Parenting: Babies
Do Stay-at-Home Moms Miss the Rat Race?
Your maternity leave is quickly coming to an end and a decision has to be made. You thought you’d be able to leave your baby and get back to work without any reservation. But it seems your feelings have changed. You love being home with your baby to watch her every smile and cater to her every need, but you long for adult conversation beyond the weekly bank visits and quick “hellos” in the grocery checkout line.
So what do you do? Today, it seems almost abnormal for Mom to stop everything and stay home with her children. In fact, in less than one-quarter of married households, the husband is the sole financial provider. Within the last century, the number of American women in the workforce has increased from 28 percent in the 1940s to more than 60 percent by 1998, according the U.S. Department of Labor. Between 1969 and 1996, the number of working married women with children increased by 84 percent, and by 1998, two-thirds of all mothers in married-couple families were employed.
By choosing to work again or to remain at home, each has its own set of consequences. On the one hand, you have your career back on track, a sense of purpose beyond your family, not to mention a second income. But then there are childcare expenses, occasional missed baby milestones and leaving her in the care of someone else when she’s sick.
By choosing not to return to work, you can take care of your family and your home. That also means leaving your professional life behind and the obligatory tightening of the finances. This decision is never an easy one and often comes down to basic necessity. Here are two women who put their careers on hold for their children and had very different outcomes.
Miralys Camelo
“Everyday I’m elated because I have two kids and I’m fortunate enough to stay home with them, but at the same time I feel like I’m not doing anything with my life,” she says. Camelo, 29, a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) in Connecticut, eloped with her husband Wilson three months after she finished college. “He was in the Air Force and he was transferred to California, so I followed him.”
Miralys’ husband, Wilson, appreciates her position. “We feel fortunate that Miralys can stay at home, but I also think going back to work will help out immensely,” he says. “Not only from a financial perspective, but I think she misses the interaction with adults, feeling like she's contributing in other ways and forging friendships with other people.”
While Camelo is happy her husband has a wonderful career and is thankful she can raise her children herself, she’s looking forward to the day her eldest goes to kindergarten. “Play groups are a good place to make friends, but they can become expensive, and moms in my situation are always in such a rush to pick up their kids and go,” she says. “But once kindergarten starts I can go to groups with my younger child that I couldn’t attend with both my kids, and hopefully I can meet some people there.” Her plan is to begin school again sometime this year.
Her advice: “Follow what you heart tells you,” she says. “Take a deep breath and bear with it because things will eventually change.” But most importantly, she says, “Enjoy your kids, because you never know when you might be forced to go back to work and then you miss out on so much. Kids are only this age once.”
Jackie Kelvington
During those last few months of her pregnancy, Kelvington realized her desire to work diminished. “Before she was born, I would get massages to make time for me,” she says. “Then later on in the pregnancy I was ready to get out of work. My focus was changing, and I could feel my body telling me it was time to slow down. But I was surprised at how little I longed to work once I was home with her.”
After about five months, Kelvington realized how much she missed her career, so she worked out a compromise. Rather than going back full time, she started a consulting business out of her home part time and was still able to enjoy her daughter. “Our family would be very hard pressed to live on one salary, as is the case with most families,” she says. “So I am able to contribute financially and am actually making more money than I did in my last job. Two years into this, however, I still miss an office, being around people and having adult conversations everyday. But I am involved, and I stay in touch. The first five months there was some wanting to go back, but for the most part, it was being there for MacKenzie and making sure our family was in good shape.”
Kelvington’s advice is to prioritize. This is your baby and your family and this has priority, she says. “MacKenzie put things in perspective for me,” she says. “I will never have that time again, and raising her is important. It’s important to be patient and understand that you made the decision to have a baby, and there are things that come along with that.”
Make Time for You
It is also important that moms believe in themselves and know they are the experts when it comes to their children. “Make your own decisions, but learn to trust others too,” she says, mostly out of personal experience, as she has a 2-year-old child herself. “Give up a little control so someone else can share in raising the child.”
It’s 2:30 in the morning, and Miralys Camelot's 1-year old daughter has just settled herself to sleep. As Camelo leans over the rails of her crib and strokes her daughter’s face, she smiles, reassuring herself that moments like these are why she decided to postpone her career.
Now with a 1-year old and a 5-year old, Camelo finds herself with mixed emotions like many other moms who ended or didn’t get the chance to start their careers. “I feel inadequate and useless because all I do is be at home with my kids,” she says. “I don’t have a life or any friends. I get frustrated, depressed and sometimes cry. My husband gets to have friends and a life [outside of the house], and sometimes it doesn’t feel fair. I’ve worked small jobs here and there and gotten some experience. And I have this desire to go back to school and get my master’s degree but I can’t because the cost of daycare. And with the money my husband earns, it isn’t economical.”
When Jackie Kelvington of Winter Park, Fla., became pregnant with her first child, she was in a fast-paced position as a public relations director. When her daughter, MacKenzie, was born, she decided not to take back her full-time position. “It was a very difficult decision,” she says. 
“I am very career-minded and loved my job and the people I worked with.”
Regardless of which path you choose, there are some things a mom needs to do for herself to maintain her “sanity,” so to speak. Amy Mason-Mann, the founder of Xanadu Family Center in Connecticut, believes all moms should take time for themselve. “Enroll in exercise classes or yoga once a week and find a gym that offers babysitting,” she says. “When you are nurtured, you nurture better.”
