Branding Stay At Home Moms!!

First let us understand about the parenting styles across all species in the world. Bi parental care is a norm in birds compared to other animal groups where it is mostly uni parental or maternal care. The typical responsibilities of bi parental care for birds consists of egg guarding, grooming, protecting and escorting of young. This type of bi parental care can next be applied to human beings. Along with guarding, grooming, protecting and escorting, human parents also have additional responsibilities of developing life skills, talent, shaping character and provide guidance to help achieve their little one's goals. Just like birds where the ability to fly come later, human children also develop their gross motor skills and fine motor skills later, and becoming completely independent is a long term process.

So the discussion itself about whether women should work outside or stay home makes no sense to me. Human offspring technically need both parents or bi parental care to thrive. When one parent goes out to work for money the other becomes a primary child care provider at least till the time he/she comes back home. And in most cases moms take a break or become a part timer, depending upon the age of their little ones. And when both parents need to work outside they got find some other trustworthy care provider. Typically grandparents provide that care and support when both parents are out for work. But now professional baby sitters and day care centers also do the job and they come with immense price tag.

So that was the talk about the nature's requirement for humans to have stay at home moms. Now I would like to throw light on the intelligence and skill set used, to be a stay at home mom. The self worth of stay at home moms are at stake because of the nature of work she performs. In an abstract manner it is cooking, cleaning, baby sitting etc. But from a bird's eye view, one need to posses strong management skills including crisis management, conflict management, inventory management, time management and operations management skills. I remember GRE and management entrance tests that I wrote many years a ago. It is just Math and English but with tremendous time constraint. So that makes me think that any job can be simple if it has infinite time limit, problem and pressure amounts when there is a deadline. And top notches are those who achieve results within their deadlines.

I am really interested in branding of stay at home moms simply because of the underrated intelligence requirement. All these quotes about stay at home moms going viral in social media mainly talks about its work load. I agree that it is a 24/7 job, but I would also like to confirm that this role needs high level of intelligence to maintain order and raise happy & healthy kids. The only difference in staying home or working outside is in receiving a pay check.

I thoroughly support woman going outside and achieving their dreams. But it would be nice if she is not branded to be more worth and intelligent, only if she works outside. The day when a woman can proudly say “Yes, I work outside” or “ Yes, I am a stay at home mom” without any difference, that's when it is truly liberating.