The Baffling Thing About Being a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM)

2012-10-18Uncategorized Standard

Without really planning to, I’ve become a Stay At Home Mom, affectionately known as SAHM on the internets.  This is a much less prestigious position than the Work At Home Mom (WAHM), which again, is usually deemed less prestigious than just being a Working Mom.  I am painfully aware that I’m now occupying the lowest of the low rungs of ‘healthy’ society (i.e. not the addicts, the mentally ill, etc), but I’m trying to put a happy face on it, and enjoy myself.  Because I’m assuming this is a temporary situation.

Of course, the original plan was to go get myself a ‘normal’ job this fall, but then I got pregnant, and it just doesn’t seem worth the hassle to get set up at a new job for a few months, only to disappear for more months, and then stress about reappearing.

We also planned our finances in such a way that we could survive off of only one of us working, or to be more precise, off of Finnur working in a job in his field, or me working a ‘regular’ (non-academic) job as some sort of engineer.  It pains me to say, but my salary as a teacher at the University of Iceland for the past couple of years wasn’t terrible by general-population Icelandic standards, but way below what my fellow engineers were pulling in.  And it has me fearing for the future of the EE department.  In fact I think these past two years will go down in my personal history as ‘Hrefna volunteers her time and energy for the good of her country – or at least a handful of students’.  And now I’m volunteering my time for my own family.

Surprisingly, I thought I’d have hit the ‘Bottom of the Boredom Bowl’ by mid-October, but that’s just not true.  I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of all that I want to accomplish during my me-time, although I’ve been knocking things off the to-do list at a fairly regular rate.  It’s pretty baffling really.  How can there be so many tasks hidden in a home?!?

In fact, I’m starting to get the somewhat sinking feeling that the task-list is pretty endless, so it might be pertinent to set up some sort of an end-goal?!  Something like ‘Walking into a room in the house only prompts 1-2 things-I’d-like-to-do instead of 4-5’? 🙂

Another factor in not finding my boredom-bottom has been that tendrils of my old job have lingered a bit.  Only yesterday I gave a short talk at the University of Iceland (It’s a video-link!  My part starts on minute 23, but it’s in Icelandic.  Go there for my baby bump if you’re interested… 🙂 ) on my experience weaving together ‘teaching and research’, and I’ve sort of agreed to write a short paper on it, drawn from my final project that I just finished – apparently on my own time!

So yes, I’m surprisingly busy these days.  If I’m not nursing a sick kid back to health (or nursing myself back to health after nursing the sick kid back to health), I’m driving around town finishing errands, or organizing stuff at home, or doing the endless laundry, or just mucking about online.  I have yet to be bored, and it shocks me.

The biggest challenge by far is not talking to other adults for long stretches of time, but that was also the case when I was doing my Ph.D. so there’s nothing really new there.

Anyway, that was today’s meditation on my life as a sheltered princess.  I better go assemble that Ikea chest of drawers now… 🙂

p.s.  The home is far from being spotless.  Just thought you should know. 🙂

COMMENTS

Sonja

Being a SAHM is a luxury that not everyone can afford. I would suggest enjoying every single day of it. You will have more time with the kiddos than at any other time while a working mom.

I wonder why being is SAHM is so looked down upon in Iceland? And also why people think their children are better of with a stranger in an institution than their own parents (but that’s a fodder for a whole different conversation).

Hrefna

Ah yes, one thing I neglected to mention about the ‘SAHM’ aspect of it all is that Bjarki is still in full-time daycare, and Anna spends most of her afternoons at one friends’ house or another. So there is very little ‘mothering’ going on, except I take one them to swim practice pretty much every day, and stay with them when they’re sick.

It’s probably looked down upon because you’re not pulling in any money, and/or are ‘wasting your potential’ when there is almost free daycare to be had.

That said (venturing into the whole different conversation for a bit… sorry!), I still think kids are better off in a well managed group of other children (aka good daycare) than cooped up at home with a mom for the first few years, at least part time, although this depends on the mom. I certainly couldn’t be a full time mom much after the first year. And I could never give them the social skills needed to navigate a group situation for realz.

I am absolutely certain for example that Bjarki is doing so much better than he otherwise could be because he attended an excellent daycare with attentive and creative and loving teachers for his first crucial years. Not only did he have other kids to model, but the school had a much wider range of ‘stuff to do’ then we could ever offer.

For us, going to half-time care around 8 months, and then full time around 1.5-2 years worked really well. We’ll have to wait and see what happens this time around though!

Guðrún Birna

Just note that the end-goal of prompting 1-2 things-I’d-like-to-do is a moving target. Your mind prompts these things by way of mental space. You seem to have a lot of mental space for home-projects, but believe me, once the baby is there the mental space will disappear and you will likely have reached your goal and not notice any. I for instance have put up a messiness filter in my brain, and with the logic that the house will get cleaned in December I can survive in my home just fine.

Hrefna

You make a good point about the mental space! (I’m still living in 85% denial about the whole thing…) I think what irks me most is that we moved in, stuff got put away any which way (non-optimized!!) and now I have this very strong urge to revisit where stuff is and clear out the gunk (VHS tapes! But some have family stuff!) and make it so that I know where stuff is and where it goes. Otherwise, we’ll be back to the ‘piles of stuff on random flat surfaces’ very soon.

But yeah, I’m thinking/hopgin a few more weeks of this will be enough sorting for the next couple of years at least… 🙂

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