The Unexpected Stay-at-Home Mom

unexpectedstayathomemomBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Many working mothers agonize over their decision to spend long hours at the office while their children are being taken care of by full-time nannies. Under these circumstances, there are often feelings of guilt as well as self-doubt. While walking out the door, many women are left wondering if they’re going to miss a pivotal moment in their baby’s life while making their commute, attending a meeting, or working overtime for the third day that week. It’s more than understandable that these feelings exist, but what happens when being a stay-at-home mom isn’t your decision, but rather thrust upon you… after being laid off?

According to Dr. Gillian Paull, a research associate for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the current recession is having a more far-reaching impact on working mothers; more so than previous economic downturns because there are now more mothers in the workforce and because their sectors have been hard hit.

The discord of the guilt-ridden working mother has been well documented, but with this crop of laid off moms brings a multitude of new and unfamiliar problems to the table. After years of tormenting themselves over whether or not they should give up their job in order to raise their children full-time, the one-time fantasy has become a reality and for many women, it’s not how they had envisioned it.

Whose Choice? Does That Matter?

Can a woman who’s devoted much of her adult life to her career happily- and seemingly overnight- morph into a full-time mom? Even more importantly, will being a full-time mom be fulfilling or stimulating enough? These are proving to be tough questions for many former career women. Being a mother is obviously an unrivaled experience, but, for some women, the shift can feel completely overwhelming after years of work they enjoyed in a career they felt passionate about and fought to keep.

Though many women must work to support their families, there are also legions of women who choose to work because they love their career and feel their work gives them purpose. For these women, being laid off can lead to questions about their identity and confusion concerning their role.

In her piece entitled Maternal Affairs: Back to Square Mum, UK-based writer and laid off mom Bridget Harrison poignantly describes her realization that she is now a part of a club she had no desire to be in as she faces the moms at her son’s school who have chosen from the very beginning to stay at home with their children. She writes, “The stay-at-home-mums gang is something that strikes terror in all of us would-be working mothers. Perhaps it’s the guilt of facing women who have made the sacrifices we fear we were too selfish to make. Or paranoia that they know we have always secretly thought their lives beyond tedious.”

Caroline DeVore’s experience has proven to be different from Harrison’s, but she can definitely relate to the writers’ feelings of guilt and confusion. DeVore spent a majority of her 20 year career in c-level positions with large software companies and prided herself on being one of only a handful of female graduate students who received Masters Degrees in electrical engineering back in the early 1980s. In the past four years; however, DeVore has been laid off twice.

Always an overachiever, DeVore was the SVP of Marketing for an $800 million company when she was just thirty-five-years-old, but that came with a price. During her first marriage both of her children were essentially being raised by a nanny, and she spent very little time with her husband. Ten years, a divorce, and two c-level jobs later, DeVore is remarried and drawing unemployment after being laid off in August of 2008.

“I’m trying to reconcile being laid off and staying at home with my children with making a decision to ‘retire’ and stay at home with my children,” DeVore said. “I think the rub for many c-level women is ‘whose decision was it, mine or theirs?’ I struggled with having my career, fulfilling my desire to make the big decisions and be the go-to person on the corporate team and being a good mom. I told myself that I could be a career woman and then retire early and stay at home with my two girls later, but the date for later was supposed to be my choice, not theirs.”

In an ultimate twist of fate, in November of 2008 DeVore found out she was pregnant.

Challenging Changes or Serendipitous Circumstances?

Over the course of just a few weeks she’d gone from successful working mother, to an unemployed forty-four-year-old with a new baby on the way and a seventh grader and a high school junior to care for. “I never stayed home while I was pregnant or nursing my first two babies,” DeVore said. “Now I am home with this new baby, but it wasn’t my choice. Does that simple truth make it harder for me? On nearly any day I can argue both sides of that question, but I’m still not sure how I feel. In so many ways I think I’ve been given a second chance to make decisions about staying home with a baby; decisions I never thought I’d have, especially not in my mid-forties.”

This acceptance of circumstances DeVore began to feel soon came to a crashing halt when the financial reality of having a newborn and a child on her way to college sent her scrambling for a job and interviewing for positions throughout her pregnancy, often times by telephone. Needless to say, c-level marketing roles were scarce for a pregnant woman with a salary history in the upper $200’s.

DeVore, whose baby is now almost six months old, has been out of work for over a year. This has left a major blank spot on her resume and this bout of unemployment has left her confused about her role as a mother and her place in the world.

