If your partner is a stay at home parent (either mom or dad) taking care of small children, do them a favor. Help them get out of the house more. It seems like a small thing to you, but to your SAHM who hasn’t spoken to anyone over three feet tall for days and lives in a world of diapers and laundry, it can mean a lot. 

Among the things that stay at home parents need most is rest, assistance with housework, and some alone time. You may have your career, your day job, while your partner stays at home. You can be sitting there thinking you’ve got it rough, but I doubt your partner would agree. If you traded places with your partner for one week, you’d have a deeper appreciation for what is required of a stay at home parent.  

You come home and wonder (hopefully to yourself) what he/she’s been doing all day. The house is a mess and they’re exhausted. Well, the fact is, parenting wears you out. It’s time for you to help your partner renew and refresh by getting them out of the house!  

Get a babysitter and take your partner out to dinner, set it all up, just tell them to be ready at a certain time, and you’re taking care of everything including childcare, transportation, reservations and picking up the check. Buy them an adult beverage and have adult conversation. Make it about adult subjects and not about the kids.

Give your partner a gift certificate for a massage, a spa day, a day on the golf course, or wherever they like to relax.  You take care of the kids and see your stay at home parent off on a full day of whatever the heck they want to do. 

Give a romantic gift and remind your partner of how much you love and appreciate them. There’s nothing more meaningful to someone who is being spit up on all day long and changing diapers then to be reminded how loved and appreciated they are. How sexy you find them and how much you love that they are doing the all- important work of raising your child. 

Stay at home parents need love too! They need romance and they need time off to be themselves. They need to get out and be with other adults sans children once in a while and not to be made to feel guilty about it. You can do your partner a world of good for their outlook and attitude by being aware of this and considerate of their feelings. Help your stay at home parent feel great about their role by supporting them fully and helping where you can. Let them rest uninterrupted for a few hours and see what a difference it makes.

It takes empathy and compassion for your partner to realize what he/she needs. Put yourself in their shoes and try to understand what they are going through on a daily basis. They are under a great deal of stress, a huge level of responsibility and responsible for countless chores, care, feeding and emotional support for not only the children but you as well. This is one of THE most important jobs any human can have and while it’s generally thought of as less than a person having a career, it’s truly a priceless and thankless task that they’re doing for the family and often a huge sacrifice they’re making personally to give up their own career goals, put education on hold and concentrate on the family instead. 

Honor that commitment and that choice that hopefully you both made together to have one of you be the stay at home parent and help out when you can, give some relief and respite to your partner and allow them the freedom to indulge in some romance, self-care and rest.