Sent from my iPhone

My child is one that needs very careful supervision around other children. Taller, stronger, and less inhibited than virtually every other child of age 3, I worry that my child would possibly kill another if left in a group situation under someone else’s care. Too many times have people allowed their visual cortex to override their mental understanding that my mini giant (with hands larger than those of my 9yo niece) is really only 3–and cannot be expected to behave like the 6 year old their eyes would indicate. [When raising a superhero, one has to know that the child with superhuman strength may be cutting off the circulation of the other child's hands when hand-holding, for instance.]

I feel like I have a moral obligation to “stay home” with my child so that he is assured of having someone loving and understanding on hand. So that he is not villainized for being what he can’t help but be. I’ve gone from being someone who expected to go back to work full time after a few months (and tried to work part time from home while nursing 12 hours a day; HAH!) to someone who intends to homeschool, possibly all the way through high school.

I never understood the whole SAHP thing until I became a parent. Both my parents worked full time, though my father had his business out of the house for several years. I was raised with the impression that parents who stayed “home” were lazy.

I know better now, even if my parents don’t. (My dad recently said to me, “We thought you were going to grow up to do something important, with as smart as you are!”) And moreover, all the families who moved toward two-income households did themselves a net detriment in the long run, as it turns out. The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi has great information on this idea: that because so many families became dual-income families, the cost of living rose to meet this new standard to the point where it is nigh impossible for a family to subsist on a single income. Boy did we ever shoot ourselves in the foot on that one!

But I’m lucky because we have the option for me to stay with our child, to raise our child better than we were raised, and to show people that it is entirely possible to believe in equality and still live a more traditional life. It’s a choice. I have the choice to stay home, and I choose to take it!