The Value of a Mom in the Home

When I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord at the age of 29, I was working at Boeing, and the mother of Katie, almost 2 years old, who hated Boeing because she wanted to be with her mom. It didn't take long for God to impress upon me that it was more beneficial to my family and to my own health for me to stay home than it was for me to work full time. This in spite of the fact that at the time Gary was trying to break into sales after 12 years of office work; he would start a job as a sales rep at a food brokerage, and within a month or so they would put him on part-time so they would not have to pay him benefits. This happened three times; so at the time I was realizing the need to stay home he was earning $9.50 an hour, part-time. This wasn't very promising! Yet circumstances too complicated to relate made it very clear that it was the best option. So I quit, but I gave just enough notice, 3 weeks, to quit on the first day of August so I'd have just one more month of medical coverage. (A year and a half later he got a steady job that paid better than any he'd had before, with full benefits; that's a funny story in itself, for another time. Meanwhile we scraped by and learned to save like never before!)
It wasn't financially easy, but it hadn't been easy before, either. At that time, I was paying $250 per month in daycare. That sounds cheap by today's standards and I think it was fairly cheap then but not cheap like it would be now, and not cheap to me even then! I was earning about $9 per hour at Boeing after 4 years there when I quit. As one example of how desperately broke we were, we used only cloth diapers rather than disposable to save money, the wash-your-own kind, even though I was working. By the time I paid daycare, the cost of driving to work, higher car insurance, higher income tax, the various conveniences I no doubt purchased for the sake of sanity, the birthday presents and occasional bought lunches because of office festivities, the cost of dressing up, and with the inability to shop for sale prices with the remaining time I had, I didn't have much to spare by the end of the month anyway. At the time I quit I had more exact numbers than I have now, and I estimated that I earned about $80 per month by the time I paid for the expenses of working.
These days most women who work probably earn more than I did; but they are no doubt paying more for daycare unless they have a kindly friend or relative doing it as a favor. (I remember one woman at Boeing who paid more in daycare than she earned, because she had two boys; she said the daycare people could do a better job of raising her kids than she could.) If a woman has more than one child I would like to challenge her to show how it could possibly be financially smarter to work than to stay at home.
For that matter, there is the matter of stress and sanity. My health was at a low ebb by the time I quit; I had allergies that were ever-increasing in spite of taking shots, and I was constantly exhausted. My home was in dreadful disarray for lack of time and energy, and I had no significant time to spend one-on-one with Gary or Katie by the time I'd made dinner and had cleaning still to do.
I read an article that is entitled, US Mothers Deserve $134,121 in Salary. (If you are interested, go there! It will try to quantify the value of the work you do at home; in fact, if you work, it doesn't discount the value of that.) While it offered the role of daycare teacher as one facet of a mom's workday, the role comparable to homeschool teacher wasn't provided, such as private tutor or private school teacher, for which I could probably claim higher pay. It also assumed that the husband does the yard work (Gary does mow the lawn but the rest is mine), and doesn't say anything about home repairs. Well, between painting, working on plumbing and electrical and so forth, that's a whole additional category that is mine! The categories it offers are housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver (chauffer sounds a little higher pay and is more like the custom-applied driving of a mom, rather than a corporate van driver), CEO and psychologist; in previous years it also included nurse. Now I don't consider myself a CEO or a psychologist (though I do try to use verses from God's word for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training; give practical aspects regarding behavior; and also apply discipline where needed)."Laundry machine operator" and "janitor" each seem so specific a segment of my time that they ought to be included in housekeeping. Many functions I do are those of a nurse. What about personal shopper, too? The list is hardly comprehensive or perfect. Still, anything in the realm of $134,000 brings a smile to my face. Mom's presence in the home counts for a lot!
And yet, the money value on paper doesn't account for all of it. What about just the comfort that a mom's presence at home provides? The fact that a child has a parent always ready to be at home with him if he's sick, or to help make a car for the Grand Prix? Not only that but the accountability for his behavior after school. I mention that because out of about 17 kids on our street, most of them have mothers who are still at work when they come home from school, and who don't make it home until 5:30 if by then. These parents have no idea of the things their children do while they're gone. A child needs someone to account to, someone who will be his mentor, his confidante, his defender...the value of a mom's presence is impossible to quantify in dollars, but according to what I experienced and what I read in that article, a mother's value is definitely highest at home.

Ways to Save Money so You can Stay Home with Kids

When I was growing up, I had no clue of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I went to college and quit after 3 years, since I couldn't decide on a major and thought I was wasting my money. I went from job to job, starting in retail and then on to office work. I was a national sales secretary for Nike, and a department secretary at Boeing, and worked as a temp in various places. It was all interesting enough, other than Boeing, which I couldn't really describe in that way.
When I became a mother, and was working at Boeing, we were hard-pressed for money. My husband was trying to break into the field of sales and started working for various brokers. They'd hire him full-time and immediately put him on part-time so they wouldn't have to pay benefits. So he was going through regular job changes at that time. There I was with my colicky baby, waking her at 6 a.m., hurriedly dressing her and myself, taking her to daycare at 7 a.m. and going to see her at lunch; taking a pump to work so I could continue nursing. (You should have seen the gate guards' puzzled faces when they'd ask me to open my cooler with it all in there!) I'd pick her up after work and go home too exhausted to clean house well (I was anemic also...). She'd wake up at 2:00 every night. I hated work; Katie hated my work as well. She finally got kicked out of that daycare; the woman said (though she'd been doing daycare for 25 years) that Katie was the most difficult baby she'd ever watched--not a distinction that I'm proud of. I hired a neighbor to take her in instead. (Thankfully she's no longer difficult!)
Finally a month after becoming a Christian I knew very strongly that I really needed to quit working and stay home. It was truly a stretch but I had to trust in God's help. The first morning that I stayed home, I suddenly knew what I was wanting to be...I'd wanted it all my life and just didn't realize it. I wanted to be an at-home mom. Because I'd never thought of it as an option, and because I'd never really been trained in it growing up, I was ill-equipped. I had a lot to learn; I still do!
There are various ways other than what I've already blogged about (garage sales and grocery store shopping) that I use to save the money to stay home. I cut our own hair, all four of us (sometimes with better success than other times--but the biggest challenge is my own head, and I can accept that), and I figure I save about $100 or so per month by doing so. I clean our own carpets. I fertilize our yard (I recently learned that getting this done commercially would cost us about $450 per year!). I fix our furniture and many appliances and prune our own trees. I do our plumbing, sewing, gardening, indoor painting, and home schooling. I don't do car repairs or get on our roof, but I do many of the other things! Sometimes I think knowing how to do these things is a drawback, in that I never feel free to call and get someone else to do it, but we'd be struggling financially far worse if I didn't. And though getting everything done that seems to need doing is perhaps impossible, I'm never bored! Life is fuller than it ever would be in an office, away from my home and family!
For all these things that you can do to save your money and be able to stay at home with your family, you can find out how to do them either on line or by looking at books from the library--I've done this many times. If you're in the middle of a household project and can't figure it out, the hardware store is full of people who can advise you on how to finish the job. I installed a sink, for example, taking 4 trips to the store to ask questions and buy parts and tools. Sometimes the difference between being able and not being able to do these things might lie in buying or renting the right tool.
If you're perplexed with your work and longing to stay home, pray for God's help and inspiration. He'll give you the means to do what He wants, and I believe that His ideal is for families to be together.