The Miserable Mom Era Is Out

For years, I stayed at home and felt like what I did at home didn’t have much value. Here’s what finally changed — and why you don’t have to earn permission to love your life.

The Miserable Mom Era is out. And I say that as someone who lived in it longer than I’d like to admit.

Not because I was doing anything wrong. Just because somewhere along the way I’d absorbed the idea that a woman who loved her home was somehow settling. That homemaking was what you did when you couldn’t think of anything better.

I believed that longer than I’d like to admit. And I’m done with it.

Y’all, something is shifting in our society. I see it in my comments. I see it in my messages. I see it in the women who are quietly, almost shyly, admitting that they actually like being home. That they love cooking dinner for their family. That keeping a tidy house brings them something close to peace.

And every single one of them says it like they’re confessing something embarrassing.

Because somewhere along the way, we were handed a story that said a woman who loved her home was wasting her life. That homemaking was something small — something you did if you couldn’t do anything else. The miserable mom era wasn’t just a mood. It was a whole cultural script. And a lot of us believed it more than we’d like to admit.

The internet spent a decade telling me that a woman who loved her home was behind the times. Old-fashioned. Limited.

I believed it more than I’d like to admit.

Here’s what I know now: we were never supposed to hate this.

We were lied to. Not maliciously, maybe. But consistently. By a culture that decided the only work worth celebrating happened outside the home, that the only ambitions worth having came with a salary and a title.

And so a lot of us spent years — good years, years we won’t get back — apologizing for what we actually loved. Shrinking it. Qualifying it. Oh, I’m “just” a homemaker.

Just.

I spent more time comparing my life than living it.

That’s the honest truth of it. I’d scroll through other people’s highlight reels and feel vaguely dissatisfied with my own. Not because my life wasn’t good — it was. It is. But I was too busy looking at everyone else’s to notice how blessed I was.

The comparison was the misery. Not the homemaking.

The laundry wasn’t the problem. The cooking wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I’d let someone else’s definition of a meaningful life crowd out my own.

The thing that changed it for me was simple. I started praying for contentment instead of scrolling for it. I stopped looking to the internet to tell me if my life was enough, and I started asking God. And He was faithful — the way He always is, quietly and completely. Joy was here the whole time just waiting for me to notice. I was just too busy looking elsewhere to see it.

Your home is allowed to be your calling.

I want to say that clearly, because I know some of you need to hear it as plainly as possible: you do not have to earn permission to love your life. You don’t have to justify your choices to anyone. You don’t have to make yourself miserable to prove you’re serious.

As a wife and mother, as a home-maker, YOU are the heart of your home. And that’s not a small thing. It is, in fact, one of the most important things! The 90s butter mom era — the one where women cooked real food and kept a real home and didn’t apologize for any of it — is having a moment. My Instagram has been blowing up with comments and new follows and women enjoying being homemakers. And I think it’s having a moment because women are exhausted from pretending they don’t want this.

They do. We do.

If this is your kind of place — if something in you nodded along while you were reading — I’d love to have you a little closer.

The Homemaker’s Society is where I keep everything I’ve learned about homemaking in one place: printables, planning pages, seasonal guides, devotionals, meal planning resources, all organized so you know exactly where to start. It’s $9 a month or $97 for the year, and the door is always open.

Come on in, sweet friend.

→ Join The Homemaker’s Society here

Free Homemaking Foundations Email Course

Or if you’re just getting started and want a little company on the journey, I put together a free 7-email course called Homemaking Foundations — just tell me where to send it.

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