Stay at home parents

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“Work at home parent”, “Work at home mother”, “Work at home dad” are the terms you are all looking for. They already exist. WAHP, WAHM, WAHD.
 
Several million parents (nearly all women) stay home without bringing in income. Being lumped in with the working parents who do so at home does muddy things quite a bit. It puts pressure that wouldn’t otherwise be there on stay-home parents to earn income as a norm. It also distorts the financial picture by implying that it’s “impossible” for one parent to not work for income when several million manage it, which is a pretty big deal because it changes the stay-home game if both parents don’t have to bring in income no matter what.
 
ThePCWife said:
“Work at home parent”, “Work at home mother”, “Work at home dad” are the terms you are all looking for. They already exist. WAHP, WAHM, WAHD.
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I have actually seen these terms used for people who are stay at home parents without a paid position but who want to indicate that they do, in fact, still work hard.

In any case, I’m still not sure what the big deal is. I do everything a stay at home parent does, plus work at night. So I’m not allowed to call myself a stay at home parent, even though that is in fact what I do primarily? I work from home and have no childcare help. Are people who make goods for Etsy not allowed to be stay at home parents either? What about people who watch others’ kids for some extra income?
ThePCWife said:
Several million parents (nearly all women) stay home without bringing in income. Being lumped in with the working parents who do so at home does muddy things quite a bit. It puts pressure that wouldn’t otherwise be there on stay-home parents to earn income as a norm. It also distorts the financial picture by implying that it’s “impossible” for one parent to not work for income when several million manage it, which is a pretty big deal because it changes the stay-home game if both parents don’t have to bring in income no matter what.
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I’m confused about how this puts pressure on anyone. Families can decide for themselves whether they are in need of extra income or not, and whether it’s worth the sacrifice. Any pressure they feel is self-imposed. I don’t know that anyone would say it’s impossible to live on one income, but most people would agree that there’s a certain amount the employed spouse needs to make in order to make it feasible.
 
Also I know people who do everything SAHPs do and work two days a a week. Not sure how that muddys the water… Know what I mean?
 
I guess I don’t understand your hangup on nomenclature here. I stay at home. I homeschool. Because I sit At a security site for some reading time 2 times a week and they happen to pay me doesn’t mean I have a career. Or even a job… why is this such a point of contention for you?
 
In the end, how one family makes it work is only really relevant if their circumstances mirror our own. There are too many variables otherwise.

My wife stays at home. I own a small-business defense contractor in the mid-Atlantic region. We have four kids - 1 in Catholic school, 1 homeschooled, and 2 not yet of school age. We may have more. And all of that is only really helpful to people in my similar situation.

Everyone is called to sacrifice for their family, but what that means to each individual person and family is different. And even the family that seems perfect from afar has things they likely lack and need to work on. This is as true of families as it is of individual people.
 
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That’s what I don’t understand. What does it matter to one stay-at-home parent if another stay-at-home-parent makes money from home? Is the point of staying at home to take the best possible care of your family or to win some sort of special designation that only exists in your own mind? Do they think that because one stay at home parent makes money, then suddenly they all have to?
 
I am very confused at how a source of income seems to be the thing that separates what a “stay at home parent” is from “some other kind of parent,” no matter how small the income or infrequent the work. Why is a mom that makes an income as a nanny, while she is full time with her own kids, not a stay at home parent, yet a mom that volunteers multiple hours away from her kids and home for no income is considered a stay at home mom. That makes no sense.
 
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ThePCWife said:
It also distorts the financial picture by implying that it’s “impossible” for one parent to not work for income when several million manage it, which is a pretty big deal because it changes the stay-home game if both parents don’t have to bring in income no matter what.
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It actually is impossible for many families to make it on just one income. There are so many working parents that would absolutely love to quit there jobs and be home, or go to part time, or work from home, but it’s impossible for them to make it work.
 
13pollitos said:
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ThePCWife:
It also distorts the financial picture by implying that it’s “impossible” for one parent to not work for income when several million manage it, which is a pretty big deal because it changes the stay-home game if both parents don’t have to bring in income no matter what.
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It actually is impossible for many families to make it on just one income. There are so many working parents that would absolutely love to quit there jobs and be home, or go to part time, or work from home, but it’s impossible for them to make it work.
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I think it’s not only income, but the benefits that come from the job as well. I have excellent health insurance through my job, but my husband gets no benefits from his. So we are covered under my name. If I were to quit my job or go part time, we would lose that benefit and have to go to the marketplace (potentially expensive) or get Medicaid (if we would qualify…we might not qualify, even if only my husband worked).

I would love to quit my job and stay at home with our son, but that’s just not possible right now. I could probably find another work from home job or do a “side hustle” or something to still generate some income, but the issue is still the healthcare benefits. I think only in a couple years will it potentially be possible for me stay home more. As it is, thankfully a trusted relative of my husband cares for our son the three days a week that neither of us can be at home, which at least provides more flexibility in payment and hours than a traditional daycare.
 
Why is it so important for people who work part-time or even full-time apparently, to cling to a stay-home identifier? What’s wrong with being a working parent? Working for pay outside the home is necessary for nearly all families, someone has to, so what’s wrong if it does happen to be both parents instead of just one? The OP was asking specifically about how one parent staying home was managed financially, not a bunch of weird emotional stuff about how anyone can be a stay-home parent, it’s just a feeling you have about your parenting style, not like, related to whether you work outside the home or something.

Good to know we’re all settled that there is no financial issue to worry about, anyone can just call themselves a stay at home parent. The OP doesn’t need to worry, working full time doesn’t change his basic stay-at-home identity! He can still identify as one as much as he likes.

