Why did you decide to become a stay-at-home mom?

Sometimes that question comes at just the right moment. A gal asked this on a moms chat group I'm part of on Facebook. This is the answer I typed to her.

Lots and lots of reasons... The first one that comes to mind is: it's hard for me personally to handle two demanding jobs at one time. I suspected this would be the case when I got pregnant, although I wasn't sure, because who knows exactly what motherhood is really going to demand of you right out of the gates??? Besides that, the small business I was working for didn't have a paid maternity leave option. So when I had my son, I went ahead and quit my job, knowing if I wanted to go back they would rehire me in a heartbeat. But--here come my reasons: 1) in those first few months with my son, it became very obvious to me that I would not cope well with working and trying to be a good mommy at the same time. I wouldn't be able to give 100% at both jobs and so I would always feel like a failure at both. That wasn't okay with me. 2) As I was realizing this, I was also realizing that it was much, much more important to me for my children to have one of their parents at home, being a parent 24/7, than for me to bring home a sliver of a paycheck that would basically just cover childcare anyway (and that's a maybe! childcare is ridiculously expensive).

Those were the big reasons that clinched it for me. In addition to those: 3) My husband's salary was enough to let me stay home. 4) That's what he had hoped for anyway. And finally-- 5) eventually I figured out that I way preferred being a mom to working out in the world anyway. I'm just better suited to it somehow. I didn't know that before I became one though.

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