A Working Mom Hilariously Explains Why Being A SAHM Was Way Harder

We could debate the semantics of whether or not being a stay-at-home mom is actually a “job” or not all day, but there is no debate about how freaking hard it can be to be with your kids pretty much every second of everyday with no adult conversation. Plus — kids can be feral!

A now-working mom, Shay, who has also been a full-time stay-at-home mom in the past, compared the two different roles in a now-viral TikTok, responding to another woman’s video about how she couldn’t wait to be a stay-at-home mom.

Let’s just say Shay brought her back down to earth real quick.

In the original video that Shay stitched on TikTok, the girl talks about how her “dream” is to be a wife and stay-at-home mom where she can bake muffins and buy throw pillows. Of course, every mom out there knows that there is no muffin baking and throw pillows are picked up from the floor 700 times a day.

Shay also knows this and offered some words of wisdom, noting that being a full-time caretaker to your kids is not all it’s cracked up to be. Tl;Dr: Don’t believe everything you see on social media.

“Okay, so no hate, no shade to this creator because I used to have the same thought process. I couldn't wait to have kids so I could stay home with them. I thought staying at home with my kids would be the best job ever and because I thought it was easy because what did I see? Moms on social media making it look easy,” she explained.

Shay also assumes that the woman probably doesn’t have any kids of her own yet due to her fantasy of baking muffins and organizing her fridge.

“Let me tell you something. That's 30 seconds of someone's life. Bake a muffin with a child. Have you met a child first off? Because if you've ever met a child then you know that that's a bad idea. I've tried it. I bake muffins with my kids. My daughter had flour in her hair for a week,” she joked.

“Throw pillows? What's a throw pillow? My son punches them, kicks them. My daughter, she s**t on the last one. I had to throw it out. It is not what you see on social media,” she added.

Shay then compared her executive job to being a full-time mom, noting that an office job provides some structure. Kids don’t exactly offer that same kind of stability.

“My job is structured. I know exactly what I'm gonna walk into. Being a stay-at-home mom was exhausting. It was repetitive. It was lonely, and I had a supportive partner. He worked from home. He was right there. Helped me out with the kids greatly, but it was still hard work,” she explained.

She applauds stay-at-home moms for all they do, after all, she knows that it’s not a job for the faint of heart. She also joked that anyone “dreaming” about how wonderful and lovely being a homemaker is, have some kids and get back to her.

Shay continued, “I could never do what you do. I couldn't do it. It is a hard job, and if you're fantasizing about it. It's because you don't have children. You've clearly never met a child. Have a couple kids and then let us know how that worked out.”

Her comment section blew up with many women saying that they loved being a stay-at-home mom, negating Shay’s opinion that working a job is a lot easier.

“I got a couple comments like this and you know I'm happy for you. I'm happy for you,” Shay remarked in a follow-up video. “But let me just let you in on what happened in the few hours that I've been home.”

She added that her son — the “one who goes to school” and “knows better” — asked her if he could do a puzzle, and he proceeded to take it into the bathtub after eating applesauce with his hands.

She then joked that her two-year-old daughter might “rob you” if you get too close to her.

She explained, “I'm just saying, I don't know, but I'd rather go to work, and I'm in charge of a hundred people. I have a very, very, very, very demanding, stressful job, but these kids is gangstas.”