The Truth About Being a Stay at Home Mom I Never Expected

I Thought Staying Home with My Children Meant I Had Made It

When I was a little girl, I had a very clear picture of what a woman having a good life looked like.

She was married.

She had children.

Her bills were paid.

Her husband went to work, and she got to stay home with the kids.

I really thought that meant she had made it.

No boss.

No commute.

No coworkers getting on her nerves.

No alarm telling her she needed to rush out the door every morning.

Honestly, it sounded pretty good to me.

Then I grew up and became that woman.

And that's when I learned that the words “stay at home mom” leave out an awful lot of information. 

I Really Was Grateful That I Could Stay Home

I don't want to rewrite my own story and act like I hated being home with my children, because I didn't.

When I first got married, I worked.

Once I started having children, staying home started making more sense.

Daycare was expensive.

By the time we paid someone else to take care of our children while I worked, there wasn't going to be much paycheck left anyway.

My spouse at the time was able to pay our household bills, so I had something a lot of women don't have.

I had the option to stay home.

And I appreciated that.

I got to see the little things.

I knew their routines.

I was there when they were sick.

I didn't have to call a boss because somebody woke up with a fever or daycare called and said somebody needed to be picked up.

There was something nice about being available to my children.

But two things can be true at the same time.

I can be thankful that I was able to stay home and still tell the truth about how hard it was.

Because it was hard.

Much harder than the little girl in me ever imagined. 

“Stay At Home” Is A Very Deceptive Job Title

The funny thing about the title stay at home mom is that it sounds like we're home relaxing.

Stay at home.

It almost sounds like instructions from a doctor.

Stay home.

Rest.

Take it easy.

Meanwhile, a real day might include getting children dressed, making breakfast, finding missing shoes, washing clothes, cleaning up the breakfast you just made, grocery shopping, making lunch, cleaning that up, dealing with somebody crying, answering school messages, scheduling an appointment, picking somebody up, making dinner, cleaning again, baths, homework and bedtime.

And that's assuming nobody throws up.

The job description changes completely when somebody throws up.

Then you become nurse, laundry service, pharmacist, comfort person and disinfecting crew.

There is no clock out time.

There are no weekends when motherhood closes.

You don't put an out of office message on your bedroom door Friday afternoon and tell everybody you'll respond Monday morning.

You're on call.

All the time.

I think that's the part people don't always see. 

Nobody Sees Half the Work Because Half the Work Happens in Your Head

Some of the hardest work I remember wasn't even physical.

It was remembering everything.

Who needed something for school.

Who had an appointment.

What groceries we were running out of.

Whether somebody had clean clothes for tomorrow.

What was for dinner.

What bill needed to be paid.

What birthday was coming.

Which child needed what.

You can be sitting perfectly still and still working.

Your body may be on the couch, but your brain is going through tomorrow's schedule.

That's what people now call the mental load.

And I understand that phrase very well.

It's the difference between someone saying, “I'll take her to the dentist,” and being the person who noticed she needed the dentist, found the dentist, made the appointment, put it on the calendar, filled out the paperwork and remembered she needed to leave school early.

The drive is one task.

Everything surrounding the drive is another job.

That invisible part matters because when it mostly falls on one person, everybody else can honestly believe things are running smoothly.

Of course they're running smoothly.

Somebody is running them. 

It's ME!!

A House Full of Children Can Still Feel Lonely

This was one of the biggest surprises for me.

I had people around me all day.

Little people.

Very needy little people.

And I was lonely.

That's difficult to explain if you haven't lived it.

Being alone and being lonely aren't the same thing.

You can have children touching you, talking to you and needing something from you every five minutes and still desperately miss adult conversation.

There were stretches when I felt like every part of my day revolved around somebody else.

What they needed.

What they wanted.

What needed to happen next.

There wasn't much room left for me.

I loved my children.

I also missed being around adults.

Those feelings weren't fighting each other.

They were both mine. 

After My Fourth Child I Decided I Needed to Get Out of the House

Eventually, after I had my fourth child, I decided to go back to work for a while.

I needed something different.

I needed adult conversation.

I wanted to put real clothes on, get in the car, drive somewhere and talk to grown people about something besides snacks.

And I loved that part.

There was something good about walking into a building and being recognized as a person who could work, think, solve problems and have conversations that didn't end with somebody asking me to open a juice box.

For a while, it felt really good.

Then I looked at my paycheck.

Daycare had basically looked at my paycheck and said, “Thank you very much. I'll take that.”

Most of what I was earning was going right back out to childcare.

Since my spouse was paying the bills, it wasn't creating a financial crisis for us.

But it did make me question what I was doing.

I just needed to get out of the house.

I needed to interact with other adults.

Then something else happened that taught me an even bigger lesson. 

I Went Back to Work and Somehow My Old Mom Job Came with Me

Going back to work didn't remove the work I had been doing at home.

