February 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 1

It happens all the time. I’m at a party, let’s say, and there’s a lull in the conversation. Someone turns to me and asks, casually, “So, what do you do?”

As an autistic woman, I’d been all too happy to quit my job as an attorney when my daughter was born. It was an easy out. I never had to explain my chronic burn-out, my persistent difficulties adjusting to the expectations and structure of a traditional 9-to-5. I was becoming a mother, and that was all the justification I needed.

Still, I used to cringe inwardly when people would ask what I did for work. I was embarrassed to utter the words “stay-at-home mom.” It felt like I had failed feminism, fallen short of some ineffable standard.  I spent many years trying to evade such inquiries.

The phrase “stay-at-home mom” feels controversial. I remember one man retorting, “It must be great to sit on the couch and watch TV all day.” Those with more tact often go with, “Oh, that’s the hardest job there is.” (It’s not. I’ve worked other jobs before. Many of them were harder.)  Once, during an intake at a medical clinic, a receptionist looked at my paperwork, blinked and said, “I’ll just write unemployed … for now.” To some, it’s the most natural thing in the world, conjuring up images of baked sourdough and the scent of lemon all-purpose cleaner. To others, it’s scandalous, like I’ve just admitted to selling organs for spare change.

I understand. The term “stay-at-home” has … connotations. For women, especially. But recently, I’ve begun to embrace the term, to declare, with conviction: I’m a stay-at-home mom.

I considered using a different term, one with less baggage, but nothing I encountered fit the bill. Most options sound like parody or carry with more sinister implications.

Take, for example, “full-time parent”—an improvement in some respects. But what does that mean for so-called “working parents?” Are they demoted to part-time parents? “Full-time parent” adopts the on-the-clock language of capitalism to legitimize itself, and in doing so raises questions about how we view the labor of parenting.

“Professional mom” is similarly fraught. I’ve also heard the term “domestic engineer”(albeit mostly on old reruns of Supermarket Sweep). I actually really like this one, but I am not brave enough to use it in public. And it has similar shortcomings: it tries a little too hard to equate the labor of parenting with something professional, lucrative—and hence, respectable.

All these semantics underscore the value we place on producing, on participating in the economy. This valuation can be especially fraught for those of us living with disabilities. Moreover, capitalism historically has not been kind to women, or to what has been perceived as “women’s work.” The fact that caregiving isn’t paid much, or at all, is a huge con job, and it tells you everything you need to know about how the system functions. (If you can get away with not paying someone to do something, congratulations, you’ve won capitalism.)

But changing my title to “full-time mom” isn’t fooling anybody. Domestic labor is still devalued. “Stay-at-home” has a negative connotation precisely because it’s coded as feminine: it is all staying and no doing, and staying is seen as the province of women.

How about we embrace a title that doesn’t attempt to justify its existence in terms of the marketplace?

I can understand the desire to try to put parenthood in the realm of the corporate, to try to salvage some dignity in work that’s too often denigrated. And I think that’s what well-meaning people attempt when they offer the cliched “hardest job there is.”

But … what if it’s not? What would happen if we stopped trying to job-ify everything?

What if this is just my life?

I want to build towards a world that doesn’t revolve around the way one makes or doesn’t make their money. I want distance between our worth and our wage. I want to opt out. I don’t want my caregiving to be classified, and therefore quantified, by the timecard of industry.

Caregiving and parenting existed long before capitalism. They are pre-capitalist. They exist above and beyond capitalism. This labor is important—not because it is a job you can have, but because human life is inherently valuable, regardless of its earning potential.

I’ll say that again: human life is inherently valuable, regardless of its earning potential. As a disabled person, moving towards a more inclusive “what do you do?” is especially important.  Reclaiming stay-at-home mom is one small step towards a world that does not associate human life with a dollar sign.