SEASON FINALE: Navigating Tradeoffs in Motherhood

In the last episode of season 2, Charmaine discusses a key part of motherhood that is rarely discussed: the tradeoffs. Join in on this honest conversation, as Char brainstorms different ways to navigate decision-making and tradeoffs with grace.

Transcript

Season Finale Recap and Future Plans

Speaker 1 0:00

Hi there and welcome to another episode of the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast , where we chat about entrepreneurship , mom life and earning a side income as a busy mom . I'm your host , charmaine , and I am so glad you're here . This is the last episode of the season , so if you're just joining us or missed some , I'll quickly go over the titles from this season if there are any episodes that you're interested in . We started off the season with a guide to a gentler postpartum I had just come out of . I think it was three or four months postpartum that I wanted to share all of my ideas for that period , right after having a baby . So check that out if you want ideas . Then we went into an interview with my friend and she talked about her journey from being a teacher to a mom , to a YouTuber , and then we had the episode when motherhood doesn't go as planned and then nobody talks about this the mental load of decision making in managing home products . Then we had five Amish and Mennonite side hustle ideas for moms and crafting for cash . Is a handmade business worth it ? Is writing and self-publishing a good gig for moms ? Can content creation actually bring in cash ? Is a handmade business worth it ? Is writing and self-publishing a good gig for moms . Can content creation actually bring in cash ? And last episode , which was work from home , part-time and MLMs all about those topics . So I am not sure when the new season will be starting up . Again , if you want to rejoin with me and not miss anything , make sure you subscribe to the show and leave a rating while you're at it , because , again , I am just kind of a one-woman show . I'm doing this all by myself . I don't have official production plans so I can't officially tell you when the next season will be out , but I am already planning and dreaming for it . I definitely want more interviews and to go deeper into some of these household management , family side income ideas for you , and so if you've been here and you've joined me for a lot of these episodes so far , just thank you so much for being here , and there will be another season , god willing , but I don't know when it will be , so make sure you subscribe .

Every Choice is a Trade-off

Speaker 1 2:06

Today's episode is all about the trade-offs we make in motherhood . It may seem obvious when I say this , but I need to constantly remind myself of this that every choice is a trade-off . Every time we say yes to one thing , we say no to other things . That's the way it's always been . That's just sort of a law of life . We only have this one life and as much as I would wish there would be 20 different versions of me , of different lives I could lead , I think we have this distorted view Thanks in part to how we consume media through social media .

Speaker 1 2:43

It has impacts on our lives . Social media ignores trade-offs . A lot of media ignores trade-offs and I have a hard time seeing the difference between a lot of media nowadays and just marketing . Right ? Marketing propels the positives of one thing and it doesn't really focus on the drawbacks . Obviously , because they want you to consume whatever product they're advertising , and I see that a lot in social media too .

Speaker 1 3:11

The content is curated . I mean , no one is showing everything and no one should have to . By the way , I mean , I am a content creator and I am not showing you every piece of my life , obviously , but we need to be aware of this trade-off right ? And let's say you are consuming content from a cooking channel or something you might watch all of the beautiful recipe videos the creator has published . That creator has chosen , in this example , to make recipe videos instead of doing other things . They're kind of narrowly defining their niche and making videos about their niche and it's kind of this self-perpetuating cycle , like more people respond to that , so they make more videos , and so it might be shocking to a lot of us who follow these creators like , let's say , a cooking influencer doesn't do just cooking . They're obviously a multi-dimensional human being , but that's all we see of them online , right ? And we have to be aware of the fact that , to make this content , these people are saying yes to making the content and no to other things , right ? So there's a trade-off there .

Speaker 1 4:15

Again , it seems obvious , but what happens when all we see is one side , not the trade-off ? So we might be scrolling and come across the perfect looking cooking video from one creator , then a really nice looking workout video from another creator , then an immaculately decorated home design video from someone else , and as we begin adding all of these bits and pieces together in our minds , we begin filling our minds with these pictures of inspiration and perfection and we begin creating expectations for ourselves . Whether it's conscious or not , we kind of collect all of these in , maybe like a mental Pinterest board of sorts . But these are false standards , I would say . Nobody is doing it all . No one can have perfect everything . You might see a collection of perfect cooking , gardening , home decorating and parenting content on one sitting , and then you hold up your average messy , mistake-ridden life up to it and start feeling discontentment that it doesn't measure up .

