I resigned from my job three months ago to help my pregnant wife around the house and take her to doctor's appointments. A month ago she gave birth to our bundle of joy. Since we saved up a fair amount of money, the hospital stay was pretty much free, and my wife is getting months of paid maternity leave, we decided it'd be best if I'd stay at home a couple more months to help around the house with cooking, cleaning, and taking care of/bonding with the baby.
The last couple weeks, neighbors, family, and friends kept asking me:
“So….when are you going back to work? Yanno…apply for another job? Why aren't you going back to work yet?”
Stop asking. Seriously. I know Americans are conditioned to be good Calvinists, think 'idle hands are the devil's work' and being work-obsessed cog cretins till death do they part is the end all be all of existence but I, prepare your Pikachu faces of shock for this, don't subscribe to that miserable, bogus workaholic shit one iota.
If we can afford to coast a couple months without me going back to work so I can pitch in with the baby, what's the problem?
My wife, a non-American, is completely baffled by the typical American mindset of 'living to work' instead of 'working to live' and them getting into a tizzy over people not working all the time. It's bizarre and disturbing.
If I chose to go back to work when I originally was going to, I would have probably missed the birth of our child because my wife gave birth a couple weeks before she was scheduled to so all the nosy judgers can piss off.
Anyway, rant and ramble aside, I don't feel guilty at all about going about it the way we did and would do it again.