Stay-At-Home Parent Struggles
First let me say that being a stay-at-home parent is rewarding. I’ve been one for almost six months now after quitting a lucrative career. Yes, the stay-at-home parent struggles are real, and we’ll dive into how to cope with those challenges, but it’s not all bad.
In fact, if you have the luxury of being a stay-at-home parent and raising your child day-to-day, you are uniquely fortunate. Many families do not have that option. They have to resort to nannies, daycares, or other family members for help.
During the week, most parents who work barely see their children. A stay-at-home parent not only sees their children regularly, they can help ease the household burdens on the parent who works. But this is where the challenges can compound.
Caretaker and homemaker
If you hire a nanny, they usually do not offer additional services for free such as washing dishes, doing laundry, or cleaning the house. They may do some of those things, but rare is the nanny who includes them all at a standard hourly rate.
If you are a stay-at-home parent, those homemaking tasks usually fall to you. That’s in addition to taking care of the kids. This can alleviate some of the burden on the working parent, but can add extra stress to the parent who stays home.
There is nothing worse than dealing with frustrating babies and toddlers, and then trying to clean the house during your only break — nap time.
As a stay-at-home parent, all of the homemaking tasks should not fall to you. Taking care of children is already a full time job. So just as you would with your partner if you hired childcare, split the homemaking tasks. Figure out what works best for you. It’s one thing to try to clean throughout the day while the kids are awake, it’s totally different for the expectation to be that you have a spotless home by the time your partner comes home from work.
Good communication with your partner
To communicate well with your partner, there first must be a baseline level of respect for what you are doing as a stay-at-home parent. Some people are…
