What’s In a Name? The SAHM Conundrum: Mothers of Invention

A woman, who has her PhD in Asian Studies, recently told me that when people see her with her kids during the weekday, they automatically assume that she’s a stay-at-home mom and never ask any other questions about her vocation. And proving Rhonda’s point, one of the more popular blogs by a full-time father is called Rebel Dad. What would a rebel mom be? A Harley-driving harlot? An Amazonian river guide?

When I took a very unscientific poll of friends’ attitudes about the phrase, a few women told me that they consider being a stay-at-home mom a privilege—after all, many families can’t afford to survive on a single paycheck. (Though I think there’s also a large sector of the population that cannot afford childcare and is in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.) The media has certainly taken glee in recent stories of Ivy League grads that are leaving corporate salaries in order to be home with their kids, thus glorifying the position.

For those in creative fields who paint between naps, or play music on weekends when their partner is with the kids, however, the term for stay-at-home mom, SAHM (my au currant sister-in-law alerted me to an entire parental acronym system of which I was previously unaware) omits a vital part of their being. Forgive me if you’re a really passionate CPA, but I don’t believe that hanging up your briefcase and stilettos for a few years is the same as retiring your cello or your potter’s wheel. Creative pursuits provide a pleasure, a sense of self that’s different from the fulfillment of a profession. In fact, creativity is closer to the satisfaction and frustrations provided by motherhood. I like my job, but if I couldn’t do it for a few years, it wouldn’t affect my internal barometer. Not being able to write for a few years, on the other hand, would drive me over some Guantanamo line in the mental sand.

And so it becomes all the more vital to find the right words that will sum up to the world—Who am I? My friend Claudia, an illustrator and children’s book author, agrees that SAHM is full of contradictions. “It conjures up commitment, self-sacrifice, privileged (to choose), wholesome, trapped, contentment, pejorative, old-fashioned, surrender, ennui.” As someone who works out of a home-based studio and also does the bulk of childcare in her family, she goes to great odds to explain her situation, or, as she puts it “to defend my motherhood and feminism at the same time.”

Feminism.