Why It's Never Occurred To Me To Stay At Home

In the same vein, it seems inevitable that I would be a working mother. Both of my parents worked full-time until retirement, and I never had a babysitter. My dad worked in the morning and my mom worked in the evening. I came home from school just as my mom was leaving the house to go to the hospital. My sister and I were latchkey kids. So when I had my own kids it never occurred to me that I'd do anything except take them to school in the morning and pick them up in the evening, feed them dinner, help with homework and get them in bed. However, in my affluent SF suburb, the stay-at-home alternative had clearly occurred to a lot of other families. They may have had that experience themselves, growing up. I've watched neighbors and friends spend their days in ways I can scarcely understand because I'm so unfamiliar with what it's like to be a full-time parent.

From the little I have been able to glean, it looks like they spend time socializing together, creating friendships, community and intimacy. Many of them are disciplined and smart enough to exercise regularly, too. All of them juggle scheduling, multiple school dropoffs/pickups, and choosing and supervising after-school activities. A lot of driving and carpooling is involved. And of course, there are all the family- and life-management activities to pull off every day and week -- meals, laundry, cleaning, caring for sick kids, reading, helping with homework and extracurriculars. They do other things that blow my mind as well. For example, I've seen Neighbor A take care of Neighbor B's kids -- all under the age of 7 -- for an entire weekend so that Neighbor B (husband and wife) could get away. On paper this seems so sensible and accessible. But to me, it feels unthinkable. My parents NEVER left us in the care of anyone else; they didn't pursue their own leisure or interests or go away for weekends. So to my brain this concept seems like it's filed in Wikipedia under Giant Imposition; basically, something so drastic you'd only ask if it were a life/death situation.

On the other hand, I'm confronting a few wrinkles with my own assumed approach. First, we live far away from school, so my kids need a responsible adult to drive them back and forth. Next, my husband and I both work during the days, yet someone needs to remain at home with the kids once school is over -- they're too young to be on their own. Last, and most important, my son has a challenging temperament (that's putting it politely) and also appears to have some learning differences which will require a steady degree of parental coaching, tutoring, supervision and assistance. Put all that together and working full-time seems like a strange choice -- it essentially means that I'd have my original day job, my new day job (tutor/coach/parent/advocate), and my less-new day and night job (parent/cook/launderer/chauffeur/activity organizer). That's three jobs in the same 24 hours with no commensurate increase in time off or benefits. Is that what we call fuzzy math?

So now I finally get why parents choose to stay home to support their kids and families -- so they can have 1 or 2 jobs instead of 3. Because you're not supposed to have 3 full-time jobs and do well at all of them.

It's a safe bet that nobody ever discussed this without being dismissive or blithe about the infeasibility of it all when I was going to graduate school, or at any of those somewhat vacuous career-development conferences for high-potential women that I attended. All they mentioned was "flex scheduling" which basically boiled down to working after dinner until very late at night just to keep your job; and getting a good nanny, or somehow manufacturing excellent in-laws who would effectively act as your kids' nanny. And at some level, at some age, this just doesn't work the way one might hope.