The Ultimate Pros and Cons List of Each
Debate of the ages, eh? Which is harder, stay at home parent or working parent. With experience in both, I feel like I’m more than qualified to say they’re BOTH hard dammit. Also, alight, calling it the ultimate pros and cons list may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but now that you’re here, can’t hurt to look right? It really does come down to your individual circumstances (which change!) at any given time. There are benefits of being a stay at home parent and benefits of being a working parent, both also have their drawbacks. Lets explore!
If you’re trying to decide whether to be a stay at home parent or a working parent, I can’t tell you what to do so I’ll just lay out some facts. There are a number of things you need to take into consideration when you’re deciding what to do, so allow me to highlight some obvious ones and some you may not have thought of, in no particular order.
Considerations
- Time with children
- Schedules
- Household management
- Childcare cost
- Financial status
- Career development/creative pursuits
- Social life
- Personal fulfilment
- Education
- Social stigma
- Impact on relationship
Stay At Home Parent
Pros
- Potential to spend more quality time with kids
- Typically more flexible schedule to meet kids needs
- More time to focus on household crap
- No (or less) childcare cost
- More involvement in kids development and growth
- More opportunity/time to teach and pass on cultural traditions/heritage
- No commuting to work (yay!)
- Ability to run errands during the day
Cons
- Typically limited/no personal income (solely relying on partners income)
- Potential career stagnation
- Probably limited adult interaction
- Greater risk of social isolation
- May experience lack of personal fulfilment/identity
- Judgement (isn’t there always?) for “putting” the financial burden on your partner
- Potential strain on relationship over unequal sharing of responsibilities (financial, home, etc)
Working Parent
Pros
- Ability to contribute financially
- More opportunities for career advancement
- Possible fulfilment from professional achievements
- Opportunities for social interaction through work
- Better able to maintain a sense of personal identity (being able to “switch” between home and work modes)
Cons
- May miss out on experiences with kids
- More rigid schedules (may be a pro to you!)
- Difficulty balancing household tasks
- Possibility of childcare costs
- May rely on others for kids development
- Judgement (again!) of society for “putting your career first”
- Higher potential for burnout
My Experience
In case it isn’t obvious, this section will be full of bias and anecdotal information. You’ll notice I said “ability”, “may”, “possibility”, “typically” and such in the comparisons above; this was very intentional because nothing is guaranteed and some items may be in the opposite column for you, that’s totally fair, everyone’s different.
I’ve been a full time working mum for the last 10 months after being a stay at home mum to three kids for eight years. With the current cost of living crisis here in the UK, it kinda became necessary for me to go back to work. Although, in all honesty, I had been longing for work for a little while before that – the logistics were never right. But, since my youngest started primary school this past September, it’s a bit easier. Let’s go through my experience with both shall we?
Being a stay at home mum made me miserable
I thought I knew what I was getting into when my husband and I decided to have kids. It was a very deliberate choice that I now find myself questioning daily (a story for another time perhaps). I’ve been seeing a lot of stories lately about what no one tells you before having kids, but the thing is, even if we were told, we wouldn’t listen. It’s like trying to teach high schoolers about money and budgeting, they don’t give a shit. Nobody listens to the boring bits, but its the boring bits that weigh you down; being the default parent, having the responsibility of keeping the household up (because after all, you’re home all day), learning the different parenting styles and finding what suits you, the monotony of daily routines, to say nothing of your new role as emotional punching bag to the crotch goblins you birthed.
If you have more than one kid, that’s a whole other can of worms, you get all the sibling drama to deal with and your own transition of splitting time and managing multiple kids. It really is so easy to just lose yourself when you’re putting all of your time and energy into raising kids and keeping house. That’s the part that made me miserable. But it’s also amazing at the same time. Well, sometimes.
I was there for all three of my kids first big moments, first steps, first words, etcetera. We had lots of slow days where we just explored outside, with no schedule or time limit. Watching them learn everything for the first time is amazingly fulfilling. The little moments when their unconditional love for you shines through the bullshit screaming fit they just had. Magic. Even with that, I was constantly stir crazy. I was forever feeling like something was missing, like part of me was missing but I didn’t know what. Looking back, I can see that I’d lost myself completely; I was no longer an individual person, I was just a mum. At least at work, I could be more than that. Of course, having friends to spend time with helps, but arranging everything between kids and lives, its hard.
Being a working mum has made me angry
I’ve definitely got more of myself back after going back to work, I’m using skills and knowledge that I haven’t in years. I’m able to switch out of mum mode and tune into my professional side (well, professional-ish). I can have conversations with other adults that aren’t kids and the shit they’ve been up to. While I have regained a slight sense of self, it has come at a cost.
While I longed for an escape from what I thought was the prison of being at home, we’re now in an era of no time. Between school runs and shift work and full time working days, I’m finding myself dangerously close to burnout again. A lot of the house work gets put on my husband, bless him. I can feel the resentment building in him just as it was in me when I was at home. It happens that way since his shift pattern leaves him with at least 2 full days a week home while the kids are at school (during term time obvs.). Whereas all of my time off, the kids are also off. Quite tricky to get much housework done on evenings and weekends with three young kids constantly wrecking the place.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, you need to look at your own circumstances. For us, the financial benefits for me to go back to work outweighed nearly all of the drawbacks and we had to figure out the rebalancing of all of the household and childcare tasks, which was not an easy feat in and of itself! (Side note: if you wanna read how we managed that, check out my post here) Both are hard, both are rewarding, and both will bring mom guilt and judgement anyway so fuck it, do watcha gotta do eh. For some interesting (albeit a but dated..) statistics, have a look at this post on the “You The Daddy” blog.
