Working Vs Stay At Home Mums - A Healthy Balance (Working Mums vs. Stay at Home Mums)

Member Name: KLockwood75

Product:	Working Mums vs. Stay at Home Mums
Date:	20/02/09 (156 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The best of both worlds

Disadvantages: Still can't quite shake off that Mummy guilt

Working Mums vs. Stay at Home Mums - that is a big question and it's very much a matter of personal opinion.

For some parents (and not just Mums, there are stay-at-home Dads as well and this trend may well increase in the current financial climate) having one parent stay at home with the children is really important. For others, it is a financial necessity that both parents have to work, at least some of the time....

From my personal experience, neither scenario is without it's issues. Society often has a perspective that the world of the stay at home Mum is an endless round of meeting friends for coffee and lunch, chatting at toddler groups while your child plays, play-dates at friends houses, taking them to all sorts of activities designed to enhance their physical, mental and social development. For some Mums, probably the ones who can afford the ever increasing cost of children's activities and who are confident enough to make new 'Mummy' friends, this may well be the reality, but for others it can be a lonely existence, leading them to question their own sense of identity with nobody but a demanding toddler, constantly in need of entertainment, for company.

And on to the Working Mums - yes, they are probably financially better-off, can retain a bit more of their own identity, get adult conversation, time on their commute to read a book and uninterrupted shopping time in their lunch hours (believe me, you should make the most of those small pleasures when you can!), but it is counter-balanced by that never-ending sense of 'Mummy guilt'. It becomes a juggling act where you're terrified of looking unprofessional when you have to leave early to pick up a poorly child from nursery, never get the chance to socialise with work colleagues as you rush home to snatch that precious hour with your child before bedtime, spoil your child with treats instead of quality time... not the easiest existence at all.

For me personally, I feel that I have a healthy work-life balance. I work three days a week. My 2 year old spends one day with his grandparents who take him for days out and provide him with loads of one-to-one attention, two days in a nursery which he loves and runs into each morning without so much as a backward glance, and 2 days at home with me. He is a happy, outgoing, sociable and intelligent child with a big vocabulary and loads of self-confidence - I think this has come from the different experiences he has every week. I know that he gets the company and stimulation he needs at nursery, the unconditional love from his grandparents and lots of quality time with Mummy and that has provided him with a fantastic start in life and I am very proud of my little boy. In turn, I get a bit of time to be 'me', a bit of money to spend on things that I want to buy without feeling guilty that I haven't earned it and appreciate the time with my son even more because I'm not doing it 24/7.

Summary: Sometimes a mixture is what works out best, but everyone is different