Not so long ago when asked to describe how I was feeling about motherhood and this stage of my life I told those women that I was coming to terms with the permanence of it all. What I was coming to terms with was the permanent effect motherhood was having on my career, and more than that, my ambitions. Working part-time for two and a half years is starting to take its toll on both. My career opportunities are very limited while I continue to work part-time, and my boss and my partner sometimes wonder when I’m going back full-time. I’ve been in the running for two interesting higher level positions but I didn’t get a look in when they realised I wasn’t willing to work full-time. On my most frustrating days at work I imagine another five years in the same job, at the same office, and wonder how I can survive it. Some mothers I talked to tried to reassure me that there was still hope after the ‘mummy track’, but frankly I thought they were deluded.
How much longer will I need to work part-time? I’ve had a dawning realisation that motherhood doesn’t end after the first year, nor after the first five years. When will my daughter not need me as much? When will motherhood not be so consuming? Susan Maushart’s words are resonating strongly with me:
I felt very ambivalent in my soul about daycare, even though with my mind, I had no problems about it at all. That was really unanticipated. I didn’t think I was going to have that struggle, but I did, and it affected the trajectory of my subsequent career. I assumed the worst case scenario would be that I would work part-time, and resume full-time when she was three or four. And even that turned out to be an unrealistic projection, because I hadn’t thought about what happens in the hours before school starts, or after school finishes. I hadn’t thought about having two additional children to care for. So here I am, ten years after the birth of that first child, and I still don’t work anything like full time.
Like Maushart I am not trapped in part-time work, it is a choice I am making. My daughter doesn’t readily take to alternative care arrangements so the pressure hasn’t really been on me yet to own up to my maternal desires and their role in my current life course. Even now it is difficult to see Lauca coping well with full-time kindergarten or daycare, but more and more my part-time work arrangements are about both our needs and not just hers.
I’ve discovered the secret to happiness – a relatively well paid part-time job. Kids or no kids, this is the secret to your happiness, I guarantee it. Note, I have not discovered the secret to being rich! Part-time work gives you the freedom to become a well-rounded person, to pursue a range of passions and pursuits including paid work, to have a life, to get things done that you’ve always wanted to do. Part-time work has resolved a lot of my eternal restlessness. For me, motherhood drives me (though I don’t want to crowd out those women who don’t feel driven by it); motherhood is an enormously fulfilling experience for me and it is fair to say that I wasn’t expecting that to be the case back when I was making life plans for myself at 30.
If I am not going to pursue a successful career, as I’d always planned, I wonder who on earth I am going to be, and will I regret all this 15 years from now. Because this decision seems awfully reckless, awfully heartfelt and irrational. Basically, I want it all. I am sad about my career sacrifices while also being absolutely certain that I don’t want to give up time with my three year old daughter. I am torn while also being excited by my current arrangements. I know, I know. I am annoying and it is hard to feel sorry for me. But I wonder is this a common experience?
Some friends I’ve been talking to lately seem to be having experiences similar to mine with motherhood. A few of these women have been fiercely ambitious and have found themselves, after having a baby, unexpectedly overtaken by maternal desire and wondering what it means for them. It certainly seems to mean trouble for their careers. (There is a lasting sadness in re-directing a career from cardiac surgery to surgery more suitable to part-time work). Looking around I think the friends who have fared the best, with the least confusion about themselves, are the two who were working part-time prior to motherhood.
While coming to terms with all this I suddenly received a PhD offer. It sent me into a (happy) tailspin and it made me realise that this stage of my life isn’t such a dead end. (Yes, ok, those reassuring mothers were right). And now there has also been a job re-shuffle at work. I’ve been assigned a new portfolio; one with more autonomy, more responsibility, and more opportunity for growth. It is welcome serendipity, even if a large part of the improved pace in my new job is because I am overseeing a full-time position as a part-timer. Exciting to try and pull off and also a little doomed! My blog writing has taken a hit, oh, did you notice? (Not such good timing for these kinds of requests). Anyway, I should have a new routine worked out soon and my blog writing frequency will improve. In the meantime I am being careful about what I wish for, in case I get it.
It’s all so complicated and multi-faceted isn’t it? For myself, I feel very overwhelmed by motherhood these days, and I think I use my career to escape that. I remember that when I had my son, I thought how motherhood was the simplest way of fulfilling your destiny. It felt right, it felt like exactly what I wanted to do with my life. Now nine years and two more children later, I feel subsumed. Like, yes, fine, motherhood was inevitable/destined (whichever word seems more appropriate today), but being ‘a mother’ isn’t who I am, and I’m tired of being a footnote to a role.
