Stay-at-Home-Mom Depression Is Not Only Real, It’s Become a Crisis

"It's like cabin fever after a few days, except it's your life every day."

Stay-at-Home-Mom Depression Is Not Only Real, It’s Become a Crisis

As an at-home mom for the past 12 years of my 34-year-long life, I am no stranger to the struggle that is stay-at-home-mom depression.

That feeling like you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, because what’s the point? More diapers to change, butts to wipe, snacks to cut up, and cleaning to do even though no one will ever be able to tell because it’s a miracle to just get it back to what it looked like when your partner left the house that morning. Why even bother trying to do anything when you’ll just be interrupted anyway? Most days, frankly, it feels easier to just not even try. There’s less disappointment that way.

I’ve struggled with stay-at-home-mom depression for as long as I have juggled being a mom of five kids through the years, but the past year has been a special kind of depressive doozy. In the past, even though I feel that I’ve trudged my way through at-home motherhood with nary a brushed hairdo or matching outfit, there has always been some semblance of escape available to me. The park, a lunch out when I couldn’t stand being in my house another second, baby “gymnastics” or “music class,” a meet-up with some fellow exasperated and exhausted mom friends, and yes, the occasional babysitter so I could get a break. But of course, the pandemic has ruined all of that in a big way. My 18-month-old has never sat inside a restaurant. She’s been inside a store precisely once since she turned one (and it was such a disaster, I never care to repeat it again). She’s never been with a babysitter.

There’s stay-at-home-mom depression. And then there’s “stay-at-home mom in the middle of a pandemic without any help whatsoever” depression.

It’s hard to describe what I feel like these days—and even more, it’s hard to know if how I feel is even “abnormal.” Who wouldn’t feel a little less than motivated if they spent all of their waking (and nonwaking hours) with a toddler, with only the bi-daily poopy-diaper change to break up their day? Who wouldn’t start to feel a little sluggish without any semblance of an escape, not even to sit alone in a coffee shop for an hour?

The point is, it’s no secret that the pandemic has been a special kind of hard for mothers, even those of us who are already familiar with staying at home. And it’s not just me–available data (and maybe common sense?) tells us that parents of young kids at home without childcare are stressed and struggling without any form of emotional, mental, or physical support available to us. If we struggled before the pandemic, we are downright drowning now.

What is stay-at-home-mom depression?

I first came across the term stay-at-home-mom depression in 2018 in an article on today.com—written by Megan Powell, founder of The Momma’s Tired—that elicited a collective “THIS” from women across the Web thanks to its frank take on an underdiscussed but very real mental health challenge. The essay nailed the day-to-day reality for many SAHMs: balancing the vast task of raising children and running a household while simultaneously fending off comments about how it must be so nice and relaxing to not have to go to work.

As a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and counting, I too felt a surge of vindication reading Powell’s essay. Not going to a traditional job every day in favor of full-time parenting is no walk in the park (as any mother or father who’s ever stayed home with the kids even for a day can imagine). Anyone willing to stand up and say that deserves a standing ovation from the one in five U.S. parents who stay home full-time (and, let’s be honest, from everyone else too). But for some women, there exists a deeper sense of distress that can plague those whose daily routines revolve solely around the kids. “It’s like cabin fever after a few days, except it’s your life every day,” says Danielle Moeslein, 32, a stay-at-home mom in Missouri.

Powell’s essay put a name to that panicky, helpless feeling that sets in when you start to believe that you exist only to help others exist. Or feel like you might want to be doing something more but can’t talk about it because you’re “lucky” to have the option of not working or, as is the case for many of us these days, of working while we are home with the kids, a special brand of hell all its own. Or when every small thing in your life feels like a struggle—from brushing your teeth (while the toddler is climbing up your leg) to trying to cook a meal for yourself (oh wait, the baby is hungry right now and feeding her is more important) and even to getting dressed (why bother?).

What causes stay-at-home-mom depression?

Just as postpartum depression may be triggered by external factors—a major life change, a shift in hormones—stay-at-home-mom depression is often the result of big, stressful changes in your life. “Stress exacerbates any condition, mental health or otherwise,” says Melinda Paige, Ph.D., a professor of clinical mental health counseling at Argosy University in Atlanta. And SAHM life is rife with triggers. Isolation, loss of purpose or identity, and lack of social interaction can all play a role in the development of depression.

Add in a pandemic, political upheaval, a constant looming sense of danger and uncertainty about what each day will bring, and the very real health concerns facing some families, and it becomes apparent how severe the mental ramifications for moms are right now. It’s almost painfully laughable how much of a struggle life has been. My isolation and anxiety became so overwhelming this fall that I finally decided to try therapy for the first time. Of course it was virtual, and of course I don’t have childcare, so I attempted to push my daughter in her wagon outside to keep her happy while I chatted with the therapist. My session ended abruptly when the dog pushed her down the hill, she became inconsolable, pooped through her outfit, needed a bath, wanted a snack, and then was ready to be put down for a nap. I didn’t bother scheduling another appointment.

The stigma of stay-at-home-mom depression

Despite all the strides we’ve made in talking about mental health, depression is still stigmatized as a personal failure. That pressure feels particularly frustrating for a lot of stay-at-home moms, myself included, who fall into the roles less by choice and more by circumstance. Moeslein, for instance, tells Glamour that she never planned to stay home, but after her son was born with medical complications as a result of a bladder condition, sending him to day care wasn’t an option. She had no idea what she was getting into, but she didn’t have any other choice.

