Evolving as a Modern Family: Embracing Non-Traditional Roles and Breaking Societal Norms

Taylor Shanklin is the VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at Pursuant. With over a decade spent in the nonprofit technology sector, her passion and purpose is to help charitable organizations connect the dots between marketing, technology, and fundraising. Taylor is also the mind behind Hacks for Good, a passion project where she brings the ideology of growth hacking to the nonprofit sector. A lifelong Austinite, Taylor shares life’s journey with her husband and two children, along with a grumpy old Chihuahua named Toby. In her spare time, she enjoys dancing Zumba, writing about tales of motherhood, and occasionally leaving her kids at camp grandma so that she and her husband can truly enjoy a vacation.

We are an upside down family, one where the wife works and the husband stays home, one where the family downsizes from a large home into a small rental–instead of upsizing from an apartment into a hefty mortgage.

We haven’t shifted this way because society asked us to or because we thought it would be hip.  We were finally allowed to evolve into a modern family, free from the guilt of meeting a traditional American standard. This may be the greatest gift of the millennial generation: the gift of acceptance.

But acceptance doesn’t come without hard work.

We continue our three part series today with Lesson #3. Missed a lesson? You can find Lesson #1 here and Lesson #2 here.

Lesson #3: Stay at home parents don’t get enough credit for their hustle.

Remember back in Lesson #1 when I said “The American dream is dysfunctional?”  We are so hyper-focused on “the hustle” that we lose focus those raising our next generation.

Stay at home parents sacrifice a lot and don’t get enough credit. In fact, they are often segregated from the rest of society–put in another bucket. The parents who choose to focus on the kids and leave behind the workforce hustle get painted into a corner and forgotten about.

Yet, where would the next generation be if both parents always focus on the hustle?

From my own experience staying home with the kids, and in watching my husband adjust to this over the past couple of years, I can say that the life of the stay at home parent is challenging on a whole different level. While it is fulfilling to raise your children, it’s often a thankless job and one which lacks mental stimulation. We now live in a society where many of the stay at home parents are well educated, and were once in the workplace; moving out of the workforce into the home-keeper role is mentally taxing.

We need to do a better job as a society of integrating stay at home parents into the hero story and it starts with telling them thank you more often.

In closing on this series of the modern family

Life is an evolution. I share these three lessons, ideas and experiences because I have to think that other couples, other parents, other individuals are out there struggling with these same things but are uncertain of what to do with the feelings or how to make a change.

You may be overwhelmed with how to be a parent in this modern world that always wants more, more, more. You may be struggling with wanting to follow your passion but being told that money and hustle is the way to success. You may be struggling with the idea of buying a bigger lifestyle than you actually can or want to afford.

You may feel stuck in living up to the American dream’s expectations of you.

But you can do this! Embrace the evolution.