Kyryl Gorlov/iStock(NEW YORK) — Anyone who thinks being a stay-at-home mom is easy should just ask a stay-at-home mom.
Because just like being a mother who works outside the home, staying at home full-time has its challenges, too.
In a post shared 73,000 times on Facebook, 25-year-old Bridgette Anne Armstrong of Winona, Minnesota, shared the many reasons why her role is “lonely and overwhelming.”
Armstrong is mom to 18-month-old daughter Riley Anne and told ABC News’ Good Morning America she “just hit a breaking point” prior to the post.
“It was just a day where my child and I both woke up early, in a bad mood, and the day just fell apart from there,” she said. “Diaper blowouts, crying, screaming, and just realizing how exhausted I was and how isolated from a world outside of motherhood I really had become.”
Her post read in part: “You can’t do anything by yourself; go to the bathroom, enjoy a cup of coffee, read, hell you can’t even scrub the shit out of pants for the 3rd time in a day without someone crying or screaming at your leg.”
Armstrong said the response to her post has been incredible.
“The majority has been incredibly positive and reassuring, which has really helped me realize how many people felt/feel the same I did,” she told GMA. “The negative responses just show the stigma that still surrounds stay-at-home parents, and it opened my eyes to the fact the this conversation needs to be out there so we can change that.”
And while social media tends to show the positive side of being a stay-at-home parent, Armstrong thinks her words resonate because so many feel they need to keep up the pretense of the perfect family.
“Bad days happen,” she said. “Almost all parents have felt like a failure at one point; that they weren’t good enough or strong enough to do this, and for someone to actually come out and say it, was a weight off their shoulders a bit I think.”
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