Welcome to the Under-Appreciation Epidemic

If you’re resigned to feeling disappointed and under-acknowledged for the childcare and invisible labor you provide, the problem isn’t necessarily a chasm between you and your partner. The root cause is society at large.

Source: Jose Escobar

The day before Nikki Caulk turned 30, she planned to get a pedicure and have her eyebrows done—a rare treat for the stay-at-home mom of twins. But when a work issue arose for her husband, who was supposed to watch their children while Caulk attended her appointments, things turned sour.

When Caulk’s husband dropped their children off at a family member’s house, he was asked “Why isn’t Nikki watching them? You shouldn’t be taking time off when you can make money.” 

“I was fuming. I cried so hard,” says Caulk. “I knew at that moment all of my feelings of underappreciation [were] validated.”

There’s a societal tendency to dismiss the value of a stay-at-home parent’s time and contributions—otherwise known as the invisible labor of mothering—as well as their personal agency, needs, and wants. Caulk’s story is a prime example of this. 

Breaks aren’t built into the structure of stay-at-home motherhood, and often these moms don’t feel they’re entitled to them. They express loneliness and a loss of identity. They feel looked down upon. They’re vulnerable to mental and physical health issues according to a longitudinal study of more than 2,500 American mothers¹, yet often unable to set up childcare in order to seek care. And in many ways, under-appreciation is at the root of all this. It’s no secret that motherhood can be thankless work—so what happens when motherhood is your life’s work? 

Under-appreciation is a real issue facing moms in general, but stay-at-home moms in particular: In many cases, they don’t even appreciate themselves, says Emily Pardy, a licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of Ready Nest Counseling.

But it’s important that we address where that internalized under-appreciation really originates (hint: it’s not from stay-at-home moms themselves) and the vicious cycle it perpetuates. 

Meet the Experts

• Emily Pardy: A licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of Ready Nest Counseling in Nashville, Tennessee. Pardy is certified in perinatal mental health. 

• Angela Amais: A licensed clinical social worker who specializes in providing couples therapy. Amais is the co-founder of theInstitute for Trauma-Informed Relationships, and the founder ofAlchemy of Love in Iowa City, Iowa.

When stay-at-home mothers don’t appreciate their own roles within and outside of their homes, it’s because of all the messages we’ve been fed about the value (or lack thereof) of care work and how much of it is invisible in nature. With these loud, pervasive messages swirling all around us, how can we expect stay-at-home mothers not to internalize some of them?

Angela Amias, a licensed clinical social worker, former stay-at-home mom, and founder of Alchemy of Love, weighed in on what some of those societal messages can look like.

“There’s this assumption that you’re not a thoughtful, intelligent, interesting adult if you spend your day with children. [This idea] is not just coming from the outside, it also [becomes] an inner struggle.”

Those inner struggles can take the form of self-deprecation: Maybe you say you’re “just” a stay-at-home mom when someone asks what you do—or maybe when someone asks you if you work, you say “no” instead of informing them that you work within your home. Or maybe you keep your opinions on why these ideas are so problematic to yourself, because we live in a world that doesn’t give stay at home mothers space to express the realities of their work. 

“When I hear variations of ‘You’re so lucky you don’t work and can just stay home all day’ or ‘I don’t know why you’re struggling/stressed’ or when women joke that they’d give up their rights to be a stay-at-home mom or [when people say things like] ‘why do you need breaks? Don’t you want to be with your child?’, I either silently rage because caregiving is WORK or attempt to shrug off the things people say,” says Star Lengas, a stay-at-home mom and military spouse. “Every few weeks it feels like motherhood has broken me, I feel burned out.”

American ideas about productivity influence ideas about the value of stay-at-home motherhood—but these aren’t just ideas. Because of how we view stay-at-home motherhood in our culture, these mothers are at risk for mental health issues, according to both Amias and Pardy. Often, these moms lack access to mental health care—or feel as though they can’t enlist anyone to watch their children so they can attend appointments. 

Additionally, stay-at-home moms often feel like because they chose to stay home with their children, they’re not allowed to ask for or even want time to themselves. And because we still uphold ideas about financial dependence, sometimes they don’t feel like they can’t allow anyone—even their partners—to take on some of the domestic load.

