The Job I Never Wanted (aka The Best Job I Ever Had)
When I was in grade 10, my career studies class had a discussion about the jobs our parents chose. As expected, our parents held a variety of positions — there were farmers, and auto assemblers, lawyers, and doctors. And then there was one that took me by surprise — a stay at home mother.
I was an idealistic teenager who thought she knew everything about feminism and women’s rights at the tender age of 15. To me, choosing to be a stay at home parent was a step backward in the fight for equality — I didn’t understand why any woman would give up her career to look after her children when she could have both.
I grew up assuming I’d do the same thing my mom did — have a husband and kids, work full-time, pay for childcare when it was needed, and balance everything. After I gave birth to my twins in 2017, I realized how stupid I was back then.
After 18 months of parental leave, I went back to work at a hospital foundation and put my kids in full-time daycare. The first few months were brutal — the girls caught every virus imaginable, and passed it on to my husband and me. We both missed many days of work while we built up our immune systems, and with no family help nearby, we felt like we were drowning.
Our health improved after a while, and once we were back to our normal selves, we began to realize that with our working hours, commute time, and the girls’ sleep schedule, we basically only saw our kids for a couple hours a day, during which time it was all work — making meals, bathing them, making our lunches for the next day and so on. To top it off, after paying for daycare, I was banking about $400 a month from my full-time job. Nothing felt enjoyable anymore.
Then, the pandemic began. Everything closed, and we were all at home together, trying to balance everything in our 1200 square foot condo. When my office called me back in June 2020, I decided to throw in the towel — we’d barely been holding everything together, and when you are faced with a new virus that could be potentially harmful to your family, as well as new daycare rules that would exclude the kids for so much as a runny nose, it wasn’t worth it anymore.
I quit my job and became a stay at home parent. And at first, I wasn’t happy about it. I felt resentful that I was forced into making this decision by a society that wasn’t set up for families to thrive — from our unreasonable working expectations to the outrageous cost of childcare, we were set up to fail.
It took me a while to work through my negative feelings, and when I finally decided to embrace my role as a caretaker and teacher to these two brilliant little girls, I started to feel whole. We spent our days playground hopping, making friends with other kids at home, and enjoying one another’s company.
A year into the pandemic, we decided to relocate from Toronto to Vancouver Island in search of a better childhood for our girls. Doing so meant forgoing a year of school for the girls — BC doesn’t have Junior Kindergarten. When we moved, I had to decide whether or not to look for childcare and find a job, or take another unplanned year off to be at home. To my surprise, the decision was easy — I had a front row seat to watch my kids evolve as humans, and I wasn’t ready to give it up.
Moving opened up a whole new world for us — we started exploring nature, spending our days in the woods or at the beach. We made new friends and found better playgrounds and fell madly in love with one another. I watched as they learned to walk further and further on our hikes, their eyes lighting up as they learned to love nature, and I listened as their language and knowledge evolved to include arbutus trees and bald eagles. It was pure magic.
When the girls started kindergarten this past September, I started applying for jobs and to my surprise, not a single job advertisement excited me. The thought of going back to work full-time and not being the only person my kids look to for their care and entertainment all day was almost too much to bear, and I have struggled with trying to reimagine my identity as a parent and an employee juggling it all.
But this week, I am finally reentering the workforce after being a stay at home parent for 2.5 years. I really thought I’d be happy to get a little bit of freedom back, and to have more money in my bank account, but so far, all I feel is fear and sadness. I worry that we’ll grow apart, and lose a bit of this bond we’ve created between us, and I’m sad that my kids will continue to learn and grow and I won’t be there to witness it happening in real time.
But at least I can rest easy at night knowing with certainty that I did the best thing I could’ve for my family and for me. Being a stay at home parent was the job I never wanted — but it turned out to be the best job I ever had.
