SAHMs With a Working Mom Mentality...

I was talking to a close friend today that has also just quit teaching to be a mom. We were discussing the mind set of not earning our own money now. It is nice to say what's yours is mine and mine is yours, but after you have contributed financially for the entire marriage, how do you deal with the new reality that the husband is the sole earner? We were discussing the "guilt" of spending that was not there before.


Then there is the time. Something everyone has always wanted right? I mean I actually had time to prepare a couple of fabulous homemade desserts while having a glass of wine for a dinner party we were invited to. This was actually a first. I have never had a glass of wine while cooking.....Hard to believe but true. Who had time for that?

I had so much time I threw in a pasta salad. The thing is- this was my first time I have ever made pasta salad! Seriously. I have loved it since I was little and always have eaten it at any salad bar that had it but never made it. But when I have a whole day to go to the grocery store and get the ingredients I need, cook it, and have a glass of wine-that's why I wanted to quit my job. To do things I've never had time for....like pasta salad and wine! I wanted to be a homemaker with the same creativity and gusto that I have had as a teacher. I wanted to live with more intention and less frenzy.

But getting back to that coveted free time. Now that for the first time I am not doing everything frenetically I am adjusting to the, "What do you DO all day?" or the "It must be NICE to have time to..." Am I supposed to carry guilt that I quit the job I went to college for 6 years to do and did with a vengeance for 13 years utilizing my masters degree so that I may raise my own children all day everyday, clean my own house, cook our meals (and dessert and pasta salad for the neighbors), run our errands, manage all of our appointments, mow my own grass, and wash, dry, and iron our own laundry? I'm learning stay at home moms actually save their family a bundle by actually doing what others PAY people to do.

I asked my friend if she thought it would have been easier on our minds if we had been stay at home moms all along rather than making the switch later in life in our mid 30s. I don't know. I do know that it is a major adjustment. I don't know if I will be "just" a mom and wife (such and oxymoron) or if I will teach again, or find a whole new career. I am learning it is never best to assume when looking into someone else's life. I am learning to give what I am doing now all I have and try to figure it out as I go! I am learning how to be a SAHM with a working mom's mentality.