Speaker 1 5:13

I think we really need to be careful about taking the best from all of these other people , combining it and creating our own ideal out of it . There's nothing wrong with gathering inspiration , but I think it's the combination of all of these things becoming one like huge super life that we're trying to go after , and we can't go after it all , of course . So , yes , you want to make homemade bread from freshly milled flour , like that video on Instagram you saw , and there's nothing wrong with that . I follow recipe videos sometimes and it's fun and I think it's great , but realize that the content creator who chose to make the bread and the video did that instead of doing something else . So do we want to make the bread and the video did that instead of doing something else . So do we want to make those trade-offs as well ? I think sometimes we want the lives of the creators , we want that outcome , we want , you know , whatever they've created , but we don't realize all of the production costs , all that went into it , so we're not aware of the trade-off . It can be hard to realize these trade-offs , so it's important to keep in mind that as we go about life , and especially as moms .

Speaker 1 6:18

Let me paint another picture .

Social Media's Unrealistic Standards

Speaker 1 6:20

Let's see if anyone falls into this , but I think this happens quite a bit . Let's say you had a fulfilling career and everything , but then you got married and had a child and you are just so in love with your new baby . You're ecstatic , but you have a typical maternity leave and you try to return to that full-time job after maternity leave . But after a few months you just find this , this whole workload of managing home and work life , untenable . Every day you come home stressed , exhausted , unable to complete any home duties , and , not to mention , you are missing your child after having them in someone else's care all day . You cannot juggle the job of caring for your child and responsibilities at home . Your husband might be helpful and understanding , but with him working too , you both are kind of drowning in these piles of laundry . Too many fast food runs , you know all of the things that are adding up that neither of you has time for . So after looking at finances with your husband . You make some hard decisions , you cut some expenses , you go really lean , but you go all in and you decide that you are quitting your job to be a stay-at-home mom . Yay , finally a chance to fully throw yourself into caring for your family and home .

Speaker 1 7:35

Your first few weeks go great . You are so thankful , for instance , that you're hanging out with your baby on a random Tuesday at 10-15 . You're able to get a healthy , homemade dinner on the table most nights . You're able to focus on your child and even make it to a few mommy and me classes at the library . But over time you grow in your discontentment . As a stay-at-home mom , you try to take on the sourdough , a lovely heritage baking method . You're stretching and folding your loaf during nap times and freaking out about flour and water percentages . And then you may embark on creating an herb garden and a vegetable garden and a flower garden .

Speaker 1 8:11

You're so inspired by a creator you saw on Instagram that you decide you want to sew your own clothes . So , before you know it , you are sourcing fabrics from online and in person and threads and notions , and you buy a sewing machine . You're buying patterns , you're cutting them out and you are trying to sew your own clothes . Then you also want time for date nights with your husband , family camping trips , hosting other friends for dinner in your home , being involved with church or community activities , all inspired by content you saw on social media . Before you know it , you begin to feel as busy and overwhelmed as you did before you quit your job .

Speaker 1 8:50

Quitting your job should have freed you up to have more time to focus on your family and your home , freed you up to have more time to focus on your family and your home . But now , through you know , pursuing other things that are good , by the way , but not understanding how all of these things are a trade-off , you've taken on so much more and become just as overwhelmed , if not more , as when you had that other job . So none of these things are bad , by the way . They're good things but , like lifestyle creep , is a phenomenon

Stay-at-Home Mom Schedule Creep

Speaker 1 9:18

that gradually hikes up your cost of living . This can be another form of lifestyle creep . I guess you could call it time or schedule creep . These things are taking up your time , energy and money and it's hard to see the trade-off .

