Empowering Truths for The Stay-At-Home Mom or Dad by Nicole Dieckman published April 25th, 2025 ; This article may contain affiliate links please see our disclosure policy.
I’ve been homemaking for eighteen years, but if I could go back and give my brand new, stay-at-home mom self, some advice, so I could be a successful homemaker right out of the gate, these are the things I’d make sure I knew:
1. Dear Stay-At-Home Mom, Homemaking Is A Valid Job
The most important thing I’d tell young, stay-at-home mom Nicole, is that homemaking is a valid job with pay. I always felt like I was out there trying to do more than just be a homemaker or a stay-at-home mom. If I had realized right away how important being a mom and a homemaker is at building the valuable space that is your home and how much different of a life it is when you have someone at home making that a priority, then I would have, gotten a homemaker’s planner, and valued my job as a homemaker right away.
I always had this idea that if it was important the world would pay me, and I wish I would have known right away that the pay that you get, is so much more valuable than money. You get paid in successful children; you get paid in happy children; you get paid in the most valuable memories of your life. You get paid in strong bonds with your family and you get a happy home which at the end of the day is the most important thing to all of us.
2. You’re Doing A Great Job
the second thing I’d tell my young stay-at-home mom self is: you’re doing a great job! If you’re showing up for your children every day and doing the best you can, then you’re already doing a great job. You’re doing so much more than what so many parents are doing out there. If you’re valuing the way that you’re treating your children and the way that you’re taking care of your home, if you’re showing up every day and being your full authentic self, as a mother to your children, and you’re really there and present and caring for them, you’re doing so much more than so many people, and you’re doing a great job.
If you need more than just me saying so, check out this book, “The Power of Showing Up” written by some medically qualified to say so guys, or just believe me, an experienced mother.
3. Start Homemaking Right Away
Every space you live in is your home. Start homemaking right away. When I was a young stay-at-home mom, I had this idea that we were waiting to buy our forever home and the places we were living in were just temporary. We lived in rental homes and we lived in apartments and I did not have the idea that I was homemaking in my mind right away because I felt like I was waiting. I was waiting for that right home.
At first I only identified as a stay-at-home mom and I didn’t consider myself a homemaker, but the truth is that every single moment in your child’s growing up time is what all of their memories are made of. Today, right now, is when they’re going to look back and be like “That was my home.” So you’re homemaking immediately. As soon as your child can develop memories, part of your job is creating the space that they live in as their home. That is their home. They don’t have any concept of “Oh this is temporary.” Their memories aren’t going to be like “Well that house didn’t matter because it was only temporary.”
Their memories are going to look back at this moment in time and say “That was my home.”
There’s a whole world of decorating that you can fall into if you’re in an apartment or small rental too!
4. Stay-At-Home Moms Should Prioritize Sibling Bonds
The relationship that your kids have with each other, are the only relationships that they’re going to be able to carry with them throughout their entire lives. The friends that truly are there from the beginning. No matter where they move, or whether their love life falls apart, or their friendships fall apart, their siblings are going to still be there. They’re siblings for the long haul.They are going to have the memories of the same childhood and all the fun things that you guys ever did together as a family.
So, let me give you some advice. I’ll tell you what we do, that I kind of stumbled into early on, that has been one of those miracle things in our life.
If my kids are arguing or having a hard time getting along, I will sit them down, i’ll make them stop and tell each other three things that they love about their sibling, and then I’ll make them give each other a hug afterwards. Once they stop and hear their sibling say good things about them, and they say good things about their sibling, it reinforces and strengthens that bond.
On top of that, explain why that relationship between them and their sibling is one of the most important relationships that they’ll ever have.
You’re doing them a great service as a parent if you help them really build that relationship.
5. Being Broke And Helpless Is Part Of The Hard Work
Nobody said being a stay-at-home mom was easy. Ok, there are some people who have said that, but they didn’t know anything. Some days you will be broke and that will make you feel helpless, but that is part of the hard work that comes with this job.
Nothing will make a homemaker feel more humbled than needing money and not being able to make money at the job that we do. It’s so frustrating and it is one of the hardest parts of our job as a homemaker. Completely depending on somebody else for the financial responsibility that comes with building our home.
