Identity crisis

I get all stymied every time I have to fill in the "occupation" box on a form. The way I see it, I have three choices: housewife, stay-at-home-mom, or homemaker.

I don't like housewife. I think it has a negative connatation and has no real descriptive value, so that's easy to eliminate.

The other two...well, it's more of a challenge to choose. Stay-at-home mom has its upside. It's a handy phrase that people can wrap their brains around. It also seems to be the descriptor du jour. And there's the added bonus of it being so true sometimes that it makes my teeth ache a little. Some of you know those days; the ones where chaos reigns supreme inside the walls of your house and nothing short of a federal evacuation order could induce you to take that show on the road, even to the grocery store. Especially not to the grocery store. But it's an incredibly limited label in many respects, too, like on days where the last place I find myself is home because I'm running all over the place tending to errands that ultimately tend to my family. Or I'm running my child to one of his four weekly activities or trying to do Cub Scouts or whatever. There's nothing stay at home about that. And the mom part...Do people understand that "mom" implies chauffeur and therapist and activities director? At the minimum?

Then there's the third label of homemaker. The drawback to me is that I think it kind of shortchanges women who choose to/need to work outside of the home to apply this label only to non-wage earning mothers. Can't a mother have a career and still make a happy home? Yeah, because I did it for five years. But the upside is that "homemaker" is the one that rings the most true for me because it is what I'm trying to do: make a home, a place of warmth and love and peace and safety.

Here's the thing. Did you think I would have a resolution here? I don't. I told you it's an identity crisis. So my current plan is to avoid any forms that have that blank to fill in until I become a published author and then I can just stick "writer" in there and be happy that my kids know who I am and what to label me. Just plain old glorious Mom.