Stay at Home Moms’ Job Security

This is a post I wrote in 2007, I believe the message is poignant and very appropriate to be shared in 2013.

Recently, a friend asked me to look at a copy of the local newspaper section on jobs. As I was going through the ads, one heading really hit home. The question was asked, “Is job security important to you?” My first thought was, “Of course! Who wouldn’t consider job security as important?” I immediately answered my own question. Stay at home moms don’t even think about job security when they quit their paying jobs or careers to mother their children full time.

I must admit that I was one of the really dumb and unsuspecting ones. I quit my job a month or so before I became vested. I gave up my tenure, retirement security and my ability to contribute to 401Ks in order to be a full time wife and mother. I never even thought about what my future might be like, in the event of divorce. After all, everyone knows that being a mother is a forever thing. As hard as this is for me to admit, that is not necessarily so. In addition, in today’s day and age, everyone knows only too well, that marriages are not always forever. Since the marriage vows are not binding, it has become abundantly clear to me, that we, as women, need to revamp and modernize our thought process.

We need to begin to plan, well in advance of quitting our jobs, for the possibility of divorce. We, as stay at home moms, need to protect ourselves while we still can. We need to protect ourselves while we still have bargaining chips to offer to our husbands, while they still, hopefully, care about us. I have received a few emails questioning the fact that my words of late, are directed more toward preparing for the possibility of divorce, rather than dealing with the consequences of being a stay at home mom who is currently, dealing with divorce. I guess that I am guilty as charged.

I think of the old adage that, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” and realize that I agree. My purpose is to help stay at home moms to avoid this whole painful ordeal, well in advance. Hopefully, the two are not mutually exclusive because my main desire is to be a life line for the stay at home moms who are already drowning in the quagmire of divorce.

Photo: Photologue_np