Scientific research clearly shows that children with stay-at-home moms enjoy numerous benefits over those who are relegated to childcare. The evidence is also overwhelming that, in many ways, stay-at-home moms get the short end of the stick. Somewhere along the way, the social climate turned, placing a stigma on the terrific choice of staying at home to raise children as opposed to getting a job. But even onslaughts of negativity from others aren’t the terrible parts about staying at home to raise children.

You are Actually Raising your Child

Instead of entrusting daycare workers with the jobs of feeding, instilling values in your children, and keeping them safe, you handle those things yourself. This qualifies as “raising your children.” It also qualifies as building a strong foundation for their lives, which is excellent.

Staying at home, however, easily makes moms feel isolated inside a thankless bubble of continuous household chores, food preparation, and the exhausting antics of children.

Moms deserve opportunities to enjoy themselves with friends and family outside the home and away from the children. Otherwise, life becomes very out of balance and a sacrifice worth making feels like too much.

Stressors are Different

Working on a job comes with all kinds of stress, from bad bosses to squeezing the job of parenting into a few hours on weekdays plus very busy hours on weekends.

Raising children can cause stress on completely different levels. Children make huge messes, fight and argue with one another, and misbehave. Babies can cry a lot, and toddlers require constant attention. Managing a home comes with the job, and it has a mountain of daily demands.

Stress management is a must for stay-at-home moms. A smart approach is to create order in the home by setting expectations for good behavior from children and consistently following up on enforcing the behavior with loving discipline. It’s just human nature for people of every age to experience less stress in a more orderly environment.

A More Settled Routine

Instead of the frantic rush involved with trying to balance working outside the home with raising children, the routine at home becomes comfortable and settled. This is an aspect of being a stay-at-home mom that translates into such benefits such as children performing better in school than their peers who go to daycare.

A predictable daily routine can also become boring and feel like you’re living in a rut.

Add some spice to life by taking frequent visits to museums, parks, and relatives’ homes.

Economics

It may seem like a no-brainer that cutting a paycheck means a huge economic downturn for a family, but that’s not necessarily the case. When mom stays at home, there is far less money spent on such things as:

• Childcare
• Gasoline
• Car maintenance
• A business wardrobe
• Eating lunch at restaurants
• Toll roads
• Hair and nail salon expenses

Depending on how much mom brought home from her job, there could be some pain with trimming things down to one paycheck. An upside is that the children could get involved with maintaining a family budget. Clipping coupons, finding bargains at the grocery store, and seeking out other ways to cut costs can become valuable life skills for children. It can also prevent them from taking things for granted in life.

Being a parent is arguably the most rewarding thing in life but at the same time most challenging. Surely, stay-at-home moms deserve to be highly commended, never condemned, for making the choice to be on hand during the precious but often chaotic growing up years.

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