Speaker 1 9:32

Social media can be inspiring , but it can also give us these unrealistic expectations about our lives . We want to do our best and be our best in every area of life , just like the collection of photos and videos we see every day . But this is not realistic , right ? There are trade-offs . You know you might want to be like the creator of Ballerina Farm and somehow have seven kids . Does she have seven kids ? A farm , do beauty pageants , make sourdough and make gorgeous homemade meals , keep up a garden a small business . You know she seems to do it all , but really I admire her .

Speaker 1 10:11

I realized that a lot of these people , these creators , have staff , they have people to help them with things . They've outsourced a lot of things and we're not seeing that on the other side of the screens , right ? So it will always , I think , be sort of a struggle as a homemaker , but it is up to you to see and decide at this season of life , at this period we are , you know , what things do I want to do myself and what things do I want to outsource , because , again , no one is doing it all . So I really just wanted to focus on this topic again because I need reminded of it and I think it's good to remind others of it , with how big the impact that social media has on our lives and just our viewpoints . It really shapes our views . To remind you of these trade-offs that no one is doing at all and , as the runner

Real-Life Meal Trade-offs

Speaker 1 11:00

of your home , you will have to decide what things to outsource and what things to do yourself .

Speaker 1 11:06

I am looking at a photo of my mother's family from the 1950s and 60s . I'll try to paint the picture of the photo . It's a really nice photo . My mom grew up in rural Pennsylvania with five siblings , so there were six kids and her parents , and in this photo the whole family is gathered around a metal kitchen table maybe a linium , I don't know with a simple dinner . Spread on top of the table there's a plate of peas , a serving plate of some sort of meat , there are glasses of water flanking each setting and there's a package of sunbeam bread . The family looks truly happy . My grandma is wearing her apron and a tired smile , her elbow on the table propping her head up . She looks truly happy and so do the kids .

Speaker 1 11:57

I asked my mom what they typically ate in their everyday lives for dinner and she said vegetables from the garden , with some sort of cut of meat that they got from a local farm . They would buy , you know , a large share , a beef share , from a farm and keep the cuts of meat in the freezer and use a cut of meat for each dinner . It sounds so simple and far more homegrown than I'm used to . You know the garden , fresh vegetables , the locally sourced meat and I'm willing to bet more homegrown than a lot of us are used to . But even when my grandmother was growing their own food in a garden and using locally sourced meat , she still bought grocery store bread , the sun-beaten bread . So that was her trade-off and I think about it a lot .

Speaker 1 12:37

Social media again seems to promote the more extreme ways of thinking and again , it's not bad to be inspired . But I think in this day and age , people emphasizing healthy food which there's nothing wrong with , but emphasizing the healthy food would say that every single aspect of a meal would need to be like at the peak health level . And yeah , I think it's important to realize that it's not always realistic . So even within one meal you could have some things that are outsourced and some things that are not . And then , if you think of your week of meals , sometimes you might make it homemade , sometimes you might make something like a convenience meal , like very simple that's like already mostly prepared , and then sometimes you might go out to eat , sit down at a restaurant and sometimes you might get takeout or fast food . We do all of the above in our house and I try to make sure things are mostly homemade , but I also really appreciate the trade-off of having someone else make food if we're doing something else or busy that night or trying to avoid a lot of dishes . You know there's this balance and only you can decide what the percentage needs to be in your family . But I don't think we need to feel down on ourselves . Of course we can always do better with health and nutrition and meals , but we don't have to also condemn ourselves for doing some trade-offs for time and cost if that's what we need to do in our life .

Speaker 1 14:13

As another example of trade-offs , one meal that I did recently I was wanting to do burgers and I wanted to try a homemade burger bun recipe . I was just really craving some good homemade burger buns and we don't always make ours homemade , so that's a trade-off that I sometimes make , but this time I wanted to test a recipe and , yeah , just enjoy some soft homemade burger buns . So , and I knew that was going to be sort of an undertaking and I didn't want to stress about all of the other things going with our burgers , so I kept the menu extremely simple . We did burger cheeseburgers with the homemade buns and then also on the side I did like a can of Bush's baked beans and that was the meal . It was more than enough . I mean , it sounds simple and maybe you know you're thinking , oh , that wouldn't be like enough variability for our family . What about the vegetables ? Yes , I know , sometimes as a quick veggie I like to keep a raw homemade sauerkraut from a local maker here in town . I always try to keep our fridge stocked with sauerkraut , so that's an easy veggie if I'm not doing one myself . But yeah , so that was an example of a trade-off meal .

