Megan Noelle Powell, a stay-at-home mom of six kids, has been used to her needs not being taken seriously. Whenever she'd vent about how exhausting it is to be with little ones all day, she'd be met with eye rolls and admonishments that she shouldn't complain or that she was lucky.
Now that most families are experiencing some similarities to life as a stay-at-home parent, Megan hopes that when the national shelter-in-place order is lifted, people will start taking the mental heath of stay-at-home parents a little more seriously [1].
"Being a stay-at-home parent isn't all it's cracked up to be, huh?"
"Being a stay-at-home parent isn't all it's cracked up to be, huh?" Megan wrote in a candid Facebook post [2]. "Now you understand why things may not get done or why the house isn't spotless? Those kids make continuous messes when they are home all day. It's impossible to get everything done that needs to be done when you're tending to multiple little people's needs all day."
She asked if the parents who used to brush aside her feelings now understand why stay-at-home parents still wish they could go to work or to the store by themselves.
"No more eye rolls when we say we need social interaction," she wrote in a Facebook post. "No more telling us we shouldn't complain about being able to stay home with our kids, when in reality we're just venting because staying at home all day is mentally taxing."
She continued that it's not mutually exclusive to "love our kids" but need "time away from the people you live with [4]" in order to maintain healthy relationships and mental stability.