The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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I've mentioned on here a few times that our family has an Au Pair and I work from home most days. This happy arrangement is going to come to an end and I'm of mixed feelings.
First, for those who don't know, there is a program in the State Department that is designed to connect families with young women across the world who would be interested in taking care of children in exchange for living in America for a year. The host family has to provide a separate room and pay a weekly stipend. It's a "cultural program." As part of it they are supposed to take a couple college courses every year. There is a lot of abuse, but I pay my Au Pair more than the minimum, don't ask her to do more than just keep the kids alive, and buy her whatever she asks for that seems reasonable.
When interviewing Au Pairs (it's a lot like an online dating service, with profile pages and matches) I always asked, "What are you hoping to get out of becoming an Au Pair? What benefit are you looking for?" The answer was almost always, "More experience speaking English." This seems reasonable, as a good American accent probably gives people a huge advantage in business.
Anyways, the State Department is reviewing the Au Pair program, and has proposed a series of rules that will break it for most families. I don't want to count every toothbrush I buy her, or make sure that she only eats $10.88 worth of food every day. Regardless of what is financially feasible, I'm not going to do it. There's just no way to live with someone in your house, monitor them to this extent, and then still trust them with your kids.
But then the question turns to, "Who is going to watch my kids?" I have four kids, ranging from 10 months to 6 years. There is a preschool we send one child to for 1/2 day socialization, and she likes it well enough. I could send the others to their Summer Camp. But the 10 month old would be too young, and daycare for a 1 year old is already booked up for a year.
Then there's the reality that I'm not giving my kids the attention I want to. Work takes over too much. I might technically be off work at 4:30, but someone puts a meeting on my calendar at 5, or I really need to finish these
threefive emails, and before I know it it's Dinner Time. I have all these worksheets I want to do with my two oldest and practice penmanship (which they really struggle with.) I want to take my kids outside to play. I want to go for walks. But I also want to be held in esteem at work. As long as work is there, I will put off my kids because kids can wait but work can't. But that is a LIE. Kids grow up, and toil is forever.I don't want to send them off to a church preschool from 7 to 5, and then pick them up, feed them dinner, do homework, and kiss them good night. That's not how I was raised. That's not what I want for my family.
So I will likely become a stay at home Mom, once my Au Pair's contract ends. I'm looking forward to taking my kids to parks, splash pads, libraries, festivals, and other public areas around my city. My city is actually really family friendly. I know it is hard work. I took half a year off work when I had my second child. I know it can be isolating. But I have the example of my mother, who make lots of mom friends and seemed to have a blast when my siblings and I were young. Thinking about making this change fills me with excitement and hope.
The two downsides - and they are huge - is money and the Future. Money is easy enough to explain - we will have less of it. My husband makes enough for us to live on, if we had no debt we would have a good amount left over after all the mandatory bills (food, mortgage, utilities, etc.) Unfortunately, we have debt. There are some student loans that are almost paid off and we are in a payment plan with the children's hospital after three of my children were hospitalized for a cumulative of 27 days, 10 of which were in the ICU. With this debt, we are still able to make due, and live a good quality of life, but we would need to be careful to limit things like how much meat we buy, how many clothes we get the kids, etc. Once the debt is paid off in a couple years, it's all fine. But we will have to live frugally for a couple years, or risk falling into more debt.
The Future one is harder to explain, but I can't stay home with the kids forever. By the time the youngest is 10, if not sooner, I need to go back into the labor force. I think that is where my mother messed up. She put her foot down on her identity as a homemaker, ended up not doing much during the school day, driving us around to sports in the afternoon (until I was able to drive, and then she had even less to do.) The cognitive decline you see retirees experience, she seemed to get when she was 50. She kept the public areas of the house clean, cooked dinner (badly), and otherwise watched Masterpiece Theater. Shortly after I graduated college, my parents divorced. Now she is a real estate agent with no sales and sometimes manages to convince her friends to pay above market rates to clean their house.
I see a few possibilities. I have a Master's degree, and can probably get a certification and find work as a school teacher once the children are in school. I don't have any particular interest in this. I think of schools as enemy territory, so to speak. It would be nice if I could instead home school my kids (I'm not going to leap straight into that, but it's a possibility now.) Maybe I could teach at a Catholic School. The benefit of being a school teacher is obvious, I would be off work most of the same days that my children would be.