Source: CottonBro Studios

We’ve all heard from stay-at-home moms who care for their children and homes all day long, and instead of splitting the domestic load during evenings and weekends, their partners feel empowered to take time for themselves. That’s not a sustainable way to live, yet far too many stay-at-home moms don’t feel entitled to advocate for a change.

“If the work of running a household isn’t appreciated then the partner who works outside of the home probably doesn’t feel a need to participate in it when they are home. Division of labor should be split when both parties are home, but unfortunately that isn’t always the case,” says Lisa Pontius, who frequently posts about the value of domestic labor on social media. “Working partners come home and act like it’s their time to rest and the person at home will continue to work alone for those remaining hours. Over time, no breaks and constant work and stress would wear anyone down into burnout. It’s unsustainable and it’s never ending.”

Under-appreciation can take many forms. In some cases, like many of the ones mentioned above, there’s a lack of appreciation for a stay-at-home mother’s capabilities and contributions. It also stems from the lack of affirmation they receive. Most stay-at-home parents aren’t saying “thank you for going to work today” to their partners, Pardy points out. But at the same time, people who work outside the home typically hear “thank you” every time they submit a deliverable… and of course, a paycheck is a form of affirmation as well. 

When it comes to stay-at-home parenthood, on the other hand: “There’s no feedback. There’s no paycheck. There’s no perks, there’s no vacation time. It’s really this feedback loop that is one way. The [partners] don’t miss it because they’re getting it at work,” says Pardy.

People who work outside the home typically hear ‘thank you’ every time they submit a deliverable… and of course, a paycheck is a form of affirmation as well.

For stay-at-home moms in heterosexual partnerships, “daddy privilege” plays a role as well. “People compliment my husband for doing the same exact job I do 24/7,” says Caulk. “I take the kids everywhere with me; grocery shopping, paying bills, going to the bank, and when my husband takes them to Target he gets stopped numerous times saying ‘you’re such a good dad’. If I got even one compliment a day from a stranger I’d probably ride that high for a week.”

Because a partner who works outside the home typically doesn’t miss verbal appreciation in the same way, they may not understand that the partner who stays home is craving it. That’s why communicating feelings of under-appreciation is so important.

Of course, voicing these feelings isn’t easy, especially because we live in a world that doesn't allow stay-at-home mothers license to express negative feelings about their roles. 

“My number one piece of advice is to speak up for yourself and to talk about how you’re feeling, to talk about what your experience is,” says Amias. “Something like ‘I’ve been feeling like nobody really gets what I do, and it’s really starting to make me question myself’.

Reframing ideas about stay-at-home parents and the role they play is crucial for Pontius, who was inspired to post content about this issue in order to shift the conversation.

“Domestic labor has always been undervalued when in reality it’s the unseen labor of women that allows our economy to function.”

“Domestic labor has always been undervalued when in reality it’s the unseen labor of women that allows our economy to function,” she says. “When I realized how uncommon the dynamic in my home is: with a working spouse who not only shares his load of domestic labor and parenting but also attributes his business success to the comfort of knowing his house is running and children are well taken care of in his absence. I realized how many women in my position are being taken advantage of, belittled, and undervalued by their spouses but also by society as a whole. Just because the work of a stay-at-home mom or parent isn’t paid, does not mean it doesn’t contribute to the economics of the family. Outsourcing those jobs would be nearly financially impossible for most people. And I just think that position deserves more respect.”

If you’re feeling under-appreciated in your home, consider shifting the way you view your contributions, then communicating your feelings to the people in your life. It takes work to cut through the noise of all the messages we’ve been fed about stay-at-home parenthood, but it’s work worth taking on—and it’s work you can only take on if you’re able to step away from the work of parenting by accepting or asking for adequate support. While it’s emotional labor mothers shouldn’t have to take on, changing deeply rooted ideas is a mission worth supporting.

“You need to do that inner work of uncovering these biases that you’ve internalized yourself and pulling them out and taking a look at them,” Amias says. “That is the internal work that stay-at-home mothers need to do to value themselves.”

References: Frech, A., & Damaske, S. (2012). The Relationships between Mothers’ Work Pathways and Physical and Mental Health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 53(4), 396–412.