Ashley asked me to write a guest post on her blog from the perspective of a working mom. I was excited to do it – until I realized that meant I actually had to decide what I think and feel about being a working mom, and I’m still very much figuring that out. Even if I had a solid opinion, I’m sure it – like my job and my children – would be different by tomorrow. So, I will simply share some of my thoughts and experiences in juggling work and motherhood, and on feeling okay about doing so. Whether it’s completely foreign or totally relatable, I think there’s value in sharing our stories.
Just to be clear, I’m not being saluted, I’m being given a chance to explain myself. That was a joke – kind of. I feel like one of the first things you need when you’re a full-time working mom is your line that justifies why you’re working:
“Yes, I work full time, but I can do a lot of it from home.”
“Yes, I work full time, but my husband lost his job.”
“Yes, I work full time, but I have a wonderful nanny.”
“Yes, I work full time, but we take nice family vacations with the money I make.”
“Yes, I work full time, but I carry a heavy boulder up a hill each night to punish myself for it.”
When I had my first baby I found myself saying a lot of, “Yes, I’m going to continue working, but…”. I’m not sure if I was really being judged as harshly as I thought, but whether or not other people demand it I think we demand of ourselves some sort of justification for why we are spending time working instead of being with our children, especially when it is not an absolute financial necessity. Even more so when our children are very young. But don’t mistake me pointing out the need for justification as me dismissing it. A mom diverting time and attention away from her family for a significant part of each week is no small thing - I know this because I run these justifications through my head frequently to make sure they add up. Being a working mom takes logistical and mental juggling, and some very real sacrifice. I do everything I can to make sure the brunt of that is born by me and my husband, with as little as possible splashing up on my kids: Luca, my toe-headed wild man who will be 3 in June, and Laney, my happy, chubby 6-month old baby girl.
I can do a lot of work from home, by the way. I’m a professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, where I do research in public health and behavioral interventions for chronic disease prevention. It’s an intense publish-or- perish environment; my career success is entirely dependent on peer review – “peers” in this case being people who comb over every grant and manuscript I write searching for flaws to expose and punish me for. It can be mentally and emotionally taxing, but no two days are the same, and I get enormous freedom in my schedule and in the work I actually do.
As any parent who has worked from home can probably tell you, it’s not as great as it sounds. Because you don’t have physical boundaries, you have to enforce boundaries elsewhere. “Mama is in the other room but not available right now” is a much harder concept to grasp than “Mama isn’t here right now.” It takes a lot of self discipline to hear crying or laughing in the other room and not come out, and even more self discipline to put my kids to bed at night and go back to my computer instead of collapsing on the couch (I’m batting around 500 on that one these days). I also have a job that is based on getting things done, not by the number of hours you log. This is useful in that I get my work done efficiently and have more time for my family. However, it’s also awful. My husband has no reason to think about work at all when he’s not there. I, on the other hand, can think about work during breakfast, in the shower, on vacation, when I’m reading books to my kids, or as I fall asleep at night. Again, I have to create boundaries. I schedule hours for myself, about half of it in my office, in order to prevent the ice cream sundae that is my life – full of interesting, meaningful work, wonderful children, an amazing husband, a beautiful city to call home, and much more – from being covered with a thick, fudgy layer of guilt.
The system works well most of the time. But there are a lot of questions that stay with me as I slowly fall asleep at night:
Does me having a job require unfair sacrifices of my children?
Is more time with me always better for them? (Do they enjoy a break from me as much as I enjoy a break from them??)
Am I able to do both of these jobs well simultaneously?
The last one is a tough one. I know I’m able to do both of these jobs simultaneously; boxes get checked off, meetings are attended, children are fed and alive. But am I able to do them both well? My job isn’t one that I can do in a half-hearted, mediocre way – at some point you either get tenure or you get fired – and it’s not the kind of job you get to by being happy with something other than your best effort. Who wants to do a job that they can’t do well? Especially when, as in my case, you’re audacious enough to believe your job is important.
But of course, the evaluations of our multiple life roles don’t carry equal weight. You could be called a bad teacher, a bad housekeeper, a bad driver, a bad accountant, a bad cook, a bad writer, a bad citizen, or a bad mother; most of these could be laughed at in casual conversation, others might be unfortunate, but only one is tragic, and feels like an evaluation of the entire person, not just something they do. The costs of being a bad or even mediocre mother are too high to treat the possibility flippantly, which is why these questions circle in my head at night. But now and then I stumble on some that are unexpected: are my children actually enriched by me working? Is it possible that my job actually makes me a better mom? Are we all better off – not just financially, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually – by me having a job?
