Is Being a Stay-at-Home Mom Enough?
“So, what do you do for a living?”
“I work for the government.”
At church gatherings and in the Target checkout line, this was my reply to the most basic of small talk questions.
In Washington, D.C., our nation’s security hub, “I work for the government” is just code for “I have a top-secret security clearance, and I can’t tell you anything about my job.”
Even inside the Beltway, where these types of positions are fairly commonplace, the people I met acted interested in—even impressed by—my line of work. Their questions and engagement with me communicated that I was worth knowing. Yes, I do have access to secret information. No, if I told you more detail, I would not have to kill you.
EMPOWERING FEMININITY
Before I became a mother, if someone asked me my opinion about choosing stay-at-home parenting, I stated confidently that while not a mandate or a prescriptive choice, running a household was admirable, essential work. Opting out of the workforce to raise children was sacrificial and beautiful. But becoming a stay-at-home parent myself? It was never an option.
When I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s, professional possibilities for young women were multiplying. My parents came of age during the 1960s counterculture. While they rejected the sexual ethics of the movement, they embraced the elements of second-wave feminism that promoted equal pay for equal work and a belief that a woman’s choice to work outside the home would both prosper them as individuals and prove them valuable assets to the workforce.
This was the only “girl power” I cared about: education and opportunity. You can do anything you set your mind to. Achieve. Advance. Self-actualize. In my mind, to stay at home raising children amounted to a squandering of my education and a waste of my God-given talents. It was a fine enough choice, if you had no other choice.
Then one day, I chose it.
THE MIRROR OF PARENTHOOD
I liked school and learning, and I was pretty good at it. Through hard work and some lucky breaks, I translated academic success into a job with the U.S. Intelligence Community, a stimulating, profitable career path. I gathered knowledge, and I applied it. I set goals, and I reached them.
Several years later I met my husband and got married. We knew we wanted to move away from D.C., which meant I’d have to quit my job. As I prepared to resign my government position and pivot to raising children, the future appeared promising. I’m a competent person. I know how to solve problems and learn new skills. How hard can it be?
“For all of the good that my former career produced (income for my family, vocational purpose), I also allowed it to fertilize the soil around deep roots of selfishness.”
Imagine my surprise when the baby arrived. Knowledge was useless; professional experience meant nothing. Even the hours spent poring over baby books seemed fruitless. My treasured parenting facts vanished like a vapor as I stared into the face of a screaming child.
As an expectant parent, I’d heard warnings of the sacrificial nature of motherhood and how my life would be turned upside down. And yet I was blindsided by the turmoil in my heart. For all of the good that my former career produced (income for my family, vocational purpose), I also allowed it to fertilize the soil around deep roots of selfishness. God was about to teach me that the biggest way your life changes as a parent is not that you need new knowledge but that you need unremitting, unending selflessness.
In the face of my sweet but strong-willed son, the Lord held up a mirror to my heart. I began to see that the core problem wasn’t that I missed working for the government. My problem was that I viewed stay-at-home parenting as unimportant and insufficient work. “Being a mom isn’t enough,” I told myself, “I’m not enough.”
I had a low view of stay-at-home parenting, and only becoming a parent myself finally exposed it.
THE HUMAN HEART WANTS SELF-SUFFICIENCY
“In moments like this, I encountered the depths of my insufficiencies and the heights of God’s limitlessness.”
A few months after I gave birth, my husband was preparing to go to work one morning. I remember stewing with resentment that he would soon slip away from the house and the baby boy upstairs. As strange as it sounds, I wished for the familiarity and predictability of a desk and computer. I longed for completed checklists. But, mostly, I craved an escape from my intense feelings of failure. I was overwhelmed by problems I couldn’t solve and a person I didn’t understand.
In this moment and others like it, I encountered the depths of my insufficiencies and the heights of God’s limitlessness. I became aware of my minute-by-minute dependence on the strength only he provides to clean up one more mess, calm one more meltdown, cook one more meal my kid wouldn’t eat. Through the perfect life of his son Jesus, the suffering servant, God was teaching me to lay down any perceived entitlements I had to a quiet, tidy home and a quiet, tidy life.
