Reply to Be honest- what do you think about women who are content to be just wives and mothers?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When I was younger, I thought it was an embarrassment. Now that I'm older (kids in middle school), I don't really care all that much. But, to be honest, I only know one person who is a SAHM, and she came to the U.S. to marry and have kids, so I don't think she's representative of the lifestyle.

[b]I do know several women who have these weird ambiguous consultant gigs--they are neither a SAHM nor a WOHM. And I don't have any particular thoughts about them, they are all quite different from one another. [/b]

I think there is probably more difference in women with different kinds of jobs (let's say nanny versus lawyer) than between women who work and women who SAH. [/quote]

This is me and I'm happy with it as a choice as it's afforded me a lot of flexibility to spend more time with my kids, and also to ramp my work up or down according to the season (I work less in the summer) or what else is going on in life. But it also means I didn't just abandon my career and I derive real value (both in income and in self-worth) through the work I do, which is the culmination of years of experience in my industry.

But it can also be tricky because people don't view your work as "real" because it's not full time or consistent in an obvious way. People also make a ton of assumption about your day to day life that are often based on jealousy or judgment, or both. I know some people who think I do literally nothing. Others think I work all the time and ignore my kids at home. I've met people who assume I bill time to clients when I'm taking care of my kids (I'm way too ethical for that and also most of my work is project-based, not hours-based, so it doesn't even make sense).

As a practical matter, I think my set up is the ideal marriage of being a working mom but having a lot of the advantages of being a SAHM. As an emotional matter it's more complex and I sometimes wish I was either just a SAHM (and could just own it) or had a regular full time job (and could just own that). I sometimes get tired of how other people's feelings about their own lives turn me into a weird Rorschach test for other moms. [/quote]

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