Quitting a Career to Become a Housewife - Old fashioned or Realistic?

From a young age, I was taught that women have to work twice as hard as men to achieve the same career, so I grafted from the moment I left school.

The afternoon I left college, I signed on with a local careers agency and started working as a junior office administrator the very next day. I was earning something like £4k per year, but it was experience and it was a job. I had no idea what career I wanted to do, so I took the first position offered to me. It could just as easily have been working in a factory setting.

My first job literally shaped the next 17 years of my life. I was there only 6 months, but in that time I gained the confidence and experience to apply for a better position at a new company, where they invested in me by sending me to night school to learn and qualify in accountancy.

The pattern of changing and upgrading jobs continued. I was taught how to administrate a business from the basics through to company accounts over the next few years and I seemed to take to it like a duck to water, eventually landing a position in a fantastic company working for the directors. I had to learn all about the Environment Agency and corresponding laws. We also had a trading site that I had to get to grips with, similar in concept to cryptocurrency, now that I think about it!

My boss appreciated my hard work, I was paid a good salary and they were great with me working around my family life, or so I thought! Basically they let me have a few hours off for school plays and sports days – generous, right?

So why did I leave?

I realized that all of my hard work was really only making money for the company and everything that I earned was being spent on debts, childcare costs, work clothes, travel costs and expensive lunchtime food.

Debt was a huge issue at the time, We had used credit cards to pay bills, childcare, cars etc and the interest was getting completely out of control. This eventually led to me having a breakdown and we went bankrupt. (I wrote a post about that here and how to recover from Bankruptcy... https://steemit.com/life/@beautifulbullies/bankruptcy-my-top-tips-for-recovery-and-staying-debt-free

I quit my job and decided to become invested in my family. I was able to take my son to school in the morning and bring him home afterwards without paying someone else to do it. I could also enjoy ad-hock family trips to the beach without having to worry about whether someone else in the office had already booked time off to spend with their family.

I was able to make meals from scratch and enjoy baking with my son, I had never really had the time or energy to do these things before.

During the day, I was able to get all of the chores done, so that at the weekend we were able to have quality family time.

Financially we were of course worried, but it soon became apparent that we were no worse off; in fact we seemed to be better off!

I realized that the ‘time’ I had gained completely outweighed any loss of financial recompense from working; I got more satisfaction from being a mum and a wife than I ever did from being a career girl. Strange eh? Especially as we are taught that women have to be able to juggle a career and family life nowadays to be emotionally satisfied!

I think it is hard in this day and age to know what is right as a woman. We are told that our ancestors fought hard to give us equal opportunity and many of us are made to feel guilty if we don’t want to work and looked at as freaks if all we aspire to is being a good mum and wife. I often get asked ‘what do you do?’ The conversation usually goes something like this... ‘I look after my family and home.’ ‘So you don’t work?’
‘Yes, my family is my job, but thank you for asking.’ :D

It is fine if you want a career, good luck to you and I hope you do well! But it is also fine if you want to focus on your family. Don’t allow people to make you feel like a second class citizen just because you choose family over money.

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Thank you for reading! :)
@beautifulbullies xx

Thank you to Yahoo Images and unsplash.com for the imagery