Work vs Stay at Home

There's an ongoing discussion in my mailing list with questions directed to the Stay at home moms. Questions like what made you decide to be a SAHM?

The discussion elicited quite a lot of passionate responses from the SAHMs about why they chose to be SAHMs and what adjustments they had to make.

Although being a stay at home mom with dad being the only breadwinner is the traditional way to go, the reality is that some women are not comfortable with the traditional role. Like me.

My husband and I have a different arrangement which allows us a little bit of both worlds -- working and staying at home. It helps that we are both doctors, with the same specialty (ophthalmology) and in private practice. This means that our schedule is pretty flexible compared to the average Joe and Jane.

The long and short of it is that one of us always stays with our son. We only work part of the day, and on certain days, our work hours are different. Meaning if I go to work in the morning he stays at home. Then I come home for lunch and stay...he then goes to work in the afternoon. We also have days wherein we bring our son with us to the clinic, when we both have to be there.

In our modern society, there is really a lot of variation on the family, work wise. There are also families who mom goes to work and dad stays at home. Or families who only have a single parent who needs to work. There is also the phenomenon of the absentee parent, wherein one of the parents is always not there, because of either work in a foreign land or some other reason.

I think that the decision on who's working and who's taking care of the kids should be a decision reached by both the husband and the wife. It should not be just because that is what one party wants, or just because it's tradition, or because of what others say. We all have our unique situations and we are the best persons to judge on what works well for us.