Being a stay at home mum to older children

From time to time I meet new people, usually connected to my husband's work, and of course they always ask me what I "do". When the children were very small it was easy to say that I stayed at home to look after them, but now that they are older and firmly established at secondary school I'm starting to feel a bit more self-conscious about it.

I do some work here and there but not enough to make much of a contribution to the household finances, and so it's my husband's job that supports us. He works very hard and he often travels for work so I'm the one that looks after the children and the home. It suits us both well, but I can't help feeling that it's a bit indulgent to be able to be at home all day when there are plenty of parents both managing to work full time even with much younger children. 

But I do seem to keep busy. My husband often does the morning school run and I will usually exercise then, but if he's away it can be mid-morning before I've finished a run or swim and had a shower. I usually spend most of the morning doing housework, which is all down to me, along with general life admin - there always seem to be e-mails from the school to read and take in, trips to be paid for, tradesmen to contact and so on.

Then after making lunch for us both I might sit down to write some blog posts before going out to do the school run, and this is also my chance for some hobby time because after school it's full on with making dinner, packed lunches and helping with homework. Putting the children to bed takes longer now than it did when they were little because it's my time to catch up with them both for a chat, and once that's done I'm usually ready to head to bed myself with a book!

Photo credit Annie Spratt via Unsplash

I'm the default parent, the one that is there for an ill child, the ones that makes the dinner for everyone and tidies up, the one that knows what is going on with school and the one that checks everything is sorted out. I know that I don't need to justify our set-up, and I also know that I'm very lucky to be in this position. I wish that I found it easier to acknowledge it to other people!