Regrets of a Stay at Home Mom

Parent Cafe
401

<p>*I even had other moms criticize my childbirth choices. Oh, you did Lamazee? Bradley is so much better for the child. Oh, you took pain relief during childbirth? Wow. I would never have done this to my child. </p>

<p>Okay, then. My kid was nearly double the size at birth and you were pre-term, but you are right Susie. You are better than I am. </p>

<p>You nursed for only six months? Well, it is better to nurse for 12 months, 18 months, 2 years, until child is in kindergarten…</p>

<p>You sent your child to public school instead of private? </p>

<p>You sent your child to kinder before age 5? </p>

<p>These conversations never, ever came from men. Not once. Nor was my H judged by male friends over these choices.*</p>

<p>JMO, but it’s mostly about validation. When women meet other women who’ve made different choices, somehow they think that their own choices are being criticized.</p>

<p>I have a SIL who very vocally refused to breast-feed. That’s her choice. But, that didn’t stop her from CONSTANTLY throwing out little barbs every time she saw any other woman nurse. No one was saying to her, “breast is best” when she was bottle-feeding but somehow, deep down, that’s what she was “hearing” when she saw other moms nurse…so out would pop a barb. </p>

<p>So, it’s about validation. She didn’t feel validated when she saw other women making a different choice. </p>

<p>Men do this less, but they are known to do this to other men but over different matters. </p>

<p>One guy may never have gone to college, but he may make a remark when he meets men who did. “I didn’t want to waste anymore time in school. I wanted to get out in the world and make money.” </p>

<p>H had a business guy at work once say to him, “I never wanted to be some nerdy engineer.” lol This was completely uncalled for. The guy was moaning that his salary was too low, and threw out that barb. </p>

<p>Or, one guy may buy a new car and another guy will say, “I always buy used. Everyone knows that a new car loses value the second you drive it off the lot.”</p>

402

<p>"I even had other moms criticize my childbirth choices. Oh, you did Lamazee? Bradley is so much better for the child. Oh, you took pain relief during childbirth? Wow. I would never have done this to my child. </p>

<p>Okay, then. My kid was nearly double the size at birth and you were pre-term, but you are right Susie. You are better than I am. </p>

<p>You nursed for only six months? Well, it is better to nurse for 12 months, 18 months, 2 years, until child is in kindergarten…"</p>

<p>Only if you choose to play these games with other women. You can choose to ignore or segregate yourselves from these kinds of women, you know. You don’t HAVE to hang around them or participate in their stupid, petty, no-lives upmanship.</p>

403

<p>EMM1 writes:

I am not implying anything other than my own experience as how it relates to my daughter.</p>

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<p>If it wasn"t for my mom, I dont know what we would have done and that includes my mother-in-law as well.</p>

404

<p>There is nothing as deeply personal to a woman as motherhood, so remarks that we wouldn’t notice in other areas of life go straight to the heart when they are about our kids. The best thing that happened to me was meeting a group of like-minded breast feeding families that provided incredible support and companionship in those early years. They helped me keep my own priorities in perspective.</p>

405

<p>But don’t y’all think that as women age we realize that there isn’t just one way (my way dang-it!!!) to do things? As we see how others have had to juggle family and life, we see that there are many routes to successful parenting? </p>

<p>I think most of the barbs occur when women are in the “thick of it”. Later on, we can be more open-minded.</p>

406

<p>I think that the proof is in the pudding of successfully raised kids. When they are young and uncooked, the possibility that your kid could still become a serial killer or a drug dealer or the village idiot still exists. When those possibilities have been avoided, then we don’t worry about the details because it all worked out. My SIL, who is a wonderful woman, has a son who is living every mother’s nightmare, and she often tells me how lucky I am with my kids. That makes my skin crawl because my son is only 15 and only God knows what the plan is for him. 15 year olds aren’t fully cooked.</p>

407

<p>You are correct, Pizzagirl. </p>

<p>Every one of those women who made me feel less were excluded from my group. At first. The problem is, eventually when you surround yourself with clones of only like-minded souls, you become even more isolated and clique-y. </p>

<p>Which is not healthy. </p>

<p>After awhile, you just learn to get along with everyone, take their backhanded comments for what they are. My women friends often ended up being the moms of my kid’s friends. </p>

<p>I was often surprised at the comments and do not think my women friends were intentionally being hurtful.</p>

408

<p>Out of curiosity I just asked my mom if she ever got flack from other women for not breastfeeding me. Her response? “It never really came up.” I was raised around the type of women where it just “didn’t come up” so I guess that’s why I just don’t understand some of the sentiments here. I suppose I have been very lucky :slight_smile: </p>

<p>I will let you all know when I have kids how that turns out, but I was raised by my mother who is a no-nonsense type of woman… I didn’t really have time or tolerance for gossip in high school and I doubt I’ll have time or tolerance for it when I’m balancing kids and a career :)</p>