The Lord also exposed long-held prejudices that the roles of wife and mother were add-ons, tacked on to the primary pursuits of “teacher” or “lawyer.” The world seemed to scream that it was not sufficient to just raise children. What else are you doing? How are you earning your keep? Even in our vocational pursuits, we stumble into belief in a works-based righteousness.
But the gospel of grace reminds me that I am saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ. My achievements and good deeds mean nothing. God doesn’t pin my sweater with the merit badge of salvation; rather, he clothes me in the robes of Jesus’ own righteousness. Grace offers me a status: Daughter. “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:8-9).
THE HUMAN HEART WANTS SIGNIFICANCE
I’m now a few years removed from quitting my intel job in order to raise our son full-time. We relocated to a new state and found new social circles, but the rules of small talk elicit an old, familiar question.
“So, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a stay-at-home mom.”
Silence.
I would walk away from these exchanges with a wound I couldn’t diagnose. Why did it bother me that she had no follow-up questions? Why did he change the subject so quickly?
The uncomfortable truth was that stay-at-home parenting wasn’t very compelling to these people. And what was worse? I agreed with them. For several years I immersed myself in the geopolitical topics that fascinated me. The issues I researched at work sometimes made the evening news. Though I had freely traded that life for one as a stay-at-home parent, I was surprised to discover how small my world felt.
“The irritation was merely a symptom of the disregard I felt toward work I perceived as humble, lowly, and unseen. ”
I had bigger problems than irritation over someone’s lack of interest in homemaking. The irritation was merely a symptom of the disregard I felt toward work I perceived as humble, lowly, and unseen.
Like the false apostles and teachers in the apostle Paul’s day, I judged the value of my work against the idols of prestige and status, standards of my own creation that have nothing to do with how God views work.
“Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding” (2 Cor. 10:12). Paul continues, warning his brothers and sisters in Corinth that “it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends” (v. 18).
Of course, there is nothing intrinsically holy about changing diapers and reading If You Give a Pig a Pancake for the 17th consecutive time. God does not elevate these duties over preparing security briefings or writing performance reviews. The point isn’t “good work” or “bad work,” but rather the heart of the worker. A contented, joyful heart, regenerated by the Holy Spirit and conforming to the image of Jesus transforms secular tasks into a sacred calling. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:23-24).
“A contented, joyful heart, regenerated by the Holy Spirit and conforming to the image of Jesus transforms secular tasks into a sacred calling.”
THE NEED FOR A SUPREME LOVE
One of my former jobs was as a strategic planner for an intelligence agency. I worked long, stressful days, swimming upstream against bureaucratic inertia and “the way things have always been.” The fruits of my labors—papers, briefings, charts—represented countless hours of toil and heartache. But when I walked away from my job, I was confident that I left the organization with a roadmap to positive change.
I have no doubt that those strategy papers now line the agency’s recycle bins.
Tim Keller says, “The ultimate reason for our misery . . . is that we do not love God supremely. . . . If you love anything at all in this world more than God, you will crush that object under the weight of your expectations, and it will eventually break your heart.”
If our supreme love is self, then our failures and our forgotten, discarded labors will inevitably drive us to despair.
But if God is our supreme love, we can pursue stay-at-home parenting and full-time careers and everything in between with faith and steadfastness, confident that the one who leads us to each of these callings will himself equip us to do the work. We can move in and out of different seasons, careers, and life changes with our eyes fixed on the One who is constant.
Our hearts desire sufficiency and significance, but these yearnings that God, our Creator, designed in us are only fulfilled in him and by him.
Nancy Bynum lives outside Raleigh, NC with her young son and her husband Brad. Nancy served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Intelligence Community for twelve years before taking the leap of faith to become a full-time stay-at-home parent. She enjoys serving in her local church, taking full advantage of the local foodie culture, and bingeing on podcasts. Nancy writes at http://www.thebookofnan.com/. Follow on Instagram: @thebookofnan.