Of course, my feeling overwhelmed is probably because right now, the youngest is 10 months old and I’ve been at home for those ten months. That’ll overwhelm a person with motherhood.
Then, on the other hand, I’m back to work in three weeks, and I keep looking at the baby and thinking, “really? Do I really intend to leave her for ten hours a day?” Because it feels fundamentally unnatural. But then, why am I counting down the days? So, there again, multi-faceted. Last year, when I was only mothering an eight year old and a five year old and I was working full time, I remember being quite delighted with the state of my work life balance. Maybe I’ll have that again in five years.
My last comment seems to have disappeared, apologies if it turns up in a minute ….
This post says so beautifully so much of what I’ve been thinking these past three years, and in particular these last months since I went p-t. I am happier, more relaxed and far more healthy, and so are my kids. It is working for our family. A particularly unexpected benefit has been the unlinking of work – self- happiness nexus that has driven me for so long, the idea that the core of who I am is linked to what I am paid to do, and how successful I am at doing it. I think finances will dictate me returning to f-t work next year but I am hoping that the new sense of self will remain.
But I am aware that in making this choice I am going against expectation: what’s a highly educated feminist professional doing, throwing away her career and her identity to hang out with the kids and garden? I definitely feel I’m not doing what I *should* be doing, especially in my hyper-competitive industry.
This is now the challenge for me: to do what I feel is right for me and my family and block the shoulds – unspoken and clearly stated – that other people impose on me. It’s as much a difficulty as balancing f-t work and mothering.
Picking up on Megan’s point, I can see things – ambition, needs, sense of self – changing again in the future, just as things have changed to bring me to the point where my career isn’t the top priority. But I’m not putting a timetable on this, I’m letting it unflod and I’ll start powering up at work when I want to and not when I should. It’s very liberating.
But also, as you note, bluemilk, my good experience is predicated on having a lot of resources behind me and a well paying job, it’s a choice a lot of other women and men don’t have and I think we need to do more to create the possibility of choice, in discourse and in practice.
Lovely post.
I am in the earlier stages of this journey, I think, and have been utterly shocked by my sudden complete lack of ambition. I have no desire to be away from my daughter in order to work in any capacity and don’t feel particularly concerned if I never do again…
And yet, I feel the weight of expectation that I will put all of my education to (public) use and that I will “succeed” in the public realm like a good “feminist” – in addition to the financial pressure just to contribute some money to our little household so that we might eventually be able to afford a house and so that my husband doesn’t feel trapped in his own job.
I think that a well-paid part-time position may be the eventual answer, but even that holds little appeal for me right now.
I am at the other side of the equation. I’ve raised my child–while doing the full-time work (no choice in that) and part-time school option. It was difficult and tiresome and stressful. There were times when we both suffered from me doing it but there were also benefits to us both. That being said, I now have a thriving career and a son who’s left the house. Am I happy for my career–yes absolutely, but it doesn’t take the sting out of no longer actively mothering. I think the longer we mother the more competent we get at both mothering and juggling. Yes the issues change and the way they need us and we need them changes, but a lot of it becomes second nature. Now that I’m used to incorporating him and my career into one life I find that I don’t have to do it anymore and quite frankly that is more than a bit disconcerting.
My first comment here.
I can totally relate to this. After four-and-a-half years of being home with my daughter, I am looking for a part-time job. Not just any job – one that will allow me to use my degree (and also happens to be my passion!). Looking for a graphic design job after being pretty much out of the loop for over four years is pretty depressing. I, too, don’t want to give up my time with my girl, but I also don’t want to forget about my much-loved career.
Oh yes, oh yes… I’ve been thinking about this so much lately.
It’s almost like I have to manufacture guilt for being very happy home with them, and not being conflicted about not working full-time and “wasting” all that education…. I think, Oh, no, what’s wrong with me? Why is this “enough”? Why aren’t I mourning all the lofty career-oriented things that I should be doing right now? And then I get mad that I’ve internalized pressures that I don’t feel in my heart. Something I’m sure of: I truly feel more a feminist now than ever. And something else: I’m well aware of the many things that had to come together just right to even allow me to make the choice to be home.
Funny the plans I used to make, about being home first for 6 months, and then for maybe a couple of years, and how nothing is anything like I thought it would be…
But, yes, I’ve done some part time work and projects in the last year–and I do love it.
