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Should You Give Up Your Job to be a Stay-at-Home Parent?
Should you give up your job to be more available for your children ?
This is a question which every parent, particularly every mother goes through. I did too!
Till a generation above me, the roles were very clear. My father used to go to work and was the sole breadwinner of the family. My mother was the homemaker, someone always available for the children, looking after home, cooking good healthy food and managing the home to perfection. She was always there at home to listen to us , advise us , take us out for swimming and tennis lessons and to help with the homework.
Somewhere in our generation, the roles got muddled. Women like me instead of getting married early, chose to study further, get professional degrees and started working. We became ambitious , career focussed, enjoyed our freedom and financial independence. And indeed, working was required too-what with increase in the cost of living and increase in our our daily needs and wants . My parents lived in small towns , did not own expensive cars, did not have air conditioners at that time and did not crave to travel abroad so much or eat out. My generation wanted everything- from living in luxurious apartments/houses, having expensive cars, air conditioned homes, latest gadgets, smartphones , dining out often etc. So we did need two incomes . Like other women my age, I loved my job , my financial independence and after marriage too nothing changed. We both earned, worked hard , partied harder and enjoyed ourselves.
When the children came suddenly everything changed. Instead of getting out of the house and going to my job every morning, I longed to spend more time with my children. My husband used to travel globally and the onus of looking after the house , kids and everything else along with my job came upon me . It was a tough task to rush every morning, drop one kid to playschool another one to school and then run to my own job. In India , unlike the western world school starts early and ends by about 2 pm. The corporate jobs have their own schedule of 9 am- 6pm which very often extend beyond 6 pm to about 8 pm. So I very often thought of giving up my job and spending more time with my kids who I dearly love.
I very gratefully left my job when my husband was posted to Netherlands for two years. Fortunately, he was earning well and I was very happy to be a full time mom to my kids for these years.
After a couple of years , when we returned back to India, I decided not to go in for a full time job and instead start a software training institute I thought that this would give me flexible timings and allow me more time with my children and family. It started off very well and I could match my work timings with the school timings . I kept suitable staff to manage the institute in my absence. As the business grew , I was required to spend more and more time at work dealing with clients, faculty and managing the center. I was again working long hours away from my home and this ultimately turned out to be even more time consuming than my job.
Meanwhile, my husband got a good job offer in UK . We decided to sell off the business and move to UK.I again became a full time homemaker looking after my home, family and kids and I was once again able to give quality time to my family and children. The School timings in UK were much longer than in India and I also got a lot of time alone where I volunteered to teach some classes in my son’s school purely on a non-profit basis. We settled down and even bought a house in the UK . The children also settled well in the new environment and we were happy and content there for almost four years.
Then tragedy stuck. My husband , who was on a business trip to India passed away. He was only forty three years old. By now, he was the only breadwinner in our family as I was not working. So when my younger son asked me “Mom have we become poor now’- I really had no answer. We moved back to India. I got my children admitted to a good school and looked for a house very close to the school. Luckily I got a good job and found an apartment right next to the school. I took a huge home loan and bought the apartment.
While my job was good, what I earned was just enough to live by. I started looking for ways of earning other streams of income. As my job kept me very busy, I did not really have time to spend on anything else. After selling our property in UK and clearing all mortgages, I got some money which I invested in mutual funds, stocks and shares. These started giving me an additional income which really helped me. Then the stock market started heading towards a crash. I withdrew everything and invested in real estate .
I took on new loans and bought more property. And as I read somewhere the only 3 criteria I looked for was ‘location’, 'location' and 'location'. Fortunately, the real estate market was on an upswing in India at that time, the new areas grew fast and the investments grew. I was able to sell off these and send my children to study in the US.
So yes, even though I left my job many times to be able to spend time with my children and look after my family, my job was important for me as it provided for myself and my children when we needed it most.
Based on my experiences and my struggles, I advice and guide you in this video briefly on how to plan your life to have better time freedom and financial freedom.
👩👧👦Should You Give Up your Job to be a Stay-at-Home Parent?
📃 About Vandana Nanda
📖 My Story : The Journey Thus Far
Vandana Nanda, is the Founder and CEO of Winbrand Academy, an Online Personal Branding and Digital Marketing School.
After working in the corporate world with IT and Education companies for over two and a half decades, Vandana decided to venture online in 2020 on a full time basis.
Working online with Time Freedom and Financial freedom has been a long cherished goal for her. Vandana has travelled the world and experienced both extremes of life , going from being a successful corporate executive and a homemaker to being a single parent and bringing up two young children while also focussing on a full time corporate job.
She has been able to bounce back, learn new skills and continue on her path to achieving Financial and Time Freedom. She has made it her mission to achieve financial freedom herself and also help thousands of people across the globe to find financial freedom by doing what they love. Through Winbrand Academy ,she is helping Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, Real Estate Agents, Insurance Brokers, Authors, Actors, Musicians, Lawyers, Teachers, Industry-Specific Professionals, and of course, people with a specific Passion from around the globe brand themselves.
Vandana’s purpose is to help people brand themselves as Leaders and Authorities in either their specific niche or in whatever their passion is while creating an income doing what they love.