I never planned on being stay at home mom. It just sort of crept up on me.

I invested ten years into graduate school to be a college professor. My plan, if I really had one, was to get tenure at a college with low expectations. I was going to inspire the youth with my lectures about American government and write an occasional article over summer breaks. If I had known that I would end up spending most of my time with the kids and dinner plans and the after-school driving schedule, I would have had a paying gig in my 20’s and stashed away the money. But the job market turned out to be tougher than I thought. My husband changed careers to one that didn’t allow for much co-parenting. And the kids were too sweet to leave. Instead, I worked various part-time jobs and mostly minded the kids for the past 14 years.

In the Atlantic, Lisa Endlich Heffernan talks about her mixed feelings about being a SAHM. She worries that she spent too much time on dumb volunteer jobs and that her time at home has left her financially vulnerable.

Like Heffernan, I have mixed feelings about my job as a stay-at-home parent. There’s no question that opting out of the full-time workforce left me financially vulnerable and made our family’s finances more precarious. I can’t say that my knowledge of Plato and Aristotle is being fully utilized in the soccer carpool. I am sometimes jealous of the built-in social life at my husband’s job. I miss the end-of-the-week pay stub. I can’t neatly summarize my work responsibilities.

Unlike Heffernan, I never volunteered for anything. Instead, I spent my time teaching classes here and there at local colleges, writing an occasional freelance article, and maintaining a small blog. I’m not sure if those experiences will translate into a full-time job when my kids don’t need me anymore. I certainly won’t have a high-powered job, but I might have something that keeps me amused and brings in a modest salary.

Being a SAHM (with various part-time jobs) has some nice points, which really shouldn’t be forgotten. Having one person at home means that the family isn’t so stressed out.

There were a couple of blocks of time where I worked full-time or had a part-time job that required full-time hours. It wasn’t easy. Because we didn’t have a proper daycare or a nanny, I prepared for class and graded papers in the evening or over the weekend. With one child with special needs, we never had access to the same supports as other families. In the pictures of my son’s first communion, I look at horror at my image. I have dark circles under my eyes and a dead look in my eyes. Now, I have plenty of time to buy groceries, make dinner, toss the underwear in the machine, attend school recitals, wait for the repairman, drive a kid to camp, and attend a parent-teacher conference.

There’s no question that we need reforms in government and the private sector that will allow families to function properly, but, at the moment, we don’t. Instead, we have a crappy system where workers are fired for asking for flexible work schedules, where workers are expected to work unreasonable hours, and where workers have hour-long commutes. Given that reality, it’s not surprising that so many women (and men) aren’t “leaning in” or are “opting out” or [insert the catch-phrase du jour].

I can’t really say if my oldest son is better off with me being home. My son seems no different from his friends who have two-career parents. With my oldest, I could have outsourced the carpooling and the homework help and the guidance in navigating middle school dramas, and I’m sure that he would be roughly at the same place.  I’m not sure what would have happened to my youngest son who has special needs, if I had a big-time career. I don’t know any two-career families that have a special needs kid.

But, truthfully, I really like helping my kids with their homework. I like learning about the middle school gossip. I like that I taught them how to ride a bike, how to use the potty, how to make play-dough out of flour and water. I look with pride at my growing boys and I know that I did that. I made them into nice people all by myself. I’m sure that I could have paid someone else to teach them the same stuff, but I liked doing it.

I could have done all those things and minimized the stress with a full-time job, if my husband worked normal hours, if we didn’t live in an area with hour-long commutes, if my youngest didn’t have special needs, if I made enough money to compensate for all expenses of working, if I had a career that only expected 35 hours of work, if my mom moved in. But those are a lot of if’s.