“Am I a stay-at-home-mom or am I an unemployed SVP or marketing? I miss working, I miss office politics- and I don’t. I miss PowerPoint presentations, webinars, and analyst meetings- and I don’t,” DeVore said.

“Did I fail in some way because I was laid-off or did I succeed because I would have never made that decision on my own?”

  1. BeverleySmith
    BeverleySmith says:

    It might be useful for the writer above to consider if terms used show real value for women. She is saying that women are ‘successful working’ mothers if earning and’unemployed ‘ if at home. This attitude is very traditional economics, male paradigm undervaluing of half of all women. It is patriarchy at its finest.

    Sadly as a woman who worked hard in the 1970s to get pay equity and gender equality, it has to be admitted that the movement has not yet come full way. It has stalled at the half way point, and predictably one that still prefers male roles. Now it allows women to do these roles outside the home and that’s a liberation of sorts, but now it forces women outside the home which is a bad thing. It still says women’s care roles of the young, sick, handicapped, elderly or dying don’t matter. It still insults all traditional female roles as useless, selfish, lazy, unemployed, unproductive in the economy, hobbies and not using skills. All of those assumptions are wrong, and are very big insults to the women’s rights movement.
    I was home for many years though a gold medallist at university – and the reason was because I was passionately convinced that my skills were best used to nurture my children. I taught them to crawl and walk and use a spoon and to read and do math and to share and take turns. I taught them my moral code and how to discuss opinions calmly and I gave them the security of my presence 24-7 on call as needed, to anchor them in life. I answered their gazillion questions and gave them the science exposure with museums and zoos and libraries that opened up their world. As a ‘stay at home’ mom I was out with the kids twice every single day on learning outings. I found that this role used all my skills academically and all my patience. I don’t feel superior to mothers who choose differently for they try to find caregivers who match their values . But it is completely unfair to have them judge me. I am now back in the paid labor force and feel women’s real liberation is to be funded either way, to have money flow with the child, to have our care roles valued in our words and in our tax policy and in our pensions.

  2. Tina Vasquez
    Tina Vasquez says:

    Hi, Beverley. It wasn’t my intention to imply that women can only be successful while working and that they are unsuccessful or unemployed if at home. I work from home, so I would never assume that other women who spend their days at home or who spend their days with their children are necessarily unemployed. It definitely doesn’t mean that they’re unsuccessful, either. The idea that women can’t be successful if they’re not working isn’t something I believe, but those feelings were expressed by the women I featured in the article. Those are their feelings, not mine and I don’t believe those particular feelings are representative of all women.

    Also, it’s important to point out that women who’ve spent their lives focusing on their career- even after having children- may struggle with what “successful” means after being laid off. It’s one thing to decide to put your career on the backburner and choose to stay home with your kids, but it’s quite another to be laid off and forced into that situation. Their definition of success may differ from yours, but it doesn’t make either definition more or less valid.

  3. Amanda
    Amanda says:

    This is a timely article for me and speaks to an issue I am very much struggling with. In August 2009, I was laid off when my company went out of business. Unlike the women featured in the article, however, I am struggling with whether or not to use this “down time” to START a family. I have spent the last 8 months swimming upstream trying to find a job, while quietly feeling the “tick tock” of biology. I am 27, so this isn’t an urgent issue but many of my peers are going 1 – 2 years before gaining full employment. At what point do I stop looking this gift horse in the mouth and use this blessing of time to pursue another track in life? But alas, I too find it hard to throw away the hard work, the great money, and the experience I had being an “I can do anything” female marketing professional. I feel like I am settling or whimping out or, worse yet, just not trying hard enough. But how will I feel a year from now when the demands of a job come back, my ovaries are screaming to have children, and I don’t feel like I have the time or energy? Will I regret not taking the chance?

  4. Sweety
    Sweety says:

    Amanda, I know what you mean, Im 26 now and after 4 years of full time work I have all this free time. I call it a chance to have a break which I welcomed into my life. I had to relocate due to family reasons. I can’t wait to get married and start a family of my own. I believe this is the perfect time for me and I feel more than ready. Now I look back and think if I had met the right person a couple of years ago I would have been married by now. I wont hesitate now. I am still actively seeking work, full time, part time or even temp just to keep me preoccupied and put some more money aside for the future but I would want to look after my babies as much as possible and if that means stay at home mum, I would be glad too, just until they are toddlers so I can step back into the job market, hopefully!