There’s one way that I firmly believe my kids have been blessed by me working, and its name is Dad. My husband doesn’t work a typical 9-5 job either, he works at a hospital so it’s lots of irregular hours. So while I do the lion’s share of childcare on evenings and weekends, our childcare during workweek hours is pretty evenly divided between me, Alan, and a babysitter. This means my kids get lots of time with dad without me around, which is great for all of us. I don’t leer over his shoulder as he changes a diaper or check that he follows a schedule that I’ve invented. We do things differently, but dad’s way is just as valid as mom’s. (Hopefully he isn’t reading this; I know he will quote that back to me often…). Having the kids on his own 12-16 hours per week has helped him not only know how to care for his kids, but really know his kids. The other day I was making Luca a sandwich, and Alan commented, “he really does better if you cut it up a little smaller than that.” Now, I’m sure if I was out of the home 40 hours per week and he was the primary care taker, a comment like that would stab. But in this case, I just smiled a little and sliced the sandwich up smaller. Dad knows lunches and scooter rides and playgrounds and the exact technique to get Laney to take a bottle; mom knows breakfasts and books in bed and art projects and that Luca likes the inside of croissants more than the outside. I still log more childcare hours and Alan logs more working hours outside the home, but we’ve found a relative balance that has enormously blessed our children, Alan (I think), and certainly me.
Of course, that time isn’t free: if you’re doing the math, you’ve worked out that it means Alan and I get less time together. I won’t deny that that’s been challenging. But it has forced us to work on being purposeful in our time together and doing more with less. Again, we make boundaries.
And what about me – does having a job make me a better mother? Sometimes. Honestly, I think having both work and motherhood to juggle keeps me balanced. When I’m losing a battle of wills with a toddler over a diaper change, I remind myself that there are doctoral students who do everything I tell them to do, and when said toddler collapses in a crying puddle because he wanted the PURPLE bowl instead of the GREEN one, I can remind myself that in an hour I will go do some analyses that are logical and predictable and sane. On the other side of the coin, my kids keep me very grounded. When I start feeling really smart, I invariably look down and find poop on me somewhere, and I have spent the majority of my conference calls lately hooked up to my breast pump. No matter how many times I use it the sensation of being a milked dairy animal never goes away. It’s nice to have a career with such defined goals and successes (publish this many papers in this quality of journal) when raising children can feel so abstract and haphazard. On the other hand, in a field where success and progress are hard fought for and come in sporadic spurts, it’s wonderful and buoying to have two children for whom the smallest daily happenings – sharing something, trying a new food, finishing a puzzle, or making a few marks on a paper – are triumphs worth celebrating.
There are days when things at work go really well and I can throw that energy into happy, focused playtime with my kids. There are days when things at work didn’t go so well and it leaves me depleted to deal with a messy house or a whiny child. But then there are those days when work was challenging or disappointing – when those students didn’t do what I asked or those analyses didn’t make sense at all – and I walk through the door to a running full-body hug from my little boy and a squealing happy shriek from my baby girl, and all seems right in the world. When I get overwhelmed and my “peers” deal me some harsh blows, I go on a walk with my kids, and the bruises become more superficial.
Of course, that’s all kind of self-centered. What about my kids? It would be delusional to assume they are completely unaffected by me working. With the way I’ve arranged my work, I firmly believe my kids don’t suffer from insufficient face-time with me. I want to teach my kids the value of hard work and doing something good in the world, and my job is one way I can do that. They do love their babysitter, and legitimately look forward to the 12 hours per week she spends with them. I think it’s good for kids to see their moms in multiple roles, and again, work is just one way to do that. They may be a bit young to grasp this now, but I also want them to appreciate that their mom saw a problem in the world, and dedicated a lot of herself to trying to make it better. And it may just be the guilt talking, but I do think they just need a break from me sometimes. We all seem to like each other more when we’re reunited than when we said goodbye.
Sometimes I know it is hard on them. A few weeks ago I was leaving for work in the morning and Luca cried and ran outside and got in my car so I would have to take him with me. My heart sank as mom-guilt filled the car. But the promise of a handful of raisins was all it took to happily lure him back inside. I try to remind myself of that often. Not just that raisins can solve all our problems, but that my kids really are quite happy and so far in their short lives have raisin-level problems. We all have rich, multi-scoop-sundae lives – I get to try to make the world healthier and throw myself completely into raising my beautiful children, they get time and attention from lots of people who love them, including weekday trips to the zoo with dad. As I go to sleep tonight, I will remind myself (once again) to keep the guilt away, and to cover my life with a rich caramel-y layer of joyful gratitude.
I think I’m hungry.
2 comments :
I love this Britta. I need to take some notes from you!!
Brita,
This is beautiful. You eloquently captured a wide array of emotions that I feel, and that I believe most working moms feel, on a daily basis.
As I was reading I found myself nodding and smiling or tearing up.
Plus, I might have ice cream for breakfast now. Always a good decision.
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