The Stay At Home Mom Curse? ...

Originally posted on my "old" blog March 14, 2011 ... 

If you had asked me 5 years ago if I would ever be writing a blog like this I would have told you that you were totally and completely nuts ... if you had asked for my honest opinion 5 years ago as to whether or not being a stay-at-home mom was the better best choice for any growing family that could afford it ... I would have said ABSOFREAKINLUTELY ... and then the walls came tumbling down ...

Now before I say all this ... please don't think for a minute that I actually regret the time I spent with my children ... watching them grow ... nurturing them ... seeing every single
milestone ... taking all the teaching moments I could ... being their main source of, well, everything .... because I wouldn't  change it for the world ... quite literally ... which will make more sense in a few sentences ....

So the walls came tumbling down ... in April 2008 ... my separation and divorce process started ... at the time I had been a full-time stay at home mom for 5 years ... I had a part-time job in retail management ... which I honestly got for sanity, to get me out of the house, to talk to adults, but ended up relying on the extra income ... I held that job for about 2 1/2 years before the divorce process started ... but ...

I was left in the end with a more than half-finished degree that I gave up on because I was going to be a stay at home mom ...  and really no job history .... in an economy that sucks ... I had no way of supporting myself ... it wasn't for lack of trying if I could list the hundreds, no thousands of jobs that I have applied for since 2008 ... well, I don't think anyone that isn't in it can grasp how the economy and job market have been ... I kept my retail job and then had to move through not much choice of my own ... and had to leave it ... I found a new job nine months later and ended up having to leave that one under the same circumstances ...

So, because I made the choice to be a stay at home mom ... to leave my plush office accounting job to do so ... (did I mention it had a pension) ... because I made this choice ... I have been struggling, really, really struggling for the last three years ...

You can be judgmental of me being divorced, I would have been five years ago ... but ... it's not just the divorce ... what if something would have happened to my ex-husband? ... what if he had been permanently disabled, or ... died .... I would be in pretty much the same boat ... yeah there would be life insurance ... well, now there's child support ... but still ... as stay at home moms I don't think we realize the vulnerable position that we put ourselves in ... how we put ourselves in the full hands of our partners .... and that anything that goes wrong could mean financial disaster ....

Like I said I wouldn't change it ... but I will share my story with some people ... to maybe help save them from the same fate ... there are things you can do here and there to keep up your chances of being hired ... I made a choice to put my fate completely in the hands of my ex-husband and his ability to earn money ... and while I don't regret it ... if I could go back ... I would have made some different choices ... like finishing my degree ... and maybe making that part time job in something with more living wage potential than retail ...