How to Have Kids and a Career in the Same Lifetime

I don’t love my job. Isn’t that the plight of most Americans? The problem is, my job is being a stay-at-home mom. I am supposed to LOVE that. It is supposed to be the best job in the world, isn’t it? Sometimes I sit on the couch late at night and while I’m half-paying attention to a movie I’ve already seen, I think about why it is that I’m not ecstatically happy being a stay-at-home mom after five years in this position.

As I was walking my dog Friedrich around the neighborhood this morning, it occurred to me that the reason I am struggling so much is because of GUILT. I am SUPPOSED to LOVE being a stay-at-home mom. I am SUPPOSED to LIVE for my child’s happiness — eat, sleep and breathe activities that keep my daughter’s life challenging and fulfilling. Isn’t that what other stay-at-home moms do? All the ones I know are happy taking their kids to puppet shows at the library. They are happy baking cookies, taking their kids to soccer practice, and making dinner for their husbands. I know they are happy — they post it all over Facebook.

I have come to realize over the last few years that I am in the minority. I do not want to work full-time in an office and send my kid to daycare 50 hours a week. (Why have kids, really?) But, I also don’t want to have only conversations with five-year-olds and be mentally un-stimulated for days on end. I want the BALANCE of both worlds. I want to be at home when I need to be — when my baby is sick, or has a special event at school. I want to work and earn money and be in control of my own financial destiny. I want to show my daughter that women can do anything — like balancing a career while simultaneously raising well-adjusted, thriving children. Most of all, I want my three college degrees to stop collecting dust.

Along with her sisters, a very dear friend of mine was raised predominantly by her mom, while her dad supported the family with his very successful career. All three daughters had the privilege of college educations and all three of them earned master’s degrees. While my friend was working on her master’s, her mom enrolled in college. After all those years of raising children and cooking delicious dinners for her husband and taking care of wounded animals (I remember that part vividly), my friend’s mom courageously went to college, earned her bachelor’s degree, then her master’s, and went on to become a very successful and well-respected teacher.

I was amazed, really. This loving, selfless woman who had spent more than thirty years of her life raising a family, had dreams of her own. Had she always wanted to be a teacher? Did she know what her passion was even before her oldest daughter was born? Did she think about it after her third baby came into the world ten years later? Did she say to herself over piles of laundry, “In 18 more years I can pursue my dreams of becoming a teacher”?

Everything I remember about my friend’s mom is that she always seemed happy and willing to do anything for her kids and their friends. She was even a Brownie troop leader for the neighborhood. She embraced her life as a stay-at-home mother of three. She put her career dreams on hold, raised a wonderful family, and finally picked up in her fifties where she had left off in her early twenties.

So, my dear stay-at-home mom friends, it appears that we CAN have it all, just not simultaneously. And, the reality is that it could quite possibly take thirty years before we have enough time to focus on ourselves. Wow. I don’t even have enough patience to wait for my daughter to pick out what shoes she is going to wear each day.

Get the popcorn and settle in. The all-night movie marathon just started.