Speaker 1 15:31

I did make the buns homemade and they turned out amazing . This was from a Joshua Weissman recipe and they turned out really good . I love it . It's like I always test these recipes and then I want to make sure I keep them for future reference , that that one is a keeper . And it was sort of a to-do , especially this recipe . It was a tricky , time-consuming recipe but in the end it was all worth it . I had that quick extra side dish item to make the meal a realistic meal for our family that night .

Speaker 1 16:04

Sometimes it's something even easier , like stupid easy Grilled cheese , cereal , ppnj boxed mac and cheese , like we're not afraid to pull out the stupid simple recipes , and other times I go vastly complicated . I'm that person who's like , oh yeah , I'm going to make homemade everything for this meal , but it just depends , you know , and so you're going to have to be the judge of that , and I think that's what gets exhausting for the homemaker and for the person deciding these things , unfortunately . At least first , I think the first step is being aware that of these trade-offs and the fact that you'll have to constantly re-evaluate . As long as we're aware of it , that's the first step . The second step , like I said , is re-evaluating based on what you need . I mean it could change day to day , honestly , like which trade-offs you're going to make .

Speaker 1 16:56

You might be in seasons of we're focusing on health , so you know whatever we need to buy . You know the trade-off would be trading off economics or cost . You know , regardless of cost , we're going to pursue health as a stronger goal . Or maybe you're in a season where you need to focus on finances , so you try to make that trade-off and you buy cheaper foods , and this is I'm just talking about meals and meal planning . It could relate to so many other aspects of the home , but hopefully , to give you those examples . So you'll have to pretty much constantly make these trade-off decisions , and I know that is probably what makes it so .

Speaker 1 17:35

So tiring is kind of this decision fatigue . I know when I'm at the grocery store we're both trying to save money and stay healthy . So we have those two goals and also just the goal of like enjoying the food too . So I have that all of that in my mind and I can tell , like some things I'll like spend extra money to make sure it's a healthy product , and then I'll kind of like get tired of doing that and I'll buy something else that's like cheap , to like save money , tired of doing that , and I'll buy something else that's like cheap , to like save money , but it's not as healthy maybe . So I can already tell in one grocery trip I try to honor both goals and I make trade-offs that are different in a single grocery trip too . So it's just interesting .

Speaker 1 18:19

But I think if we're aware of all of this , then we can kind of be like okay , aware of all of this , then we can kind of be like , okay , I can face this . Now , you know , I know that our family goals will change and our priorities will change , so the trade-offs that we make will be changing , and just kind of expecting that it does become sort of an invisible labor situation . And if you're having a hard time articulating this to like your spouse , maybe you could just I don't know inform your husband if you have one , like I'm having a hard time trying to find what takes priority right now , can you help me with this decision ? And you could ask him for help making decisions and kind

Navigating Decision Fatigue as Homemakers

Speaker 1 19:02

of share that load . But you know , I also don't think we should be resentful of this kind of invisible workload . I do think we can face it with optimism and we can face it with realism .

Speaker 1 19:14

Yeah , the first step is just acknowledging that there are trade-offs and realizing that what we're seeing around us , like on social media , the more time we spend on phones and screens , the more time we spend on phones and screens , the more time we're just inundating ourselves with this view that there aren't trade-offs and there are , you know . So I would encourage you . A lot of our modern problems probably stem from our overuse of technology and screens and just these addictive apps , and a lot could be solved by kind of reining that in . And I speak to myself first and foremost . I definitely want to have more control over my phone time and I'm striving to do that . I think in the next season I want to do some sort of phone challenge , some sort of screen challenge where we're not spending too much time on it . But again , I'm not trying to shame people . It's the world we live in and we have , I think , consented to this without knowing the full trade-off . I think we're discovering a lot of the negatives of the apps and social media , but we did not realize all of that when we signed up , probably , so we just thought it would be a fun way to share updates and photos with our family and friends , and then it just has become so much more than that as we're discovering . So , yes , if you're interested in some sort of challenge and talk about screen time as it relates to homemaking and side income , next season I do plan to do that because , honestly , if you are spending so much time online , that means you are not spending time either A with your family on tasks that need to be done in the home or B on some sort of side income position . So really it relates to my whole niche here .

