Deciding to return to work after having a baby is a very personal choice, often significantly influenced by a family’s financial situation. “We can have it all,” women were told, without it being clarified that this really means: “You can do it all.”
In the days of the endless juggle, and all the stresses and pressures that go with it, it’s not unusual for stay-at-home parents to be told how lucky they are that they can actually afford to stay at home. Because after all, who wouldn’t want to spend more time with their children?
But what about if you don’t like being at home? What if you find it boring and unfulfilling, and you even regret your choice to stay at home with your children?
It’s not an easy thing to admit. Claire has been a stay-at-home parent for 14 years. She has four children. She finds it very lonely now that her youngest is 10 years old. “There are some days that I drop them to school, and you wouldn’t see anyone again until you go back down to the school. It can be very, very lonely at home,” she says.
Over the years, she has had plenty of people tell her she’s “so lucky”, without ever appreciating how hard it is and the financial sacrifice involved too. “I would get, ‘sure it’s well for you now to be at home all day’.”
“Mine have never been on an aeroplane,” Claire says, due to the financial burden of being a stay-at-home parent. Whereas her friend, who works outside the home, “can go off on a whim wherever she wants”. One of Claire’s children has additional needs. With her child’s appointments, a return to work just wouldn’t be possible, she says. “For my own mental health I would like to do something, just to get out of the house. I would spend time scrolling on my phone out of complete boredom.”
There’s another side to it too, Claire says. “If you’re at home, and your parents are getting elderly, it falls to the one that’s at home.” She feels the care of her parents would have been shared more equally between her and her siblings, if she wasn’t at home full-time.
Claire feels we’ve romanticised the stay-at-home parent role. “There are sacrifices.” And her children don’t really realise how lucky they are that she can bring them to activities, and to and from school each day, she feels. Claire thinks society views stay-at-home parents as “lazy”. She says being at home for so long has chipped away at her confidence.
Emma is a mother to five children. She had a senior role at work and becoming a stay-at-home parent was never part of her life plan. But an unexpected pregnancy changed things. She became a stay-at-home parent with the intention of returning to work when her youngest child started school. When he received an autism diagnosis, things changed.
“That was a rollercoaster emotionally,” she says. “This is a bit taboo, but I mourned for the child I thought I was going to have. And people, I find, aren’t really allowed to say that – you have to celebrate disability, but actually it was a big, big, earth-shattering time, for us as parents.”
Her son’s diagnosis meant Emma felt she couldn’t return to work. “The choice was taken from me. There was such an amount of appointments. And so much advocacy that had to be done.”
As the years have passed, Emma is finding being a stay-at-home parent more difficult to bear. “I have a huge amount of experience. I have a huge amount of energy, and I’m sitting at home.”
She says there’s a feeling of being “trapped, and a little bit worthless and invisible. The education that I have. The career that I had. And you’re sitting at home doing housework and you’re bored out of your tree.”
There are also the financial impacts of becoming a stay-at-home parent. “We’re barely surviving,” she says. “We’re sustaining a family of seven on one wage. You’re saving and scrimping every way that you possibly can and saying ‘no’ a lot to your children because you have to.”
Emma would really like to return to work. She has come up against a lot of judgment and discouraging remarks. “People say, ‘aren’t you well off to be able to stay at home’, but then when you say to them, ‘I’m actually looking for work, the attitude of people ... the kind of things I get are, ‘oh God. How are you going to be able to cope with that? Who are you going to get to mind your child? Will he be okay?” Much of it, Emma says, comes from women. You can’t really talk about the “bitterness”, she says.
Because I’m at home all the time ... it almost feels like I haven’t gone out and done a hard day’s work
Maria has four children. Becoming a stay-at-home mother “wasn’t a choice” she says, but when she gave birth to twins, childcare costs took the option of working off the table. Childcare “would have been more than I was making”, she explains.
There was also the fear of losing State benefits supports, such as medical cards, and having her rent costs increased. “If I could go back to work, I would.” Maria’s partner works long hours and some of her children have additional needs, all of which adds to her difficulties around a return to the workforce.
Maria hates when people say how lucky she is to be able to stay at home with her children. “It’s lonely,” she says. She has returned to counselling in recent times. “I’ve been talking to my therapist about how much of myself I’ve lost. I’ve had so many anxious dreams about what would I do if I didn’t have to look after the kids. If they weren’t here, who am I outside of motherhood? And the answer is, I don’t know any more.”
Parenthood has become all consuming for her. Maria says she can’t remember the last time she “did something for me”. She finds the mental load crippling “and then you’re constantly doubting yourself, because who are you outside of somebody’s mother? Because I’m at home all the time ... it almost feels like I haven’t gone out and done a hard day’s work. I know I have, I never turn off.”
She believes we “massively” romanticise the idea of being a stay-at-home parent. “I think, by the time the kids are in school, I will be so out of the loop that I will have to completely retrain.”
Becoming a stay-at-home parent, with all that it entails, is enough to make Maria recommend not having children to her friends, so they don’t end up in the same situation, she says.
“There’s huge societal pressure and expectations on parents, in particular mothers,” says psychotherapist Cara Byrne, adding those who have regrets about being stay-at-home parents shouldn’t feel guilty for these feelings. “Speaking about how you were experiencing your life doesn’t ever require an apology.”
It is far more common than most people realise to experience parenting as a “very isolating, monotonous and emotionally draining experience. If you feel like you’re trapped in the position of stay-at-home parent because childcare costs are incredibly high, or you have a child with special needs, it’s completely understandable that you may regret being put in that position.
“Being a stay-at-home parent often removes most of the things that we previously identified with; our career, social life and hobbies often get pushed to the side due to the demanding nature of being on call 24/7. Resentment builds when our needs aren’t met, so it’s important to state those needs and find support in meeting them.”
Byrne recommends “talking to other parents either online or through parents’ groups, book clubs, fitness classes or walking groups”. This, she says “will allow you to engage with people who understand what you’re going through”, and in turn “combat the loneliness and help you rebuild your confidence in who you are outside of parenting”.
“Most importantly, though, seek support if it all feels too much and trust that that’s completely normal, you’re not alone, you’re not broken, you’re not failing. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just trying to find your feet in an environment that’s exceptionally challenging.”