The other idea I'm entertaining is to start my own business. I've been thinking up a small catalog of things I could crochet. Things that could only be done by hand, look unique, and would take me less than two hours a piece. I could buy a stamping kit for 1k and sell personalized jewelry. I could lean into the Mommy space, and sell "calming jars" and other kid trinkets.
The idea would be to do something for a few hours a week, just enough to keep a storefront and a tax ID. If I actually turn a small profit I can use to buy a zoo membership or something, that would be a bonus. As the kids get bigger, I can spend more time on it, eventually either actually making it a full time job, or pivoting back into being a wage worker. It seems like it will be easier for me to get hired if I can say I started a small business, rather than I took time off work to care for small kids.
I'm open to any and all suggestions.
It sounds like even though the au pair program change has inspired this, you'd be interested in being a SAHM in any case. So considering options (nanny share, retiree needing to earn a bit of extra money...) isn't something you need to waste time on. I will give my standard spiel that women often end up in difficult straits in their later years/retirement because they depend on a single income earner and things happen to make it not work out as expected. When you're in the middle of the stressful childcare years it can be tough to consider the far end of the path, especially if you're confident that divorce isn't in the cards; people don't want to consider early death or disability.
If you can financially swing it and you like being a SAHM, there are certainly ways to keep active and healthy without planning a return to work. My mom is in her 70s and doing very well, and she kept herself busy with church and child-care related activities and jobs her entire life (typical trailing spouse type stuff). She officially retired from paying work in her early 70s, but she's just as busy as ever with church activities and friends. She's sharp as a tack, although I wish she'd stay off the ladder, and I'm thankful she finally agreed to outsource the lawncare.
I didn't want to be a SAHM to a baby (I had a theory that anyone can love a baby, but it takes someone related to love a teenager, so if I was going to have to step out of the work force I figured it would happen during the years my kid was older), so we did the daycare thing. Because we were well enough established in our careers before we had a kid it gave us some flexibility. I worked from home a day or two a week, which meant short daycare days. When my kid was sick, and I needed to leave early or not come in, there wasn't a problem, I had enough sick & vacation time banked. I mention this because sometimes people re-entering the work force are stuck with one or two weeks of sick/vacation, and don't have initial flexibility while they "prove" their worth to their employer. OTOH if your spouse continues working, you can potentially lean on him to be the flexible one if you have a period of less flexibility if you re-enter the work force. On the other, other hand, it can be really hard for a working spouse to go from being all-in on his job because it was critical for his family, to suddenly being the one getting phone calls from the school because Junior's sick or forgot his lunch. I've seen this happen in both directions (and working in a male dominated field, listened to conversations men are having with men about this kind of stuff that I wouldn't ordinarily be privy to). Though you're probably senior enough now that if you do decide to re-enter you could negotiate some flexibility, it's still helpful to consider potentialities.
I wouldn't plan on making enough money with crochet to do more than subsidize your hobby. I crochet and knit, I'm reasonably good and fast, and I give things away to get them out of my house. People like me wreck the potential income. If you want to be a SAHM, and you can afford it, I wouldn't worry about trying to bring in income. For planning a work force re-entry you'd probably be better off finding a part time or volunteer situation in the same general area of your current career. There are any number of volunteer orgs that would love someone with your skills giving them time. Then you're not saying you spent 10 years doing craft fairs or trying to spin an etsy store into an entrepreneurship situation, instead you spent 10 years doing project management work with the local animal shelter, church, or homeless outreach. That is unless you don't want to resume being a PM.
I never did end up opting out of the work force. We lucked into a remarkably easy child and only had the one, and the few times we were in intense-parenting-stages all fit in times when I could auto-pilot work for a bit and focus on the kid. I enjoy working, I like the structure it gives my life, I never wanted to be a SAHM, and during the time when kiddo had a health scare and we though it might be required I really struggling with it. So that gives you some info about my biases.
I hope your kids are doing well, and it sounds like you really will enjoy being able to focus on your kids without other things pulling at your attention.
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