Speaker 1 21:08

On the podcast , right , there's so many people , myself included , who are overwhelmed , who don't think they have time , and there's an element of that . I won't argue with that . We all just have 24 hours in a day . But really really dig deep and be honest with yourself . Because I'm going to be honest with myself , is the screen time a trade-off that you're making when , if you spent less time on the screen , you would have more time to do these things for your life , your family , your community ,

Screen Time and Final Encouragement

Speaker 1 21:38

you know ? So something to think about the trade-offs in life .

Speaker 1 21:42

It's not sexy to talk about . It's not one of the trending , you know , topics . That's because a lot of what we're surrounded with , honestly , is marketing , marketing and politics . They're not going to mention the other side of the story or the trade-off . They're always , you know , tending to mention the side they want to advocate for without seeing the drawback , right ? So we're going to be aware of the trade-offs . We're going to make these decisions judiciously . Sometimes you make it very quickly . You have to make these decisions in an instant sometimes , and that's okay .

Speaker 1 22:16

Try not to let them all just weigh you down . If you need to share some of that load with your spouse , I encourage you to maybe have a conversation . See how much decision making you can put on the kids if they're older , you know . But I encourage you to maybe have a conversation . See how much decision making you can put on the kids if they're older , you know . But I do want to leave you with that encouragement to be aware of the trade-offs and just to face this sort of workload as a homemaker with optimism . Encouragement because we all face this but no one really talks about it because , again , it's like an invisible type of labor that we're doing . But I think it's worth it . Right , it is worth it , even if it gets overwhelming at times . Try to turn down that noise . And so that is what I leave you with .

Speaker 1 22:58

I hope you start thinking about some trade-offs that you can make , and you know they can go from small to big . Maybe your trade-offs today will be grabbing dinner from a restaurant and then you can tackle some random chore that you have been putting off . I think that's a good thing , and don't let the the baking and the cooking influencers make you think otherwise . They probably make money off of that , right from the little things to the big things , some bigger life trade-offs . I like to think long term , like what are some bigger life trade-offs you are making ? Maybe you are in a season where you are giving up your career to stay home with your children , like to me .

Speaker 1 23:40

I think that's a worthy and noble trade-off and I know it's hard to make the finances work with that . Even if you have a spouse who's working too , it can still be difficult with the cost of things . I get it . But really being honest with ourselves and saying , can we make this work ? Can we cut costs in some ways , I think the trade-off of staying home with your children , at least while they're young , is going to be valuable , and maybe there's a time when the kids get older and you could potentially go back to work . You know you can kind of discuss this with your spouse . What are the different variations of your life that you plan to take ? Obviously , not everything always goes to plan , but you can look at your life and your goals long term and you can think about the trade-offs . So I would definitely want to encourage you if you're feeling the financial pressures but you're making it work and staying home with children . It's a worthy and noble thing to do again , and so I do think it is an awesome trade-off to make , as we are moms Perhaps you are also a mostly stay-at-home mom and I want to encourage you in that trade-off , just for all the the well-being of you and your family .

Speaker 1 24:55

Your employers certainly miss you , I'm sure , but you are irreplaceable in your home . So to just give you encouragement in that trade-off and stick around for more episodes that kind of acknowledge that tension between work and home for the modern woman , I totally I get it and that's why I'm here . I want to give encouragement and like useful , realistic tips for navigating , you know , kind of both of those worlds if you need to . So thanks for being here . I really appreciate it . Again , stay tuned for season three and subscribe for when exactly that comes out , and I will see you in the next one .