From Teacher to Stay-at-Home-Mom: How I found Joy in Homemaking
For the first twenty-one years of my life, I had no interest in becoming a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM). If you had asked me at the time, I would have said, “Sure, it’s a valuable occupation, just not the one for me.” I don’t know if this was because of a lack of exposure—my mom worked and so did her mom before her—or because of my own ambitions, but a slow-paced life centered around the home had no appeal to me. I would even go so far as to say I thought I’d get bored. Toward the end of my junior year of college, I was actually pursuing a career in management consulting which, for anyone familiar with the industry, is incredibly intense and time-consuming. My husband works for a consulting firm right now and the job involves frequent travel, long hours, and high pressure presentations.
I’ve always been ambitious, and so I set my sights on what I felt was an ambitious career path. My interests bounced between a variety of careers throughout school—veterinarian, marine biologist, naval officer, English professor, and eventually consultant—but at every point in my life, from as early as I can remember, I always had a career ambition I was striving toward.
It’s classic, right? Everyone asks little kids what they want to be when they grow up and they usually rattle off different professions. While I knew I wanted to be a wife and a mother, I never in a million years would’ve imagined listing that off as my ambition because it felt, well, not very ambitious. In my mind, those were things that just happened on the side of the career you built for yourself. They were important, but they were sort of communal goals whereas my career was mine alone, an aspiration I didn’t have to share with anyone else.
A phrase I used a lot in college when I talked to my then boyfriend, now husband, about my career was “what people will think.” I wanted others to look at my life and see success. In elementary school I started a school newspaper and jumped one grade ahead in math. In middle school I moved another grade ahead in math and poured myself into winning awards at the Texas state science fair. In high school, I attended a rigorous engineering school and ran leadership courses. In college, I joined the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M and earned a 4.0 GPA. So many of my accomplishments in life were aimed at impressing others, even though I told myself they were for me.
And so when it felt like consulting wasn’t going to pan out, I set my sights on Teach For America. Teaching was familiar—both my parents are educators—and, most importantly, it was prestigious. I have always been a little obsessed with prestige. Some piece of me still is and probably always will be, no matter how hard I try to root it out.
The Pandemic and the Pull to Homemaking
During the pandemic, things started to change. I began my feminine transformation around this time too, which you can read about here, but as my outward appearance shifted, so did my internal aspirations.
Interestingly enough, this is kind of common among my fellow members of Gen Z. We as a generation are known for not prioritizing careers as much as those who have come before us. While there are challenges associated with this, I think it reflects an important realization: work doesn’t have to define your life.
I fell in love with a YouTube homemaker named Mrs. Midwest and started binging her content like crazy. Between my Zoom classes, I watched every single video she had ever made and little by little fell in love with her life. She talked about femininity, marriage, and the satisfaction of homemaking. While I understood that there was value in creating a home, I never imagined someone could feel truly satisfied folding laundry, washing dishes, running errands, and cooking. It felt like a form of oppression in my mind.
Before I continue, I want to say that none of what I’m about to say here is prescriptive. I don’t believe every woman needs to be a homemaker or a SAHM. We are not all the same person and we each have different skills and desires in life. I love having a female primary care provider and I love having a female gynecologist. I have so much respect for women in rigorous careers like consulting and law who balance their motherhood with their work. My time working as a teacher before becoming a stay-at-home-mom has given me so much respect for the incredible amounts of effort teachers dedicate to their jobs behind the scenes and the passion they bring to the classroom. My favorite podcast is hosted by two career women—one a wedding photographer and the other an entrepreneur—and I think the world is big enough and beautiful enough for us to coexist and learn from each other.
But for me and my life and my personal situation, I started to feel a pull to the home. It scared me at first, because I’d never felt that way before. I talked to my then-boyfriend, now husband, about my feelings, and we decided that when we had kids someday, it might make sense for me to stay home with them. In the meantime, I pursued consulting and eventually teaching, while the pull to be at home became increasingly more difficult to ignore.
Adjusting to the SAHM Life
Finally, almost a year ago, my little guy was born and it came time to leave my job as an eleventh grade Algebra II teacher and transition into my new role: taking care of my son and homemaking while my husband was at work.
My husband returned to his job at the end of paternity leave and all of a sudden it was just me and this chubby bundle of joy. I had absolutely no idea what to do with myself. A piece of me actually envied my husband for going back to work because he was returning to a life that was familiar and predictable, tied to who he was before he became a parent, while I had to figure out how to do something I had never done before with no blueprint.
I wallowed a little bit. Maybe I wallowed a lot. I was ashamed to admit that then and I’m ashamed to admit it now, but it’s true and I’m writing this for anyone who might be interested in this kind of life or even just curious what the heck SAHMs do all day. Because I had no idea what I was supposed to do all day. I’d imagined baking pastries and writing novels and folding laundry in an idyllic haze, but at the beginning I could barely make the bed, unload the dishwasher, and fold one load of laundry while entertaining my baby. I felt lost, intellectually unstimulated, and overwhelmed.
If you’re in those early months of being a SAHM, my heart is with you. It’s hard, confusing, and unstructured, but it does get better. I like to compare it to my first year teaching.
Learning the Role, One Day at a Time
In education, it is a known thing that the first year teaching is the worst. It’s like drinking from a fire hose. You have so many expectations about how fun your classroom is going to be and the difference you’re going to make and the kids you’re going to connect with and while some of those aspirations might materialize, a lot of it also looks like late nights planning and stressful situations where you’re trying to figure out your classroom management style. Teaching is one of those jobs that is best learned by doing, and interestingly enough so is motherhood.
You can read all the books, watch all the YouTube videos, ask your mom friends for advice (still working on making mom friends!) but at the end of the day the way you’ll figure out the type of mom you are is by being a mom. The way you figure out what a day in the life looks like as a stay at home mom is by being a stay at home mom. It’s all so nuanced and things change every day.
My second year teaching, I felt exponentially better than I did my first year. And now that my son is almost a year old, I’m starting to feel like I have my life together. I feel joyful. I have time to write and prioritize my hobbies. I cook delicious, complicated recipes for my family. I expose my son to exciting new experiences. I participate in mom groups. I keep up with laundry and our apartment feels clean and organized.
But I couldn’t have done any of this right out of the gate. It all takes time. That was the hardest thing about my first year teaching. I knew I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be, but I couldn’t get any better without just going through it and getting experience.
I think life in general is like this. My husband would say the same thing about his career journey through a demanding, fast-paced profession.
Giving Yourself Grace
So whether you’re starting a new profession or leaving work to take care of your children full-time, give yourself grace. When I was a teacher, I kept a list of “Things to Be Better At Next Year.” I knew in my first year that my binder situation was atrocious—binders were on the floor, thrown haphazardly into the shelves, and constantly getting lost—but as a first-year teacher, I just didn’t have the energy or know-how to address it. My second year, I hunkered down and created a system.
Think about the things overwhelming you now. Write them down, and tackle them when you have the capacity. Progress will come, but it takes time.
Next in this series, I’ll share a detailed look at what I do all day as a SAHM—because I’ve had people ask, and I used to wonder about it myself. Stay tuned!
Verily,
Kyrie
