I need some impartial third party opinions. BF and I have been bouncing an idea around for awhile but I am nervous about it on both end. Should I quit my job and become a stay at home step-mom/freelance artist or deal with sitter issues and a stressful possibly dead end job?

First the issues with the job.

Just to start things off last week the phones got shut off becuase my boss owed over $1000 bucks to the phone company, the IRS has shown up looking for him and a law firms keeps calling and asking for him. A month ago he fired the other designer for her 'attitude' becuase she thought he was clueless and making bad decisions. Now he wants to change the way that I get paid so that I get paid more for designing stuff, the issues is this week I didn't get any new projects. So in theory I would be making less not more. Plus you never know if my pay check is going to bounce or not - one of my co-workers did have their check bounce. BUT it is a job and it does pay what few bills I have. But I know what he did to the last designer and I feel like that is what he may be trying to do to me. if I don't quit he may be looking for a reason to fire me. Also I drive roughly 30 mins/30 miles one way to get to work.

The sitter.

It's BM soon to be mother-in-law. enough said right? BF and I don't think she cares too much for BM but she still let's BM doing things that we don't like, we didn't want to use her as a sitter but BM threw a fit. BM calls her daily to check on the boys and when they were in school she would have her go through their school bags and take out the stuff that she wanted to keep. Once BM even picked the kids up and took them to her house becuase one of them was sick, instead of calling us and letting us go get them. She is a very nice lady though but i think she is torn between keeping BM happy and doing the right thing. And she takes off from time to time, leaving us in a bind to find someone else or me having to take off work. And BF still has to pay "Grandma" $300 a month to watch the kids. ($150 a week , every other week) And when school starts in Sept. No one knows how we are going to get the kids to her house becuase she live so far out of town that the bus doesn't stop there.

The proposed solution

Take 6 weeks to start up some online business - freelancing, nature photography, blogging, ect. Quit my job right before school starts. BF would save the $300 a month and I would just have to make enough the few bills that I have. I could also look into a part-time job, maybe a late shift ro going back to school.

The family's concern

We are not married. So if we broke up I wouldn't have a job, unless my freelance really takes off - but let be reasonable. But BF and I have talked about it, if we got married and had a baby I would have to stay at home - my job wouldn't cover the cost of daycare and gas.

Help? I feel so trapped, like I am at a cross roads and either way i go I am taking a risk and it could end really well or really badly. Also how many of you are stay at home moms?