It added to it.

That was my big revelation.

My morning still started with the children.

I got them up.

I made sure they ate.

I got their clothes together.

I brushed hair.

I got everybody ready.

Then I had to get myself ready for work.

I'd brush my teeth, get dressed, grab a cup of coffee and head out the door with the children.

I'd take them to daycare.

Then I'd go work all day.

After work, I'd pick them up.

Then we'd go home.

Baths.

Dinner.

Getting ready for the next day.

My spouse's morning?

He got up.

Had his coffee.

Watched ESPN.

Went to the bathroom.

Shaved.

Showered.

Got dressed.

Went to work.

When he came home, he might entertain the kids while I cooked dinner.

His day hadn't changed very much.

Mine had completely changed.

I hadn't replaced stay at home motherhood with a paying job.

I had added a paying job to everything I was already doing.

Years later, women are still describing this.

In a 2026 survey of working parents, 62 percent of mothers working full time said balancing work and family was difficult, compared with 47 percent of fathers.

In couples where both parents worked full time, 52 percent said the mother handled more of the daily parenting tasks.

I read numbers like that now and think, yes.

I know that day.

I lived that day. 

That's Why I Don't Like the Working Mom Versus Stay-at-Home Mom Fight

I don't think we need another argument about which mother has it harder.

I've lived both sides.

Staying home was exhausting.

Working while raising children was exhausting.

The exhaustion just wore different clothes.

When I stayed home, I missed adult conversation and having something that felt separate from motherhood.

When I worked, I had that adult interaction again, but now I was trying to squeeze everything else around a job.

Stay at home moms can feel guilty for wanting something outside motherhood.

Working moms can feel guilty for being away from their children.

Apparently motherhood comes with a complimentary bag of guilt no matter which package you choose.

That's why I've stopped looking at this as two different groups of women who need to prove whose life is harder.

We're mothers.

It's a lot. 

I Also Understand the Money Part Differently Also

Money is one reason this choice isn't always much of a choice.

In 2025, mothers with children under six were less likely to be working or looking for work than mothers whose youngest children were older.

That makes sense to me.

Young children need more care, and childcare can change the math quickly.

I remember looking at what I earned and what daycare cost and wondering what exactly I was accomplishing financially.

But at the time, my mental health was becoming very important.

I needed something more.

Tat was another side that I didn't think much about when I was younger.

When we stay out of the paid workforce for years, we may lose more than just coworkers and paychecks.

We may miss raises.

Work experience.

Retirement savings.

Future Social Security earnings.

And getting back into the workforce later isn't always easy.

That doesn't mean staying home is the wrong decision.

I wouldn't tell another woman that.

I just think we deserve to understand the whole decision.

Not only what staying home saves today, but what it may cost later. 

What I Wish More People Understood About Stay at Home Moms

I wish we'd stop assuming that being home means having an easy life.

Maybe her house is messy not dirty therr is a difference.

Maybe she didn't get dinner started.

Maybe she's wearing the same leggings she wore yesterday.

Maybe she can't immediately tell you what she accomplished all day.

That doesn't mean she didn't do anything.

Sometimes keeping children fed, safe, clean enough, reasonably happy and alive takes the entire day.

A lot of motherhood leaves no finished product to point at.

You comforted a crying child.

Nobody sees it later.

You stopped two siblings from fighting.

There's no trophy sitting on the kitchen counter.

You remembered the school form.

You noticed the fever.

You washed the clothes everyone will casually put on tomorrow without thinking about who made sure they were clean.

A lot of the work disappears as soon as it's done.

That doesn't mean it wasn't work. 

I Don't See That Little Girl's Dream the Same Way Anymore

I used to think the woman that gets to stay home with their kids made it.

Now I think she was probably tired.

Maybe grateful.

Maybe lonely.

Maybe happy.

Maybe frustrated.

Probably some combination depending on the day.

That's the part I've learned to respect.

There isn't one honest description of stay at home motherhood because women don't experience it exactly the same way.

Some women genuinely love being home.

Some desperately want to go back to work.

Some return to work and discover that wasn't the answer either.

Some go back because they need the money.

Some stay home because childcare costs too much.

And some of us discover that no matter which door we walk through, motherhood is waiting on the other side with a list.

I don't regret being there for my children.

But I also don't romanticize what those years required from me anymore.

Being able to stay home was something I appreciated.

Being exhausted by staying home was real too.

I can hold both truths now.

And if you're the woman sitting in a house today wondering why something that was supposed to feel like such a blessing sometimes feels incredibly heavy, I hope you give yourself a little more credit.

You aren't “just home.”

You're living days that ask a lot from you, even when nobody else can see everything you're carrying.

And maybe that's what I understand now that I couldn't have understood as a little girl.

Having a good life was never about whether a woman stayed home or went to work.

What mattered much more was whether there was room inside that life for her, too.

#EvolvingWomanhood

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