During her nine years as a SAHM, the mother of three has struggled on and off with the same depression that plagued her in college. “As a mom, especially as a mom who stays at home and suffers from depression, you just don’t have that time to take care of yourself because you’re so busy taking care of your family,” she says. “You do it because you don’t have a choice.”

Even for women who never suffered from depression, the transition to at-home parenting may be especially hard for mothers who had careers before having children. The loss of the identity and self-worth a woman’s career provided to her is real, and loss is a trigger, says Susan Silver, a psychotherapist in Illinois. “When we think about loss, we usually think about death or divorce, but any major change can be a source of depression,” she says.

Complicating matters is the fact that depression is often overlooked among SAHMs because not going to work every day is viewed as a privileged choice. It’s lucky. That often means moms who struggle may feel they don’t have the right to speak out. “I told myself that so many other women would kill to be home with their kids all day, so I bottled up my feelings for fear of seeming ungrateful,” says Pamela Gillett, 32, a former stay-at-home mom of two from Michigan who went back to part-time work (before the pandemic) in order to cope.

Compounding the pressure that many at-home moms put on themselves to not feel ungrateful is the message that if you’re at home and unhappy, you have only yourself to blame. Common advice given to at-home moms—get up early so you can have me time or exercise at home—send the message that if you only worked a little harder, you wouldn’t be so miserable.

At the height of some of my own depressive episodes as a SAHM, I can remember crying while pushing my daughter outside in her little baby swing, telling myself over and over that I should be happy just to be with her, or crying when I had to drag four little kids with me to get my teeth cleaned, yet again, because finding a reliable sitter is not as easy as all of those “helpful” articles make it out to be. Not being able to voice my own misery or find the help that I knew I needed only served to make me feel like even more of a failure as a mom.

Those messages may be amplified by the other demands coming out of the pandemic–work-at-home coworkers who may be less than sympathetic about the plight of working with kids underfoot, complaints from the childfree about being “bored” in quarantine (Was I actually jealous when my own sister contracted a mild case of COVID-19 and lamented over being stuck home alone with TV and food delivery? Yes, yes, I was, and I’m not proud, okay?), or the strange pressure to come out of this whole thing somehow better, fitter, and adept at baking homemade sourdough bread.

How common is stay-at-home-mom depression?

The reality is, the very structure of stay-at-home mothering can make a woman who is already prone to depression even more susceptible. “As a person, you need conversation, you need human interaction, you need stimuli that as a SAHM you don’t get on a daily basis,” Moeslein says. “That’s something nobody talked to me about before I had kids.” Modern family dynamics are getting worse at supporting this, Silver says—extended family members like cousins are less likely to live nearby, and grandparents are more likely to be working and living their own active lives. Those key forms of social communities once available to SAHMs aren’t always there anymore. The systemic struggles that SAHMs face are also a very real part of the problem—from the way we treat mothers postpartum (spend 15 minutes with a doctor checking in on your health after giving birth and hope that covers it!) to the lack of paid maternity leave. The message to moms is clear: You’re on your own, lady.

Before the pandemic hit, survey data showed that over a quarter of all mothers in the U.S. don't work outside the home—why has it taken so long to acknowledge the mental health challenges we are faced with?

How to cope with stay-at-home-mom depression

Putting a name to the phenomenon of stay-at-home-mom depression helps legitimize it. It’s a rallying cry for any mom who has ever felt this way. For 12 years I have believed that I am just not “good” at being a SAHM. I’ve told myself, over and over, that while staying home may not be the best thing for me, it’s the best thing for our family right now—so I’d better learn to deal with it. I’ve convinced myself that all the other at-home moms out there are waking up excited about yet another day at home with kids, while I sometimes wake up wanting to cry.

I’m certainly not alone in this. “I always thought I was just having a bad day,” says Kara Collins, 33, a mom in Maryland. She’s tried medications and communicating more openly with her husband about her struggles but still feels like she’s living in “survival mode.” The term stay-at-home-mom depression was new to her, but putting a name to the feelings she’s struggling with has helped her feel that she can start to move forward and face them. “I need to find my identity outside of motherhood,” Collins says. “I’m hoping to start a school program, which I think will help me dig myself out of this darkness."

Like Collins, most moms—working or not—are generally aware of what they should do to get the help they need, such as talk to their doctor, socialize with other adults, and find interests that fulfill them. But whether they have the energy or ability to actually do those things is another story. (Please see my toddler falling down the hill during therapy.) “Women often don’t feel they deserve help, or they think something is wrong with them and that they’ve failed in some way if they have to go to somebody else for help,” Silver says. But by being more open about how it is possible to struggle with stay-at-home depression and love your kids more than life itself, hopefully women and health-care providers will be able to bridge the gap to help stay-at-home mothers feel more acknowledged and cared for in the future.

Simply hearing the term stay-at-home-mom depression has helped me validate how I’ve felt over the past decade. It’s not me that’s the problem. Or my kids. Or even my partner’s not understanding. This year it’s certainly none of that, because when society crumbles, it’s become apparent that it’s the backs of mothers at home that we expect the world to be carried on. And pandemic aside, the truth remains that there is a very real lack of knowledge about the realities of women staying home—especially those women who may already be prone to depression. For those of us in the trenches, we can help by being more honest about our own experiences, modeling truths for future generations of mothers and being kind to ourselves as we figure out how to make staying at home work better for everyone.

And for crying out loud, maybe we can all agree to give ourselves a giant pass to recover however the hell we can from the past year we just all survived.

* A version of this article originally appeared in 2018.

This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Chaunie Brusie