options.
No one truly knows how they will feel about returning to work after the baby arrives until after the baby arrives. If you can set the stage financially, occupationally, locationally, or otherwise to have some flexibility when the time comes, you are wise to do so.
You are the only one qualified to decide what lifestyle would work best for your family.
When you encounter voices–whether they urge you to maintain your career at all costs or they encourage you to stay home and have a lot of babies–the most valuable thing you can do is consider whether what they’re encouraging you to do aligns with what your own inner voice is saying to you. Also key–what is your spouse’s inner voice saying? In the end, those are the only two voices that matter.
Here’s to everyone pursuing the life choices that best suit them.
First off, your kids are adorable; your family beautiful. Second, sometimes it’s just not feasible. I chose something similar to what you did because we needed the income boost. And yes. It did keep my wheels from rusting. I don’t regret that nor the time I got with our kids. It was a grind. It was exasperating. But how beautiful it is to get to the other side and feel little regret and plenty of joy at the attempt and marvel at the fruits. 😌🩷