Endless Ramblings on Becoming a SAHM

Grab a cup of coffee or tea before you begin reading this post. It's a long one full of big issues and serious questions. I bet some of you can relate completely, so although seemingly endless, I think this post is worth reading :-)

Remember the other day how I wrote about babies because they were really on my mind? I thought writing that post would get some of my thoughts out in the open, and then I could move on to something else. However, that is not what happened. Instead, it caused me to think constantly about babies and what was keeping me from having them :-P

I decided that the #1 thing keeping Luke and I from having babies is......MONEY.

I know people say things like, "You will never be ready, so don't wait until you are!" Or "Don't put off having a baby just because you are worried about money." But I feel like we are just trying to be responsible and not naive.

I really do believe that if I continued to work at my job and Luke continued at his, combined with the money we make through our apartments, we would be financially ready to have a baby. (Or at least we would be if our car wasn't cursed and we didn't have all the payments from the repairs!) But the big problem with that is that I don't want to keep my job when we have a baby. And without my income, we would really be struggling. Ugh. Stupid money.

I find myself brainstorming really ridiculous ideas of how to find another way to make money, besides working out of the home.

I have seriously considered becoming a medical transcriptionist so I could eventually work from home (not so ridiculous I guess)

I've thought about baby-sitting in my own home, only for people who work 9-5 type jobs. Then I could just watch other people's kids while I watch my own. Maybe my best idea, but I just don't know anybody who needs a baby-sitter like that. However, I've just convinced myself that this may be something to look into.

I've thought about getting my degree in writing and trying to do freelance work. I don't think I'm really that great of a writer aside from writing my own thoughts in this blog. So I probably wouldn't make much money doing that, and I'd have to pay for school, too.

I have thought about things we could give up to make up for the money we would be losing...Netflix, umm...Cable, internet, phone, food...yeah, that would probably do it :-P (obviously not going to work!)

I could start my own Etsy shop! I could sell, ummm, not sure yet. Maybe this isn't my best idea!

We could buy another house and rent it out! Except, where are we going to find money for a down payment? And how are we going to afford another mortgage and still make money from the rent?

We could move out of our apartment (which is a part of the house we own...there are three apartments in our house), and live in some teeny tiny little apartment that we'd barely have to pay any rent on, and then rent out our current apartment which we could probably charge a pretty penny for after all the work we've put into it. But I don't really want to raise a baby in a tiny little apartment, not ever knowing when we'd be able to move out.

We could become Amish. Definitely my most ridiculous idea yet. And I'm not serious just in case any of you were wondering :-P

It's just all very frustrating. Growing up I was always encouraged to go to college! Get a job! Be successful! And I'm not saying that those things are bad things at all. I'm so glad I got a college education, and I'm equally glad that I've gotten the opportunity to have a job out in the real world for the past three years.

When I started college, I wasn't in a serious relationship. I didn't know when/if I'd ever get married. All I could see in front of me was my immediate future: college/becoming a teacher.

Then Luke came into my life right before my second year of college. I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to marry him, but still never questioned my future. I'd be a teacher. That was that.

Around the time we got engaged and I was doing my student teaching, it hit me. Wait, what's going to happen when we have kids? Who is going to baby-sit them? How long will I be allowed to take off for maternity leave? What if I want to stay at home with them forever and never return to work?

I brushed off all of these questions, thinking that kids were still in my distant future. I would just cross that bridge when I came to it.

Luke and I got married, and periodically discussed our timeline and when we wanted to have kids. I started to realize that maybe kids weren't quite as far off as they had seemed when we were engaged. I started thinking about them more and more.

The first time the thought of being a stay-at-home mom crossed my mind, I was almost ashamed. I had been taught by my teachers, family, and society that you went to school, got a job, built a career. And that is just what you are supposed to do. I never questioned it or thought about it.

The more I let myself think about and research being a stay-at-home mom, I realized that it is NOT a bad thing. God made women to be nurturers. We are called to take care of our families and raise them up in His ways. There is no reason to be ashamed of wanting to be a stay-at-home mom! It is a noble thing, and I think it is what God has called us to (maybe not all of us. I don't want to judge anyone who doesn't want to be a SAHM. There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to provide for your family by working outside the home either!)

I hate, though, how standards have changed so much in our society. Sometimes I wish it was still the 50s! Then it would be normal to be a stay-at-home mom. It wouldn't be such a struggle. Maybe women were slightly oppressed back then, but I think the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction now. Now we are almost too liberated, and we are not able to stay at home with our families if we want to.

My sister and I have had a certain discussion before, and I'm going to share it here. First of all, you should know that politically, we don't agree on ANYTHING. And we do agree on this one thing. So that should tell you something. Anyway, we were both talking about how, after the feminist movement, women almost HAVE to work outside the home to provide for the standard of living that we all want to have. We are expected and trained, for the most part, to get jobs and have careers. Now think if we all gave up some of the luxuries in life and the women all quit their jobs and went home to solely care for their families. If they wanted to, that is. How many jobs would that open up for men?? There are so many people who need jobs. If you really think about it, since so many of us women have entered the workforce in the past 50 years, so many more jobs are needed for people to fulfill! There are not enough jobs right now for the people who need/want them. If more of us women had stayed home to take care of our families through the years, I wonder if our economy would be where it is today? I hope I'm making sense. And I'm probably making myself sound really ignorant, because I don't really know what I'm talking about. But it made sense to me and my sister.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm just mad that we went from a society where women couldn't work, at least in certain jobs, to a society where women can't NOT work. I know there are exceptions. But I know sooo many women who have to work a full-time job and would much rather be at home with their kids. Or women like me who desparately want to have babies and be stay-at-home moms, almost more than we want to BREATHE, and it just doesn't seem possible.

I'm going to leave it at that for this evening. And I'm going to go and keep praying that God just somehow plops an opportunity right into our laps one of these days to make everything possible. He can do it!

Sorry for the length of this post. You deserve some kind of award if you made it all the way through that ;-)