What I’m trying to focus on lately is the fact that those of us lucky enough to have a choice about pursuing paid work are part of a new paradigm in which the rules aren’t really established yet. Many of us are not following (or don’t want to follow) the traditional male trajectory of consistently investing more heavily, emotionally and timewise, into our career than our family. Yet we have also educated ourselves to pursue careers that have until now been populated mainly by men who were okay with living for their jobs.
My own mother failed to complete her PhD dissertation when she was home with her young children; when we were in school, she changed career paths, got a law degree and did practice law for a while. But her career trajectory since then hasn’t been at all traditional; she is now employed by a university rather than a law firm. For me she is a bellweather about some aspects of my future life – I might not end up with the career I originally imagined but my I can probably achieve my desire to do good, satisfying work if I remain flexible and creative about it.
I don’t know whether my decision to never again darken the door of the corporate world was heavily influenced by being a mother – I guess just because it has changed me somewhat. But my career ambitions have evaporated entirely. I want a job, not a career.
Having said that, I am increasingly a massive supporter of the part time career. I was very pleased to hear on Monday that a friend’s sister has a part time management role – job sharing with another woman and they each work 3 days. Fantastic.
I also now realise that the management job I used to have could have been done 3 days a week plus phone call fielding. I might even consider going back to the Pinstripe Prison if I could do that… then again…. Naaah, couldn’t do it.
My workplace touts itself as being really family friendly, but just recently I’ve had a couple of revelations. The first involved having to negotiate heavily for a couple of hours flextime (gained I had to point out by often staying late to assist with the last few clients of the day) to take my daughter for a dental hospital check up that I couldn’t scedule for a day I don’t work. The second was the realisation that soon I’ll have 13 years of having to battle (hard) for some rec leave during school holidays. I thought I saw a potential career with this agency, once Grace started school, but now I’m not so sure that I’m willing to be constantly absent from those parts of her life.
“Family friendly” at my workplace is very much framed as keeping you at work, preferrably as close to full time as possible, during conventional hours through the provision of things like a carer’s room (where you can work with a sick child, oh hadeehaha) and help finding daycare or holiday programs. It’s not about looking at a varying capacity to work and how that could be made to work for the individual, their families and the organisation. Part time work is suffered rather than embraced, which seems kind of nuts because my work actually totally suits being done by part timers. With less burn out. Even much of the work higher up the food chain could be easily carried out by part-timers.
I have to work, we depend on my income, and it shits me that sometimes I wish for a more conventional and well employed partner. So now I’m thinking about different sorts of work I could do, that might have some degree of flexibility. I don’t want to look back in twenty years and say to Grace, well I missed your childhood. Somehow I think I’d feel that I’d neglected my most important work of all.
I know this is a tired old feminist refrain, but I’m confused about where the men play into this, particularly for those who choose not to be employed at all. And I don’t want those who choose full-time motherhood to feel like I’m judging, I’m just curious where the decision to stay home and let someone else handle the earning comes from.
Is it predicated on the assumption that we are ‘the mothers’ and therefore are more needed and more integral to childhoods? When we say that motherhood is the priority and the most important work, why aren’t we weighing it against how important fatherhood is. Surely fatherhood is important enough that doing it full time would be beneficial to kids too, so, why us and not them? Or is it just the financial reality that, if you’re going to have one full-time parent, it makes sense that you give up the income which is smallest?
I mean it about not judging, because I’ve gone through this debate and I’ve reasoned on, probably every side at various points. I get how great it is to let go of defining yourself by your career, and I get how important mothering feels, and how hard it is to have your priorities pulling you in different directions. But I guess I’ve come out on the side of thinking that as important as mothering feels to me, I can’t just make the assumption that my need to mother is biologically more dominant than my partner’s need to father just because it is more socially acceptable that I do. Society’s narrative tells me that working after children is optional provided I marry correctly, it has never told that to my partner. So if I said, “how about you support us and I’ll care for the children,” he might question our finances, but he wouldn’t question the fairness of it the way I might if he suggested the opposite arrangement.
So I guess what I’m saying is that while at many times, I have considered that maybe I need to be a full-time mother, I have concluded that whatever evidence I have that I am the logical person to do it is primarily founded on conditioned assumptions, and that, while there is a price to pay (for all of us) in my continuing to juggle career and mothering, it is the right thing to do because staying home would certainly, once and for all, solidify those assumptions as true. We don’t come close to equally shared parenting, but if I stop being an earner, it seems I will have put a big road block against ever moving any closer.
