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Stay-at-home moms have one of the, if not the, most demanding jobs of all time. They are the village that makes each household run with ease.
So, what happens when a family loses that? One mom on TikTok went viral for her eye-opening perspective on what it takes to replace the unwavering do-it-all nature of a stay-at-home mom.
Allison Roozen — a blogger and content creator who offers parents free resources and tools for play-based preschool activities — shared a very personal story on her TikTok, detailing the new perspective she gained after losing someone very close to her.
“My best friend — my best mom friend — died in 2020,” she began. “We had been pregnant together, had our babies together. She was like, that friend.”
After losing her best mom friend, Roozen began to observe how her late friend’s family coped with the loss and how their household recovered in the wake of her absence. “Something I keep thinking about is now that she’s gone is the amount of people that have been hired to replace her,” she said.
Roozen’s best friend was a stay-at-home mom. Besides the obvious emotional loss, Roozen explains that so many other things needed to be outsourced to hired help because she was no longer around to handle it.
“And now, with her gone, her husband has hired a landscape crew, a house cleaner, two babysitters, and enlists the help of neighbors, grandparents, along with having a girlfriend who does the emotional labor,” she explained.
She says that now that the backbone of the family is gone, an entire village had to be hired to fill her place.
“Before, they had a mom who was doing all of that,” she concluded.
Roozen spoke to Scary Mommy and explained that seeing the entire team brought in to support her friend’s husband after her passing made her see the value in everything she does as a fellow stay-at-home mom.
“The amount of people does not surprise me, but it really validates how smart they were as a couple. She had 2 life insurance policies (which shows how much her husband valued her as the home maker and care taker of their family) and without having those the loss of her would have been even more difficult than it already was,” Roozen tells Scary Mommy.
Hundreds commented on Roozen’s take with several noting how important is it for SAHMs to have large life insurance policies for just this kind of tragic situation. One TikTok user wrote, “Reminder to all moms: you need a very robust life insurance policy.”
Another echoed, “We have a life insurance policy for me as a SAHM because it would cost my husband so much if I died. I’m grateful he values my unpaid labor.”
One user noted, “This is why my husband has life insurance for me. To be able to hire people to do the work if I die. 😳”
To which Roozen replied, “Thankfully she had 2 policies 🙏🏻”
Other moms noted the irony of this SAHM finally getting the help she probably always needed a little too late. “Sad when she probably asked for help multiple times and never got that. Now that’s she’s gone the help comes. 😔” one user noted.
Another TikTok user wrote, “I’m so very sorry for your loss. Moms are expected to juggle everything and never drop a ball. No matter what and it isn’t fair.”
Roozen responded, “Thank you. It’s really not. Fair Play is at the top of my reading list.”
Fair Play — a book by Eve Rodsky — helps couples work through a system that offers couples a fair and understandable way to divvy up chores and responsibilities so that each person is carrying an equal load.
Though the concept of Fair Play is progress, stay-at-home moms are still overworked and underpaid (and by “underpaid,” we mean not paid at all).
“I want to be clear that my friend was actually very well supported – once she had a terminal illness (which was the last 3 years of her life and over half of her motherhood). Prior to her getting sick, she was decently supported, but they lived far from family so only had occasional help and eventually hired a housecleaner,” she tells Scary Mommy.
Salary.com noted that, in a post-pandemic world, SAHMs are doing more work than ever. If they were to be compensated for all they do, the median annual salary for stay-at-home moms in 2021 was $184,820 — rising $6,619 above the pre-pandemic median.
“And if you factor in pay premiums that companies offer like bonuses, overtime, and hazard pay due to the increased intensity of the work this past year, a stay-at-home mom could earn more than $200,000 annually!” the outlet added.
The study gave consideration to the more obvious roles that stay-at-home moms take on — like housekeeper, personal chef, and assistant, but also newer roles — like network administrator and social media communications.
In the end, the mom role includes more than 20 different positions with roles such as public school teacher, interior designer, and logistics analyst being added to the list of jobs.
The survey results show that stay-at-home moms work a whopping 106 hours per week on average, which means they are working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Losing a parent is an unimaginable loss no matter which parent is it. However, the loss of a stay-at-home mom is a void that not even hired help can fix.
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