Clarity is important. If anyone is a stay at home parent or working parent (apparently because one weirdo misused a specific term designed to account for working for pay at home, up to and including full-time, we can’t use it accurately?), then there’s no reason to debate employment regulations that can be difficult or challenging to families, there’s no reason to be concerned with the variety of conditions stay-home parents operate under, because there is no clearly defined group. There’s no boundaries. So you can’t actually discuss any substantial qualities of the group, since you’re insistent there isn’t a boundary because then you personally might not be in it.

Either you’re in the work force or you’re not. And you can still be in the work force and a working parent sitting at home working a telecommute job or whatever. The mostly-imaginary supervolunteer SAHM is still not in the work force and she is home on average more than a part-time working parent. Having done a decent chunk of volunteering, it’s hard to actually find 40 hours a week of it as a mother of young children. Heavy volunteering is more like 10-15, and you can sometimes bring the kids along and do a big chunk on the weekend. So even that’s still pretty much SAHM.txt.
 
ThePCWife said:
Why is it so important for people who work part-time or even full-time apparently, to cling to a stay-home identifier? What’s wrong with being a working parent?
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For many of us, we stay at home FULL TIME and work part time. With no childcare help. For me this means working during naps or at night. Very hard to get other things done- but yes I do all of the things a stay at home parent does, plus work. I’m still responsible for full time care of children, laundry, cooking, cleaning, bill paying, etc. I feel to say that I’m a “working parent” isn’t an accurate description because that implies that I am not also caring for children at the same time.

You mentioned that a SAHM who volunteers 15 hours a week is still a stay at home mom. So, I do the same thing but get paid for it and I’m not?

You are the poster who started the conversation about whether or not a person who works part time should be “allowed” to call themselves a stay at home parent. No one else seemed to care. Maybe it does matter in terms of department of labor definitions and other more “official” business. But otherwise I can’t imagine why anyone would be disturbed by people who are full time at home with kids and do a little work on the side calling themselves stay at home parents.
 
MiserereMei25 said:
We have talked that it may be best for our family if one of us stayed home and that parent would be me because in her words, I have more patience to do that where she feels like she constantly needs to be doing something which is why should stay at work plus she makes more a year than I do. Much more than $20k but less than 6 figures.
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See if you can live on just the one income before making any big changes.
 
There’s a term for what you do, it’s called “Work At Home Parent”. I already mentioned it upthread. It’s a term that is used to distinguish between staying home without earning income and staying home while also being engaged in income-earning. So yes, you are a working (for pay) parent, at home. Nothing at all wrong with it. What’s wrong with being a working mother?
 
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ThePCWife said:
Why is it so important for people who work part-time or even full-time apparently, to cling to a stay-home identifier?
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I understand why the feds believe that the first dollar of income magically turns you into a working parent (a completely different critter from a SAHM), but subjectively, that’s not really how it works.

For one thing, a lot of part-time jobs are very part-time. For another, part-time gigs come and go. Speaking for myself, I had no income during my oldest’s first year, babysat a couple days a week for the next couple years (watching another toddler in addition to my oldest) and did a little bit of tutoring, took a break for a number of years, did about a year of part-time babysitting when my youngest started kindergarten (for a speech-delayed kid who’d been kicked out of preschool and a baby–on different days), took another break, did a couple of editing projects for my MIL toward the end of my last pregnancy, did a couple projects for her here or there, and then started working very regularly for her in January 2018 (by which time my youngest was safely launched in 3-day pre-k). Down the road, I’d like to do tax preparation, which will presumably be very intense for about 4 months of work a year.

Do we really want to say that I was a SAHM and then a working mom and then a SAHM and then a working mom, over and over again, especially when the “working mom” phase involved no more than 10 hours a week? Consider the hypothetical tax preparation job–would I be a SAHM 8 months out of the year and a working mom 4 months out of the year, or would the 4 months of work contaminate the 8 months of SAHMing? It’s tricky! I feel like I’ve probably left the pure SAHM category this past fall, as I’ve made more money this fall than I had the previous 16 years, but up until the last few months, it would have sounded ridiculous to say that I was primarily a working mom.
ThePCWife said:
What’s wrong with being a working parent?
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Presumably some moms are worried about losing their peer group/their mom cred…
ThePCWife said:
because there is no clearly defined group. There’s no boundaries.
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Well, people do move back and forth quite a bit, depending on family needs…It is unavoidably murky.

In official discussions, it certainly makes sense to use Dept. of Labor terminology, but in informal conversations (like we’re having), it is reasonable to use the language the way average people use it, which is acknowledging that a parent can be legit SAHP and make a little money. Heck, would we want to say that farmwives making “butter and egg money” weren’t actually SAHMs?
 
That’s a term within your own judgement. Most people dont subscribe to your arbitrary definitions. And honestly I think its a little odd
 
ThePCWife said:
There’s a term for what you do, it’s called “Work At Home Parent”. I already mentioned it upthread. It’s a term that is used to distinguish between staying home without earning income and staying home while also being engaged in income-earning. So yes, you are a working (for pay) parent, at home. Nothing at all wrong with it. What’s wrong with being a working mother?
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Again, a lot of people use this term to describe themselves as stay at home parents, in order to indicate that they do have a job (though unpaid).

To others, the term seems to imply that you work from home for pay but also have other childcare arrangements. Most companies will not allow a person to work from home full time without childcare arrangements. “Work at home parent” doesn’t accurately describe people who are home full time with children but also work part time with no childcare help.

So, when people ask what I do I say that I am a SAHM and work part time. I’m not sure I understand why anyone would have a problem with that.
 
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