On Our National Foundation
It’s not quite the season for weather-induced late starts or snow-days, but it’s close. This morning I received the text alert that a power outage in the neighborhood resulted in the kids’ school deciding to run their delayed start schedule on the hope that power will be restored by then. Immediately my mind went to, “How do other parents deal with this?”
My life is such that either mom or dad is 100% available, entirely stay-at-home every single day of the kids’ lives. But from what I understand, this home scenario is more and more rare, if not the literal exception that proves the rule. So what are the other moms and dads doing when their entire day gets disrupted by a random power-outage? Are they taking PTO for a couple hours? Are they bringing their kids to work and then taking an early lunch to take them to school? Do families have plans with other families for these days, ie, drop the kids at some stay-at-homer’s house and this stay-at-home friend loads all the kids up at the appropriate time?
I have no idea.
But I do know that this is probably the strongest example of why being a stay-at-home mom (extreme cases it can be the dad) matters. The kids, the future-citizens of America, need to understand the concept of stability.
Civilizational stability, national stability, community stability is not intuitive like “water is wet” is intuitive. We humans need to witness the example of stability. It is entirely possible, see all the places of the planet that you couldn’t be paid to visit, for humans to never understand that there is a better way to live, that there is a stable way to live. Of course it involves rule of law, literacy, guns, and effort etc. But at its foundation, it involves stability. The stay-at-home mom provides this. And the exemplar experience is the completely thought-free way in which a late start or cancelled school day is handled.
Captain’s Log 
There are many jobs in which people are paid simply to stand by and wait for something to happen, at which point they then jump in with both feet and accomplish whatever their actual skillset happens to be. Some examples would be emergency workers, fire fighters, and armed guards. Just, as you have proven with your observations here, stay-at-home moms also belong on this list. There are two big differences:
1. Instead of working a shift and then having a break where they are off duty, they are typically on call 24/7. (Sounds like you and your wife are splitting this duty, though, allowing each of you some “time off.” 😆)
2. Their work is totally pro-bono and doesn’t pad their resume with material that can be useful for advancing in any paid field.
100% agree with you, of course! A stay-at-home parent is an invaluable asset to any family. Stability is sadly lacking in many homes today because people are not willing to sacrifice to provide it.
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I forgot to mention that, of course, whenever they are not on stand-by, they are usually accomplishing something else worthwhile (such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, running errands, grocery shopping, etc.), and all of this work in and of itself roughly equates to a full-time workload, or more. I definitely don’t want anyone to think I meant that “being on call” was the ONLY thing stay-at-home moms do; however, this on-call aspect of being a stay-at-home mom does turn it into a 24/7 job.
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