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Being a Stay at Home Mom and Feeling Good about it

by Shannon Miller

In this day and time when someone asks me “What do you do for a living?” or asks you “Where do you work?” My answer was always I stay at home with my kids. I would always think badly of myself just by the responses that I would get. Or the dreaded oh. I always felt ashamed of being a stay at home mom. I felt that others thought of me as a lazy person and lazy I was not. That feeling stayed with me for a long time. Then I started thinking about if I was working outside of the home look at all the things in my children’s lives that I would have missed. Someone else would have got to share these things with my children. I thought there is no way that I would want some else to share anything special such as their first words, steps, or to see their first tooth coming through. I wanted to be the one to see all these special things in my children’s lives. I decided that staying at home with my children was the right step for me and my children.

If someone didn’t like it well that was not their chose for me to stay at home or to go to work. I can never replace my child’s first words, first crawl across the floor, or their first steps. Once they do that milestone it’s gone forever. It becomes just a memory, and it can only be a memory if you get to see that first. There are so many more things that moms would miss out on with their children if they chose to work outside their home. It’s all these things that inspire me to stay at home with my children. No job could pay me any amount of money to equal how it makes me feel inside seeing each one of my children reaching each and every milestone as they are growing up. A job can be replaced but being a mother can not once you choose to work outside the home and you do miss out on something special it can never be replaced with that child. Most mom’s that work outside the home are not promised that their job will be there waiting on them from day to day. Being a child’s mother is a job that will never be taken away. It will always be there no matter what. I never want to feel regret for staying home with my children and I will never let any one else make me feel bad for staying home with my kids. It’s your life and weather you decide to stay home or work outside the home it is your decision and no one else can make it for you but you. . No one should make a stay at home parent feel bad for choosing to stay at home and be with their kids, nor should anyone make a parent working outside the home feel bad either. I feel that each parent’s has the right to do as they choose with their own life. When someone asks me now “What do you do for a living?” I proudly hold my head up high and say I am a Work at Home mom and I love it. I still get the occasional oh, but its okay, I am happy with what I am doing and that is all that matters.


Shannon Miller is the mom of 5 children and the owner of www.parentingfroma-z.blogspot.com