The Ten-Year Nap tells the stories of 4 New Yorkers who chose to be stay at home moms, and how, 10 years later, they are faced with needing to decide what to do with the rest of their lives now that their children are in school and no longer needing them the way they used to.

Most central of the women is Amy, who once worked as a lawyer before the birth of her son. She and her husband Leo decided she would stay at home and raise their son in his most formative years, rather than paying someone else to do it. Now that her son is 10 years old, she’s finding that she’s not as essential to him as she once was, and that staying home has become a financial strain on the family.

Amy’s friend Jill once worked in the film industry, but was let go from her job right around the time she and her husband decided to start a family. After years of fertility problems, they decided to adopt a baby girl from Romania, and that Jill would stay home and raise her. But Jill finds that she doesn’t really like being a SAHM, especially now that she senses her daughter has some special needs that will require extra time and attention.

Roberta was once an “artist”, but her work never got the recognition she wanted. She ends up turning to puppetry and crafts to make some money, though she thinks it is beneath her. When she and her husband start a family, she decides to stay home and raise them because child care would be too expensive to pay for on her small earnings. Now, as her children are needing her less, she’s feeling like a failure because she not only has lost her artistic drive, but she no longer has the desire or motivation to find something she’d be interested in doing.

Karen is a brilliant mathematician married to a successful banker. Growing up, she watched her parents work so hard at low-paying jobs to provide a life for their family. While Karen loves math and enjoys going to job interviews where companies offer her large salaries to work for them, she always turns down the offers so she can stay at home with her sons because her financial situation is one where she doesn’t have to work, so she won’t. (more…)