Woman Reveals The Most 'Heart-Wrenching Regret' She Has About Becoming A Stay-At-Home Mom
She wishes that she had never lost her independence.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A | Shutterstock It’s certainly not easy to stay home and take care of your children and your household full-time, but many women make the choice because that's what's best for their families. Making that decision doesn't come without risk, however. Sure, you're investing in your kids, but you're also putting all your trust in a partner to support you fairly.
One woman knows how scary giving someone that much control over your entire life truly can be. She made the decision to become a stay-at-home mom after living a very independent life prior to having kids, and now she seriously regrets it. She shared the reason why her reality has become so heartbreaking in a TikTok video.
A woman said her most ‘heart-wrenching regret’ about being a stay-at-home mom had to do with finances.
A TikTok content creator named Tanya revealed her thoughts about her choice to be a stay-at-home mom now that she is getting a divorce and admitted she has one huge regret.
“I have so many regrets about being a stay-at-home mom, especially now that I’m going through this divorce from my husband,” she shared. “But one of the most heart-wrenching regrets about it is how me being a stay-at-home mom and turning over the responsibility for my basic needs — you know, housing, clothing, food, the things that a human being needs to survive — turning that over to another adult and trusting that person to basically take care of me in this way.”
Tanya seemed somewhat shocked that she had ever done such a thing in the first place. “Like, what a gesture of trust that was on my part, as a very independent woman prior to marriage,” she said. She explained she had been working since the age of 14, when she was first placed in a foster home. “It drilled into my head to be, like, independent, hyper-independent,” she stated.
“And so, even into my adult life, I didn’t really depend on people, especially financially, and never a man,” she admitted. “There was never a man that paid my bills, paid my rent, paid for any of my basic needs. It never happened. I always worked.”
Although Tanya had always been self-sufficient, even when she was married, something changed when she had her first child.
“So, when I had my first child two years into our marriage, and I worked those total two years, when I had my first child and decided to stay home and talk to my husband about it, it was such a gesture and feeling of trust I had to have for him,” she continued.
“I had to trust him, that he was never going to use it against me, that he wasn’t going to use the fact that he paid for things for me to control me or punish me or throw it in my face,” she said.
And she did have that trust in him, but now she knows it was misplaced. “Now that he’s using it as a weapon against me in this divorce to try to punish me, because I don’t want to be married to him anymore, it’s just the initial feeling and idea that I had never to trust a man was right and now I’m paying the price for it,” she concluded sadly.
Unfortunately, stay-at-home moms end up in sticky financial situations fairly frequently.
For some stay-at-home moms, not having any money they can really call their own turns into a huge issue. Writing for MoneyNing, Vered Deleeuw said that the average stay-at-home parent loses $1 million over what could have been the course of their career.
Anna Shvets | Pexels
Deleeuw shared that she chose to be a stay-at-home mom herself for five years. While it worked for her, she cautioned others. “Despite my successful experience dropping out of the workforce for a few years, I believe I took a risk,” she said. “Ideally, a woman should weigh all her options and make this decision very carefully.”
As the Center for American Progress wrote, "When parents leave the workforce, they lose much more than their annual salary; the cost of this decision follows them for life. After taking into account the potential wage growth and lost retirement savings over time, a parent who leaves the workforce loses up to four times their annual salary per year."
Now imagine that loss if your partner suddenly decides they don't want to do it anymore. You've basically erased your past work history, depending on how long you've been out of the workforce. You have no savings, no income, and no retirement.
Women who are completely dependent on their husbands are just that — dependent. They lean on them for everything. This can lead to a dangerous situation if the relationship doesn’t work out. While this doesn’t mean women should stop being stay-at-home moms, it is essential, before taking that step, to think it completely through and always have a financial backup plan.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
