Playgroups as a Support System for Stay-At-Home Mothers

Introduction

Stay-at-home mothers have always been idealized as the perfect wives that sacrifice their professional lives to raise their children. By staying home they are giving up the chance to meet new people and to have an outlet to the world other than their family. Isolation and a sense of loneliness can result from the mother's putting aside their well being for the sake of taking care of their children. Playgroups give mothers an outlet to meet others that are in the same situation.

After the birth of my daughter in March 2005, I really started realizing that my other friends didn't have kids and really didn't want to hear about how many bowel movements that she had that day. It became harder and harder for me to talk to them which led those phone calls to stop. I live nine hours away from my mother and grandmother that am very close to so I only get to see them maybe one every two or three months. I was only able to talk to them on the phone. I see my husband everyday which is a source of social interaction, but the problem with that is that is I do I see him everyday. It's nothing interesting and new. It's easy to end up feeling like you are the only person on Earth some days.

My one outlet I still had was walking around Wal-Mart and using my daughter to attract the attention of people so they would stop and talk. Even it they were only there to say how cute she was. I was lucky enough that one of the people she stopped happened to be another stay-at-home mother. Another woman overheard us talking and we all realized we were stay-at-home mothers with no friends and no support. We decided to start a playgroup together so that we can have someone else to talk to that doesn't care if the main topic of conversation is which diapers really do hold more in.