Can a Sahm Have Ambition??

I'm sorry but how on earth can anything be more important then being the best mother to raise our future!!!!

I consider myself having quit a lot of ambition. I have been a SAHM for 4 years now and am constantly tring to improve and get better.

My children deserve the best from me and to even for a moment consider that they are a side job or temporary leave from a "real job" is absurd!

This kind of mentality is why women are afraid to come out and say they are "just a homemaker"

No other job is more important! Period.

There is a joke going around called "Just a Mom" I'll PM it to you it really offers a new look at the job of MOM.

I have a feeling you're going to get a lot of strong opinions on this one. Good Luck
K. SAHM of 3

I remember when I was pregnant and a Mortgage Loan Officer having a VP of another Bank tell me that she never had children because her career came first.

When you are 75 and look back on what you did for a living how can it compare to being a Mom?? I had a customer that was a Tribal Chairman, I asked him one day what the hardest part of his job was... he told me it was looking at everything with seven generations. What impact are our decisions today going to have in seven generations? If we put our children first in our lives that will have an incredible impact on the lives of all our generations to come.

Being a Mom is so important. My Mom stayed home and I remember her being there when I got home to ask me how my day was and help me with my homework. Looking back, that is why I wanted to stay home. So I can be a Mom like her. I have chosen to work from home, but that is part time and around my family life. The most important thing in my life is being a good Mom to my daughter. That is ambition. That is a goal.

L. (who is getting off her soap box now)

Lisa,
I think giving up your ambition was just the wrong words because as a stay at home mom we need our ambition to get up and run our household everyday. I gave a high paying Corp job to become a sahm but decided that I need a little grown up time so I became a Mary Kay consultant and I have to say that my schedule is busy with my son's sports, school, household,and my small business. I feel like we as women are born with ambition that just get better with age!!!
Lisa I am sure you are going to maintain your ambition but it will just be refoced!!!

Not to be rude to your husband, but......If he thinks for a second that staying home, running a household and taking care of two little ones does not take ambition,then he has no idea what it is you really do (most men don't :). The difference here is that yours is not personal ambition - it is the drive to create the best life you can for your family, the ambition of a mother. So I guess my opinion is that there are differnt types of ambition. It basically just means striving to do something better, and you are!

Wow... what an astonishingly narrow-minded and insulting comment.

One of my lifelong ambitions has been to own my own business. Oooh, look -- I do. And I'm a sahm. And have been for the last 20 years.

Ambition is not ALL about getting promoted (as Steven Covey says 'what happens if you climb the ladder all the way to the top only to find it's leaning against the wrong wall?)... it's about living values and reaching out for goals, neither of which necessarily have anything at all to do with jobs or money.

For example, one ambition I had was to raise my children well. Another was to remain happily (rather than bitterly) married.

Taking 20 or 25 years 'off' work doesn't impede upward progress. There are no circumstances under which I will EVER do any entry-level work again. I have gained tremendous skills and experience raising my children, and bring all that -- and wisdom -- to my work. I wouldn't even step sideways from my last paid job. If I were returning to work for someone else, I'd be in middle-upper management at least. Just as, if I were ever to pursue post-secondary education, at this point I wouldn't even look at undergrad work. It would be Master's or Ph.D. studies or 'no thanks.'

I am keenly aware of the advances I've made personally that translate naturally to tremendous advances professionally. I expect that in a few years (or decades, if you take to raising children seriously instead of giving the job to someone else), you'll find exactly the same thing.

I think that I would use the word "priorities" before the word "ambition". Everyone has ambitions in life, and being a stay at home mother to your children is not so much an ambition as it is a priority for you. I am sure you, as well as other sahm's have "ambitions" to be something else, or do something else someday. Yes, you want to stay at home, but you are not doing it for yourself, you are doing to for your children and that is to be admired. My husband is the opposite, and I guess I am lucky. We are in the process of re-adjusting our "priorities" so I can stay at home for a little while. How long of a period has your hubby stayed home with your kids without you? That might help him gain more of a perspective into all you do:) Just a thought......

