Sara Blanchard - Flex Mom: The Secrets of Happy Stay-at-Home Moms

FLEX MOM

Advance Praise

Flex Mom gives you permission, and teaches you to give yourself permission, to invest in your own well-being. It can actually help you become a happier and better parent.

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar , author of Happier and co-founder of Potentialife

Flex Mom honors the complexities of motherhood today and provides thoughtful, practical, and compassionate reflection and insightalong with a bit of humor. Blanchards honesty and perspective paves the way for exploring this third dimension of parenting, and seeks to support the reader along her journey. Whether you are ready to launch into being a Flex Mom today or just exploring what might be possible in the future, this book is for you.

Sarah , PhD and proud Flex Mom

It was an a-ha kind of moment, opening these pagesthis type of motherhood has been in the universe, but until Sara Blanchard put it into words, I didnt know it existed. If it werent for Flex Mom, I wouldnt have the balance to follow my passion as an author and still be the mom who picks up her kids after school.

Erin Lockwood , author of Planning Penelope

I loved this book! The author writes with such personal insight and humor about the joys and struggles of being a stay-at-home momI found myself nodding along throughout the whole book. Any mom who stays at home can benefit from reading this and thinking about how she can incorporate the ideas of being a Flex Mom into her life.

Emily , former cosmetics executive, now stay-at-home mom in NYC

Smart, unique and easy to implement, this book is written for the woman who is ready to shift from unhappy and unchallenged at home, to being excited about raising kids and pursuing her own passions. There are so many great ideas for a happy life in this book, I recommend it for working moms too!

Jaime Myers , owner of Shine Life Design

Theres so much more work to staying at home than there was in my generation. My children were always active, but it was usually stuff they did on their own; now there is so much parental involvement in playdates and sports leagues. Add that to what seems like pressure for moms to make a financial contribution or to have an identity outside of the house, and I can see where moms now seem less happy than I remember my generation feeling. Flex Mom helps bridge that gap, to help moms get back to the core of what they want to provide for their families and regain a sense of self.

Bonnie , former stay-at-home mom, now grandmother

FLEX MOM

THE SECRETS OF HAPPY STAY-AT-HOME MOMS

SARA BLANCHARD

NEW YORK

NASHVILLEMELBOURNEVANCOUVER

FLEX MOM

THE SECRETS OF HAPPY STAY-AT-HOME MOMS

2017 SARA BLANCHARD

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ISBN 978-1-68350-559-4 paperback

ISBN 978-1-68350-560-0 eBook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906586

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To my daughters, Cassady and Annika. For you, I work to find a better way.

My freshmen year at Harvard, I overheard two people talking about a woman who had graduated a few years ago and had left her job at a private equity firm to stay home with her kids. One of the guys sneered, Isnt she a little overqualified for that? I am still upset today thinking about the ignorance of that statement and the stigma on parents who deviate from the reckless pursuit of a narrowly defined type of productivity. This is not just a question of maternity or paternity leave for parents in the first few months of a new baby. This is an issue which makes us question how to live a valuable life, why work is meaningful, when to leave work in the day, whether we take vacations, and whether we should turn to productive emails after hours or on the weekend.

When Sara and I sat down to a meal in the spring of 2008, it was not at a lavish restaurant befitting young professional colleagues, but at a dorm dining hall surrounded by chatty, boisterous undergrads. We were in the midst of teaching sections for Harvards most popular coursePositive Psychology 1504and I was drafting my book The Happiness Advantage . In the midst of a monochromatic dining hall meal we spoke about the ripple effect, about the thrills and difficulties of book writing and life coaching, and about how we couldnt wait for the next time all of us teaching fellows would head out to get real food, which basically meant not eating on a tray. Who knew that despite all of our plans for consulting and research and the future of positive psychology, in the near future, Sara and her husband would soon have a child, and she would leave the workforce. And she was not alone.

Consider the statistics. Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed an increasing number of American womennow over 30%are waiting until their 30s to have their first child. Mothers in this country are having children later in life, meaning theyve had a taste of working, of having a career, before they add the new title of parent onto their resume. I have witnessed how challenging it is to give up a blossoming career to focus entirely on someone else. And, there are millions of people in this country who do it all the time. Of the roughly 34 million families with children under 18, both parents worked in roughly 60% of those families. Even conservatively, if we say that half of those parents who didnt work, did not work by choice, that would mean at least 7 million parents have chosen to stay at home to raise their children. There are millions of parents who are struggling with the in-between, wanting to continue their own personal trajectory while also wanting to prioritize their children. Its a question I ask every day as I structure my day or think about traveling for work. But due to the nature of our biology, this question often weighs heavier among our moms.

My wife, Michelle Gielan, lives the lifestyle Sara describes in Flex Mom , even though we didnt have a name for it when we started. This new model of parenthood, Flex Momthe third model that sits somewhere between stay-at-home moms and working momsis one that Michelle has operated by ever since we had our first child. She and I met first as colleagues, researching and spreading happiness together, and with her magnetic personality and brilliant mind, I wouldnt have wanted her to feel like she had to give up that side of herself to raise our son Leo. Yet, our child means the world to us and with our hectic travel schedules, we wouldnt have wanted to leave him at home to be raised by anybody but us. We created the space in our lives to give our son the love he needs, while continuing to work to spread the happiness that brought us together as a family in the first place. And it has been both a sacrifice and a joy.