But if you believe in your partner, and you trust them, then those broke moments are just a phase.
6. Being a Stay-At-Home Mom is Not a Thankless Job
This is not a thankless job. There will be days where this feels like a thankless job, but it’s not true. If you’re doing a good job and you hold out for those thank yous, they’ll come eventually. Maybe when your babies are having babies, but they will find you.
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard my husband, on the phone talking to his mom, and telling her thank you. He’s a grown man and the thank yous are just now coming for her. I mean, they’ve been coming for a little while, they’ve been coming probably since we started having children, but he wasn’t saying thank you when he was a kid, he’s saying thank you now. That is when your thank yous are probably going to come too.
You’re going to have a lot of moments where you feel like this is a thankless job, “nobody sees me, it’s invisible work,” but it’s not true.
The work is not invisible.
You are creating a life for your family, and even if your family doesn’t recognize in that moment, that’s what you’re doing, the time will come where they do recognize what you have done all along. If you’re doing a good job, if you earned that thank you, they will say thank you.
7. Parenting With A Partner = Less Control and Better Balance
Parenting with a partner means less control but better balance. I wish someone would have told me when I first became a stay-at-home mom how hard it was going to be to raise three children with a partner.
I want to be able to control every single parenting decision when it comes to taking care of my children, but if you have a partnership with a spouse that you want to last for your entire life, then you have to know, and you have to understand, that you’re not going to agree on every single parenting choice. There are some really big parenting choices, that are going to come up over the next eighteen years and beyond, and you have to learn how to meet in the middle.
You have to say, “Yes this is something that I feel strongly about, but yes this is also something that they feel strongly about, and they see it differently than me.” So you have to pick your battles, and you have to know that you’re going to have to sacrifice sometimes on what you feel is the right parenting decision. I’ll tell you this empowering truth though, as time goes on, you’ll see, more often than not I do see, that my partner’s choice was a great choice, just like my choice would have been.
As long as you love that person, and trust that person, you have to know that you’re going to have different choices, and sometimes you have got to go with their choice, but it’s going to be okay. Because in the end, it creates better balance for your children.
8. Young Stay-At-Home Mom or Dad: This Is Not The Hard Part
This is not the hard part. This is the best part; this is the most beautiful part; the sweetest time of your life, if you have small kids. The hard part is when, in the blip of an eye, all you have are memories of their childhood, and no more child, because they’re grown up. The hard part is when they move out and the person you’ve spent every waking moment making the center of your whole world, begins to build a life. Not without you, but quite separate from you still.
That will be the hard part.
9. Value What You Do
Value what you do, stay-at-home mom or dad, or you will inadvertently teach your children to undervalue homemaking. A home does not take care of itself, children do not take care of themselves. The work you do is very important, and if you don’t do it, it won’t get done, or you will pay someone thousands of dollars a month to do it instead of you.
You need to know that what you’re doing is very, very valuable. Make sure that you value yourself, otherwise your children will not value what it is that you do. Their home as adults may struggle because of it, and they may not value the homemaker in their own homes. When they become adults that person will be undervalued.
What we want for them is a happy home, that is something that is extremely important isn’t it, don’t you want them to value homemaking? So value what you do.
10. Don’t Sacrifice Your Friendships
If I could tell my young stay-at-home mom self, number ten, I wonder how much different my older mom life would be. Don’t sacrifice your friendships because you’re too busy, you’re going to be busy forever.
I can’t tell you how many times a friend called me up and asked if I just wanted to go do something random, or go somewhere fun, or make an important event, and I said “I can’t because I’m too busy or too broke.” I thought I was just so incredibly busy and incredibly tired all the time. But the time slips away from you, especially when it comes to friendships.
This is a story that is very common among women particularly, we will let time slip away from us with friendships, while we’re busy homemaking and growing our family. We end up sacrificing friendships that we never intended to sacrifice.
So if I could go back and tell my young stay-at-home mom self some things, it would be very important to tell her not to sacrifice friendships, accidentally, because you’re too busy. You’re going to be busy, for the rest of your life. You’re going to be busy after having kids in a way that you’ve never been busy before having kids, and that is not going to stop.
