CMV: Being a stay at home parent should be considered a career

**EDIT:**<br><br>Wow! This got a lot more traction than I expected, so I am going to do my best to reply to everyone. <br><br>First of all, I am not the stay at home parent. I am in a very demanding profession, and my spouse has had an easier time being the stay at home parent, and has expressed a desire to do so. I do want to note that there are some very valid points about people who don't have a choice in the matter, and its effects on them. **For me, this is about people who want to be stay at home parents, and how they should view their decision to do so, not people who don't have a choice, or who don't want to be a stay at home parent.**<br><br>My **OPINION** is that being a stay at home parent should be considered a career, as you are dedicating yourself to doing a difficult labor-intensive job (raising children), where you can't really take time off, and the future of humanity literally depends on you succeeding. I also think that, for people who choose this path, should treat this as a career. I don't believe a stay at home parent is any better or more selfless than a working parent, I believe they are simply different jobs that need doing. I believe that if someone is going to take the job of being a stay at home parent, they should be 100% committed to it, and this is a big part of why I believe it should be considered a career. I believe that if every stay at home parent treated it this way (not to the exclusion of all else, as some have mentioned) it would yield better results and be overall better for people who want to be stay at home parents. This is why I believe that being a stay at home parent should be a considered a career, and why stay at home parents should treat it as such. <br><br>Thank you everyone for your thoughtful comments and responses. I have looked over them all, and I have considered everyone's responses, and I have decided that I still believe that being a stay at home parent should be considered a career, and stay at home parents should treat it as a career. Thank you all for your replies.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>---<br><br>**ORIGINAL**<br><br>This is something that my spouse and I have been thinking about for a while, and we have decided that being a stay at home parent should be considered a career, and stay at home parents should treat it as a career. We believe that raising a child is a very difficult job, that is often more emotionally and physically taxing than many jobs that require a formal education. We believe that the quality of a parent is inversely proportional to the amount of free time that they have, and that if you are doing your job as a parent correctly, you will be too tired to do much else.<br><br>With that in mind, we believe that being a stay at home parent should be treated as a career, and stay at home parents should treat it as a career. It should be a labor of love, and be treated as such. I do not believe being a stay at home parent is any better or more selfless than being a working parent, I believe it is simply a different job to be done.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>**EDIT:** I am not saying that being a stay at home parent is better than a working parent, plain and simple. I am saying that being a stay at home parent should be treated as a career, the same way that being a carpenter or an office worker or any other job should be treated, as a career.