I have always resisted the label “stay-at-home mum”. I don’t like the way we are so quick to put mothers into camps: working mothers, full-time mothers (is there really a mother who is part-time?), etc. The other day a woman was asking me if I would ever consider working outside of the home. This was after I told her I am a full-time writer.
“Writing is work,” I told her. Well, yes, she agreed. But certainly you can’t make a living from it.
And not that it’s any of her business how my husband and I work our finances, but there in lies the truth: everything can have a dollar-value attached to it. Do I make a living from my writing? Some months, yes. But I view the writing as a long-term career, one that I need to build my successes on from year to year in the hopes that as I publish more, I will make more money. It’s like any other job – you start at an entry-level position and work your way up. I am not under the misconception that I will one day become a millionaire doing what I am doing. But I do believe there will come a time where my fiction writing income is steady and more substantial.
This is why I resist those labels. Because while I am at home, I am working. My kids know I am working. They know I have an office and that when we have a babysitter here, Mummy is writing. I call it work. So they know about Daddy’s work and they know about Mummy’s work, and I don’t think they value one over the other just because Daddy’s work happens to be in an office.
In fact, most of the “stay-at-home” mothers I know are doing some kind of work besides parenting – whether it is contract, part-time, or going back to school. Since becoming a mother I have found myself struggling with my work/parent identity on almost a daily basis. And never once have I found the labels make anything more clear.