I found being a sole parent effectively made a lot of decisions for me. There were my children’s needs – and then there was me. I felt so incredibly frustrated trying to re-enter the workforce after being at home for 5 years – I assumed that NOT being sabotaged by my partner would make it easier, but instead I found having to cope with my daughters grief after the break-up, and the logistics of having moved to an area where housing was cheap and jobs opportunities were thin on the ground made it even harder. I had worked in IT before i had children,and after i had children, I spent five years cleaning hotel rooms. (though i did do a degree in this time.)
Even my studies fell apart when my son developed a post viral heart problem that lasted for a year and a half and was complicated with other immune related problems like shingles) .. there were days when i would sit on the floor and sob with frustration at missing yet ANOTHER lecture because he couldn’t get out of bed ( the days when maternal compassion just hit empty.)
Now i’m looking for part time work and the reality between what I’d like to do and what I can do is HUGE… i don’t doubt my capacity – it’s a matter of whether or not I can manage the travel,m the level of job commitment and the children’s needs. And I’m not always that gracious about the children’s needs anymore, but i recognise that NOT Having a reliable father means that (in my head) those needs have to take a priority.
When does it end? in my experience you get a lull, an easing up when the kids are about 8 to 12, though every kid is different. And then puberty hits, and suddenly they need you in completely different way. You have to be the ‘arsehole’ that sets and detheir autonomy and still protect them from making stupid decisions that may well affect them for the rest of their lives. (i find it far more demanding than toddler, but perhaps that says something about my kids!) – and what’s more you have to do it with just about everyone telling you that you are irrelevent (especially the teenager.) I’ve found I’ve had to explain HOW i can help. and that it always really good to have one person (or even better – two!) in your life that you know loves you, no matter what and with no agenda.
Megan, I think there are a lot of different answers to why women give up work altogether. One obvious one is if they earn less than childcare costs. The one you point out – if you have to give up an income, you give up the smaller one must also be a big one. Lets face, on average women are female and younger, double strike against being likely to earn more than their hubby. Also there is inertia, if you want to breastfeed in anything resembling a relaxing way, mum needs to take some time off at the beginning. It is easier to carry on that way than swap everything around later. People don’t always put a lot of thought into decisions.
On the blokes’s side, many men have a very ingrained belief that what they do for a living is who they are. Not earning an income can be devastating to them. I know at least like that… Even part time work is hitting him really hard in the self esteem department.
And then there is just opportunism. I don’t know what proportion of the working world would give up tomorrow if they could, but there must be a proportion of women who figure if they just go with the flow, they don’t have to go back to the godawful job they left to have kids.
We really need part time careers, and we really need to raise our sons to define themselves by who they are instead of what they do.
In addition to all the reasons Ariane raised in response to Megan, there’s another reason I’ve heard from several mothers on why they wont work fulltime and support their male partners to stay home more. It’s because those women know that no matter what their partners say, the female half of a heterosexual relationship will pretty much always be the one doing the housework, cooking tea, making sure there’s food in the fridge and organising all of the other things. Somehow when women stay home with theri kids they do all those things. When they work fulltime, they still do most of those things in most houses. Is it a good situation? Hell no. Should we fight it and change it? Oh yes please. Will the vast majority of women choose the path of least resistance? The ‘least bad’ socially acceptable option? Yup.
So many women saying so many things that resonate so strongly with me. Some disconnected thoughts to add to the conversation.
The background: I am PhDed, I lectured for a while then tossed it in because it was just too damned hard with three small children (and I was so relieved to find that research that was around on Feminist Philosophers a few months back showing that women academics have less children than women in other similarly paid and ranked jobs; hurray, it wasn’t me that was the problem – it’s a systemic problem), I worked in a fascinating policy job for a while, I tossed it in to allow my partner to take up his dream position in Australia, which meant moving over here from NZ, I would like to work, but I want to have time to spend with my daughters too… dammit – I want to be the person picking them up from school, hearing the triumphs and woes of the day, pottering around at home with them in the school holidays. And although we are mortgage-tied, we can manage without a big income from me, ‘though the bits and pieces I am picking up are helpful.
From bitter, bitter experience, we have found that we can sustain about 1.5 jobs between us, and even that’s pushing it.
I found that things got harder once my girls were all at school, because then instead of paying a nanny, we were into issues of after school care and school holiday care.
My ideal job would be 20 hours per week, in term time. That means no management work.