In a word, yes. You have to give up career ambition and refocus priorities on parenting and homemaking if you are to be an effective sahm. Taking time off to parent is essentially recognizing that sacrafice. We may all be splitting hairs at the precise terminology, but I think you can get my gist. If I had not consciously given up a significant portion of my professional career 'ambition,' I would not be able to be satisfied as a sahm mom. This sacrafice is easier for some than others to make. I have struggled for months, but I think I am finally at peace with my decision and the career I left behind. I did have to give up my personal professional ambitions (as they once were) to establish a new focus for my family. And let's face it, for those of us who were in careers for many, many years, who had already climbed several rungs on the ladder of success, it's not easy at all to return to the positions we left behind.

Let me tell you, and you can tell your hubby - lol:

I am a SAHM of 6 kids 9 and under. I have given up most of the last 9 years to stay at home with my children. Saving my family money, and ensuring a warm cared-for atmosphere for all. I am grateful for the oppertunity to serve my family and give it all I've got as they say. However, my family is not what I want to *do* with my life. It is SO hard for me sometimes to be a SAHM. It can leave you feeling overdefined by your family. Your accomplishment as a SAHM is measured in the success of the family. You can't really put it on a resume. Your grandchildren aren't going to look back and say "I'm so proud of Grandma! She's accomplished so much with her life" because you raised your kids. I want to do great things with my life. I want to go back to school (with two still going half days and two still at home there's no way I can persue that dream right now). I want to pursue a career in physics. I want to be gainfully employed doing something I love so much it hurts sometimes. Staying at home is a sacrafice that people make for the good of the family. (Which is not a statement on how much they love their family or anything - I'm just saying that it is literally sacraficing your personal life and employment dreams for awhile for the good of the whole.) I am glad to be staying home with my family. I don't regret being here. I love my family tremendously, and I'm so glad to be able to share the daily ups and downs with them, but to say that it doesn't chaff sometimes would be grossly inaccurate. I haven't given up an ounce of ambition. I've just temporarily relinquished my ability to pursue it.

I am a working Mom and sometimes wish I could be a SAHM (or work part time). I don't think any MOM SHOULD much less has to give up herself to raise and nurture her children. The more independent and developed we are as women the more we bring to our children, husbands and families.

You absolutley do not have to give up ambition. You are just re-directing your life for now to stay home with your children. You didn't turn in your identity.

I agree with you, one does NOT have to have a career out side of the home to have ambition. I feel it is what you do with your time that shows ambition. I have always been a stay home mom.

I have a strong ambition to get up, get my kids off to school, clean the house (spic-n-span I might add), make a good meal for my family, type up the school news letter, plan a girl/boy scout meeting for that evening,be a cheer coach, volunteer in the classroom, do home work with my kids (and make sure they get EXCELLENT grades), make sure they are clean , and read with them put them to bed--then have enough ambition to do it all over again.

I have always done these things, and I know plenty of other Moms (stay home or work) that don't do nearly as much as me.

So, do I feel I have ambition--YES I do!!

I don't know your hubby, but I hope he just chose the wrong words. I think in the most basic sense of the topic, he's right...your ambition to succeed in business, whatever it may be, has to be set aside for your more important goal of raising children. I would question him further, though, did he mean that you have to give up your identity and resign to being 'just a mom'? Or was he trying to agree with the fact that giving up your career to stay home is a tough choice, especially for the most ambitious of us! Personally, I try hard to give my hubby credit for things he might not be saying as well as what I think he's trying to say! It's easier that way...LOL!

Either way, you'll find no argument here that staying home is hard work. I feel my natural 'ambition' to further my education and career very often, and find myself thinking ahead to the days that my kids will be in school and I can focus on myself a little more. But those days will come all to soon and I'll be dreaming of being 'just a mom' again!!!

~L.