409

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<p>First of all, there are many women who would have loved the choice to stay at home with their kids. So for sure there is an undercurrent of jealousy in some of these conversations. But yes, sometimes those of us who have to work full time AND take care of kids and pets and a home (sometimes without a husband or family to help out, as has been my situation) don’t have a ton of sympathy for women who are “exhausted” from the same things we have to do on evenings and weekends that they have all day to do once their kids are in school. I spend pretty much all weekend, every weekend, cleaning the house, doing yard work and other house projects (right now I am dealing with a broken garbage disposal that shoots water up like a geyser), and running errands. On weeknights I shop for food and try to cook healthy dinners for my family, and until recently I had to drive people to lessons and appointments and other activities. There are also bills to pay, homework to help with, and expectations that I will volunteer for my kids’ organizations (where there is no slack given to working parents–every family is expected to contribute a certain number of hours). Forget a regular schedule for exercise or anything I want to do for myself. There simply is no time.</p>

<p>I do understand that being home with kids is hard work. We working parents are also home with our kids when they are sick or on school holidays, so we know what a grind it can be. Nevertheless, all that time is still a luxury, IMO. And just because some of us have to work does not mean that we don’t have the same high standards for ourselves as parents when we are home.</p>

410

<p>I think it’s my INTJ talking, but I just never really cared about the blah blah blah of other mothers on this kind of thing. As a full time working mother anyway, I didn’t have time to sit and coffee klatsch with them anyway. If they “disapproved” of my choices, oh wells, I didn’t even care about theirs so what do I care what they thought of mine. I think women are their own worst enemies when they want validation from random other mothers.</p>

411

<p>Oh, you took pain relief during childbirth? Wow. I would never have done this to my child.</p>

<p>lol… I remember hearing this when I was pregnant with my first and was planning on having an epidural (I was truly scared of the idea of natural child-birth). My SIL (the bottle mama) gave me such a hard time. In the end, I had to have C-sections for both kids, so that ended that…no expects anyone to have C-sections w/o an epidural. :)</p>

<p>oh, and SIL ended up having to have a C-section for her last one. ;)</p>

412

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<p>I was a “professional woman.” One day I was to pick S2 up from Hebrew school at 6:00 PM – should have been plenty of time for me to get there. Of course there was terrible traffic (this was before cell phones – or, at least, before my cell phone) and I didn’t get there until 45 minutes late. S2 had gone home with the mother of one of his friends – a woman who was a SAHM for her three sons. </p>

<p>When I finally showed up at her house to pick up my son, he and his friend were playing basketball in the driveway outside. I rang the bell to thank this woman and, when she answered, I could smell onions and pot roast wafting through the house. Her middle and the youngest were sitting at the dining room table doing their homework and she told them over her shoulder that she’d be with them in just a minute.</p>

<p>I was sooooooooo jealous of her life! I think it was the onion and pot roast smell that really got to me! </p>

<p>Of course I apologized for being so late, the traffic was terrible, blah blah blah. And she just said, “Oh, I don’t know how you do it!”</p>

<p>I felt like we each respected the other’s choice. It was a good moment.</p>

413

<p>It is nice when people can respect each other without judgement and jealousy. :)</p>

414

<p>I have never had anyone, female or male, criticize my childbirth or childrearing choices. How would a conversation like that even happen? Nor did anyone ask me to care for her children if it looked like I had some free time, although a neighbor doctor thought I should let her dog out on the days when she worked out of town, since my baby woud be napping about that time. Say what?</p>

415

<p>Pizzagirl, I respect and admire you very much. I love the way you set your boundaries and are true to your own values. I want that for my girls.</p>

<p>On a personal level, I never cared what other moms had to say. I had no choice but to work. But it really, really hurt to see my kids constantly excluded. In fact, it still stings. There were so many things that the other moms did in a group that my kids didnt. In hindsight, it was a mistake on my part to put them in a school where we were the only “other” family I. Those early years. A more diverse group would probably have been better.</p>

416

<p>The comments came from friends from high school, friends from college and other moms in the park. People I never thought would be the mean girls, either. </p>

<p>Maybe it never happened to you. </p>

<p>It does happen. And it isn’t nice.</p>

417

<p>I loved telling my epidural story to other moms, and how much I loved our pediatrician because she was not judgmental about my kids were bottle fed. Whenever someone mentioned how breast fed babies were healthier, I would just point out how healthy both of my kids were. I was very good at whipping up a bottle in the car and feeding the baby without asking H to stop.</p>

418

<p>I loved telling my epidural story to other moms</p>

<p>Heck, you don’t get an extra present on Mothers Day if you did it without drugs.</p>

<p>:)</p>

419

<p>One day, out of the blue when my S was a year old or so, my mother-in-law apologized to me. She said she had always thought that women who continued to work after becoming a mother didn’t love their children. But after spending time with us, she saw how wrong that was. </p>

<p>I was very glad she had resisted the urge to express that opinion earlier–it would not have been good for our relationship.</p>

420

<p>My kids’ pediatrician was a saint. If a family had a sick kid, he would open the office right then. Sunday mornings, Friday nights, whenever a kid was sick he was here. I didn’t appreciate that fully until my kids were older and my doctor had very limited hours.</p>