Not really part of the club

While I may have been a stay at home mom (SAHM), I also confess to not being an official member of the club. I continued to work after my children were born, by choice and necessity. I chose to continue to work as much as reasonable to keep current in my field and the $$ was definitely needed as we progressed from 2 virtually equivalent incomes to one. Still, my work outside of the home was part-time (technically) and thus, I was not really a genuine SAHM and definitely not a working mom (WM)…I languished in between the two worlds…which was OK but a little weird.

Though not part of the SAHM club, I occasionally was invited to some functions (Tupperware parties, Pampered Chef, etc) but never to the Wednesday lunch club (frown) because I worked on Wednesdays, once my youngest child was in pre-school. I don’t really know how my colleagues at the PTO viewed me, but that was also OK. I chose to be at home primarily to be there for my children and have never been a huge fan of situational friends (those you were friends with only because you happened to be forced together around a common goal – a successful Penny Sale, or a rockin’ middle school dance experience. Ps. Even then I bucked the tide when we planned a small (no limos, no dates, no flowers) 8th grade dance and provided the Field Day with Pathmark ice pops (though I confess to the occasional runs to the Italian Ice store to buy crates of ice and scoop for a special end of the year treat.) But we were always about keeping the small town experience real and keeping our children young for as long as possible.

Most of my SAHM peers were like minded, though there were a few who always pushed that envelope – whether it was ‘my kid's more over-scheduled than yours’, or ‘my kid made high honor roll, how about yours?’ I tried to keep perspective. We fought video games and the evil internet as long as possible. [Yes, there were children raised with neither – gasp. I do recall a conversation with my son sometime in the mid 90s when I declared I didn’t think I’d ever have to use email (as I now ‘blog’, the shame)]. I also recall declaring my kids would not have a TV in their rooms, much less a computer (honestly, about 85% of this decision was because we could barely afford one decent TV never mind 4, but rooted in the belief that my childhood memories of 7 of us together watching the same show brought us about as close as seven individual humans could be)…and when they reached 16, the big deal was the potential for a TV in their bedrooms.

Summers, we actually slept in and did ‘nothing’. Again, some of this was because we couldn’t afford nice camps or a summer house, but we definitely knew every free air-conditioned place in the tri-state area. The library was best, museums are good, malls an option, movies were a reasonably priced treat and bowling with bumpers….the best!

Yes, my kids suffered the innocence of their parents, but we also suffered the novelty of being a bit different. My husband and I grew up in very middle (maybe lower middle class) homes where family values of religion, honestly and charity were central. We wanted this to be true for our children too. No matter what you have, you should give and be true to yourself. And as far as we have come as a society, we have lost much of this basic sense. My husband and I worked hard to be sure our children were afforded the preservation of their child-like innocence as long as possible. While it probably wasn’t as long as we thought, I hope it was long enough and special enough because of the choices we made. We may not have had the nicest cars, the best furniture (or sometimes even furniture), surely not the nicest clothes (but they were always clean), or the latest ‘stuff’, but we knew we had each other, unconditionally. I think that’s a good start, for anyone, and most importantly for a child.