NMA: Newsletter 5 Article 8

You’ve decided to take the plunge and leave the office to stay home in order to breastfeed and care for your baby. After you’ve been home a while, it suddenly strikes you that you haven’t spoken to another adult (besides your husband) for what seems like weeks. Although you love being with your baby, you find yourself craving adult conversation the way you used to crave pickles and ice cream during your pregnancy.

But how do you go about finding kindred spirits when you’re home most of the day? It’s especially hard when you’re used to spending time with work colleagues and other people who, for the most part, don’t burp on command.

Mothers & More, an international non-profit association for women, offers one answer. This organization provides support for “sequencing” women—mothers who have altered their career paths in order to care for their children at home. Mothers & More’s diverse members include women who are home with their children full-time, work from home, work part-time or freelance, or cut back on their work hours in order to raise their family.

Recent U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics reveal that more than a third of women with preschool children are not employed, and fewer than half work full-time. Even though millions of women have decided to stay home, making the transition from career to home can be a difficult adjustment. When my coauthor Darcie Sanders and I surveyed 300 at-home mothers for our book Staying Home: From Full-time Professional to Full-time Parent, we found that isolation was the biggest challenge these women faced—and that finding support is crucial to help them combat loneliness.

Local Chapter Activities: Meeting and Greeting

If you’re looking for a good reason to get out of the house on your own once in a while, Mothers & More’s local chapters offer bi-weekly evening meetings with lively discussions and guest speakers, along with playgroups, Moms’ Nights Out, family activities and book groups.

Chapter meetings give members the chance to vent, compare notes on parenting and personal feelings about motherhood, and find a sense of community. Ultimately, what advice would Mothers & More members give to new moms who are feeling isolated? Doreen Corvese, a mother from Wayne, PA sums it up: “Everybody needs some sort of support network. It doesn’t matter how independent and intelligent you are. You go through so many emotional changes in your life after having a baby, you need a support network to help you get through it.”

Martha M. Bullen (writermb@aol.com) is coauthor, with Darcie Sanders, of Staying Home: From Full-Time Professional to Full-Time Parent and Turn Your Talents into Profits.