Stanton now lives in Davidsonville with her family. She says it feels like the country home the family always wanted, especially compared with the cramped conditions of their previous life.
After settling into her new home and new life, Stanton realized she needed to find an identity beyond motherhood.
She sent out proposals for a book to help career women transition to stay-at-home motherhood. She received numerous rejections, but just before she abandoned hope, Laura Mazer, an editor at Seal Press and a former stay-at-home mom herself, contacted Stanton. Mazer realized there was a substantial audience ignored by other parenting books.
"I think there is so much emphasis on how to do it right," Mazer says. "There is all this pressure to do mothering a certain way, and little focus on the radical life change of motherhood."
Stanton started locally, e-mailing friends a 40-question short-answer survey and asked them to share it with mothers who had left a career. The survey passed through blogs and mommy Web sites, and to Stanton's surprise, 65 women returned completed surveys.
Jennifer Duquemin, 36, a former senior manager at an accounting firm and mother of two young children in Sunnyvale, Calif., said the survey allowed her a chance to reflect on the transformation from career woman to mother.
"It gave me an opportunity to take an hour and really think about what my life had become," she says.
After the surveys trickled in over six weeks, Stanton began her manuscript. Stanton wrote a few pages at a cafe while the girls were in preschool, a paragraph in her kitchen during a brief lull, a passage or two in the minivan on the side of the road. The majority of her writing was done at night while her house was quiet.
Stanton says the result is not just an emotional or psychological self-help book. It also provides tangible assistance, like her money chapter, for which she collaborated with a lawyer and financial planner.
Stanton's book "really examines the experience of motherhood in a proactive and supportive way," Mazer says.
In her book, Stanton encourages moms to regard their position as a job. She particularly distinguished from "working moms" and "employed moms" because stay-at-home moms work. Stanton says if you recognize it as a job, you can escape from the guilt of wanting to get away.
As her two youngest plan to start school in the fall, Stanton realizes she will have more time on her hands. She plans to continue freelance writing, which will allow her a more flexible schedule and the ability to stay at home if necessary. She says she has had the successful and demanding career, the life as the 24-7 caretaker and now looks forward to the next stage of her life.
"I don't think the male model of a traditional work life really works for women," she said. "Why do one thing your entire life?"
jasmine.jernberg@baltsun.com
Stanton will sign copies of her book from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. July 13 at Hard Bean Coffee & BookSellers, 36 Market Space, Annapolis, and read excerpts and sign copies at 11 a.m. July 31 at the Barnes & Noble in Annapolis Harbor Center.
