Dr. Laura Schlessinger - In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms

The Decision

The Stay-at-Home Moms Inner Struggles

The Naysayers

How Staying at Home Impacts the Marriage

How Stay-at-Home Moms Benefit Kids

Being a Stay-at-Home Mom Changes You

The Good, the Bad, the Unforgettable

Great Advice

Dr. Lauras Resources for Stay-at-Home Moms

W ith appropriate apologies to Shakespeare, I come to praise at-home moms, not to bury full-time working moms. This is not another missile attack in the mommy wars, nor is it a debate on day care versus mommy care. This is also not a treatise on the benefits to children of being with a loving parent rather than with hired help or in an institutionalized group care setting. I will leave these arguments to wiser folks than I, and statistics and research results are generally appreciated only by those who wish to feel convinced or vindicated by them.

I will admit to being surprisedno, amazedthat a whole generation and a half of women have been so easily enraptured by the suggestion that what they have to give their child is easily replaced by a nanny, babysitter, or day-care worker. A baby is conceived in a womans body, is nurtured there for nine months, and then suckles at her breast, more aware of her voice than anyone elses in the universeand then her arms, kisses, laughs, tickles, warmth, coos, and so forth can be substituted for with a routine of feeding, diapering, and snacks? Well, since so many people say it is so, I guess it must be so; therefore, no argument from me.

I am personally moved by and interested in the lovely stories of warmth, love, and sacrifice told by families whove structured themselves to focus on enjoying every possible moment of their childs journey in developmentand Im sure there are equivalent emotional highs from watching ones childs journey via nanny cam and day-care worker daily reports.

I would never dream of telling a woman what she should do to make her life fulfilling, exciting, and purposeful. There are, of course, many ways to achieve personal satisfaction. I would never dream of telling a woman that she is needed more by her family than anywhere else on the planet, because I wouldnt want her to suffer any guilt or sense of loss if she chose to be in a full-time career. I would never dream of telling a woman that the special sweetness and nurturance that only a woman can bring to a home might bring her a depth of joy and peace that she never imagined, because I might seem offensive to those women who dontand I certainly dont wish to offend anybody.

No, I am not here to condemn anyone for anything; I am here only to let you know of the lives of families with at-home moms. I hope you will be touched, tickled, moved, and entertained by what follows.

U ntil I was thirty-five, I never wanted to be a mother. At least, thats what I thought, largely because of having been in university during the 1960s, when I was brainwashed (aka had my consciousness raised) into being a feminista for whom a career, with its promise of personal importance, power, and success, was what a real woman was supposed to aspire to. I knew for sure that I was definitely not going to become like my perpetually angry, frustrated mother, who always behaved as though being a wife and mother were tantamount to self-immolation even though neither my dad nor circumstances ever kept her from doing anything she wanted to do.

Nope, no Little House on the Prairie beginnings for me.

The problem was, no matter how many successes I had, there was that constant something missing feeling. It didnt dawn on me that the empty feeling had to do with my uterus, breasts, and arms; I was clearly missing being a mommy. I woke up to that fact while watching a PBS NOVA presentation on the miracle of life. Using fiber optics, they showed sperm swimming up through a womans cervix into the uterus, where they made their way into the fallopian tube to meet the egg newly ejected by the ovary. The moment of fertilization was recorded, as was the embryos trip down into the uterus to implant in the wall and continue development. The magical miracle of the whole subsequent nine months of gestation was condensed into sixty incredible minutes. The final scene was the baby born vaginally and placed naked, wet, and surprised onto the mothers belly while Mom and Dad cooed and whooped.

By the tears on my face and the ache in my chest, I had found clarity as to what was missing. After a marriage, many infertility treatments, monthly disappointments, and one tubal pregnancy later, finally my quest ended in an emergency C-section wherein a nine-pound son was delivered from his petite momand our lives were never the same again.

The first three months were hellsleep deprivation and a constantly crying baby made me wonder what I had been thinking! My husband kept reminding me that this phase isnt permanent, but it was difficult to believe him. And then one day, exactly three months to the minute after his birth, our son slept through the night.

As my mother had chosen to abandon both her then adult daughters, I had no motherly advice or assistance. It doesnt matter how book-learned you are about children and parenting; when youre postpartum, all intellect evaporates and youre simply an emotional heap of worry, self-doubt, confusion, fear, and exhaustion. The other problem for me was recovering from the C-section. We did hire a motherly woman for two weeks to come in and show me how to handle things. She was a godsend.

In the years before my son started kindergarten, we did try two preschool-like establishments to see if they had any benefit for him. One of them lasted one day. When I came at 4:00 PM to find that he hadnt stopped crying, that was the end of that. The headmistress gave me the usual argument that he needed to adjust, but I saw no reason to torture my child with my absence until he accepted his loss. The second time was when we were financially desperate, and I needed to do some part-time radio fill-in for some extra money to survive. At first he liked the experience, but after a few weeks the routine became boring, and he yearned to be with me, doing all the stuff wed do in a day: playing, reading, errands, dancing, artwork, words and spelling, cycling, hiking, and so forth. So that was the end of that.

I am grateful for every moment Ive had as a mommy. I have great memories of twirling my son around in a shopping cart in a local Target stores parking lot (a lot cheaper than Magic Mountain), or of us walking through a forest, pretending that we were being tracked by monsters, selecting sticks for swords and spears, and working together to get to safety. Now hes a paratrooper in the U.S. Army!

My husband and I came to the practical conclusion that I needed to go back to radio work to be our familys primary financial support, while he would manage my career, the home, and our finances. Nonetheless, I refused to take any job that would require me to be out of the home every day while our son was home or awake! I would take care of him all day and then go to work on radio, leaving the house at 9:00 PM after putting him to bed. Eventually, when he started kindergarten, I landed a daytime shift while he was in school.

In order to do the writing and necessary research, I would get up at 5:00 AM and work a few hours before I woke him up to get ready for school. I always worked my career around my family, never the other way around.