I had lunch with a friend a couple of weeks back (she was visiting Adelaide for a few days), a woman of a similar age, similar education, similar work history, similar family (three children, including twins). She says she no longer aims for career. Since she has had children, she has had jobs, not a career. What she looks for is contract work, and she’s picky about it. She wants interesting work with interesting colleagues, and that will do.
innercitygarden: You’ve made a very good point, and one I strongly identify with. I think there’s a significant difference in what defines motherwork and what defines fatherwork. Where mothering is considered to include housework, meal prep, homework help, health appointments, etc. Fathering is so frequently defined as quality time, and resembles glorified babysitting.
During my own time at home this year, I told my family (partner and two older kids) that I would not be doing housework during the day, since I intended to go back to work. I don’t want the kids to get the impression that they can leave the house messy and come home to find all their stuff magically put away, and there’s no point setting up our family to feel cheated of something (maid service?) when I do go back to work. Clearly, I then feel guilty about this all the time when I’m talking to other mothers.
And, of course, there’s still a lot of things that I have been doing during the day, for expediency and my family has come to take these things for granted just as quickly as I figured they would. If they come home and I haven’t put supper on, last year my partner would have started a, “what shall we do for supper,” discussion, now he just says, “oh, okay,” and goes off to find something to do assuming that when he pokes his head into the kitchen later, it will be all taken care of.
I very much sympathize with the quandary of whether you spend your energy on doing it yourself (even though you know it’s setting up unreasonable expectations) or whether you spend your energy on trying to confront a lopsided situation if that means more conflicts, and suffering things not getting done right or at all. Sigh, I think I was looking for easy answers!
I’m going to confess my bias too here. I can pretend that my choosing to work is well-reasoned and based on long-term feminist goals, but that comes off pretty arrogant and implies that everyone who chooses otherwise is not reasoning. The reality is that after the end of my last marriage, I don’t think I can possibly ever be comfortable with relying financially on the other person.
I stayed two years too long in my marriage because I didn’t have a job that was even remotely capable of supporting me and two children and I’m pretty terrified of ever being that trapped again. Even when I’m back to full time employment, I’m going to be pretty unhappy that our margin is so thin. My ideal financial circumstances would mean that I could kick him out at a moment’s notice, not because I suspect I will want to, just because not having the ability to spells trouble in my mind.
So anyhow, my reasoning is just as automatic as that of women who are avoiding abusive jobs, I just tend to think that an abusive job is easier to fix or replace than an abusive husband who holds the financial upper-hand.
Hi Megan, yes that’s the prevailing assumption, but some dads like this one also want to be around and don’t like the big so-called choices we have to make. Ditched Barrister as a career option about 3 weeks after my Bear was born.
I think the issues are not only presumptions about which gender stays home etc, but also tightly held views about whether it is reasonable and even admirable to work 6-7 day weeks because you are IN A POSITION OF IMPORTANCE. Do we really accept that we are better off because our political leaders spend all their time chasing the media cycle and less of it with their children? Should we lie down and accept that if we want to work less than those sort of days we have no right to aspire to senior management?
Have job sharing and delegation made so little real impact?
The other issue I’d suggest you to take into account is the role female roles can play in the male expectations above. I know such roles are not likely to be acted out by the kind of writers on this thread, but out in the general mix probably the strongest pressure single men feel after about the age of 24 is the pressure to earn and have status.
Thankfully I married a woman who is smarter and higher flying than me so I generally don’t get such stress.
PS Blue Milk congrats and good luck with the PHD.
PPS we have an EXCELLENT community run childcare centre for Bear if you feel like a move to Northern Melbourne.
Interesting post, very topical for me. I am struck by how easily my (female) partner and I moved into a traditional style family model after having kids. I’m home full time, she’s out of the house full-time, working and studying. I feel so mainstream, all of a sudden. The main reasons we did it this way are a) I’m breastfeeding; b) she’s doing a doctorate and we want her to finish it and c) as a lesbian couple, I get the single parents pension so between us we scrape together pretty much one full time income. So the decision was pretty clear.
We plan on both working part time once L has finished her study – we’ll see how we go. Luckily I was self employed, so I’m pretty sure I’ll want to re-employ me when I’m ready to return. I was surprised by disinterested I have been in work – I have completely not missed it at all this year. I’m also surprised by how EASY it is when you have your family life arranged this way. Family life is hard and complicated and messy – the flexibility of not working at all seems essential! I really have a new respect for working mothers – I never realised how difficult their lives were outside of work!
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