Perspectives on Parenting: Why being a working mom is best for me

workingmomMotherhood comes with a host of choices to make about what is best for you and your family.  We at Alamo City Moms Blog have a variety of moms who want to embrace these choices instead of feeling guilty or judged for them!  So we are bringing you a new series: Perspective’s on Parenting.  Every month we will feature a “hot topic” of motherhood and the perspectives of two moms that made differing choices.  We are starting off with an ever popular and difficult decision: To stay at home or to work?

To see the other side of this perspective, being a stay-at-home mom, see Elizabeth’s post here.

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Five years ago, in the summer of 2009, I was beginning my second year of practice as a full time in-house attorney at a large nonprofit scientific research and development company here in San Antonio. I had spent the preceding 11 years working at big downtown law firms, doing commercial litigation and employment law. My daughters were three and five years old at the time. Eleanor had not started kindergarten yet, and Sadie was a toddler. My stepsons, Eric and Grant, were 10 and were with us every other week.

Eleanor & Sadie, August 2009
Eleanor & Sadie, August 2009

I wrote a lot of poetry that summer, with recurring themes centered on being a working mom, the difficulties of raising young children, the difficulties of being married, all tempered by my prevailing state of general unhappiness. It seems that mild depression can often stoke the poet’s creative fire, and while it hurts me to remember that my slightly younger self was unhappy during that time of my life, I love that I have little poetry remnants from that year to remind me who I was and how far I have come.

This piece probably comes closest to describing my feelings about being a working mother of young children at that time in my life:

7/13/09

I’m driving to work

remembering this dream

I had hours ago

about tiny white mice and green frogs

swimming in the lake of my childhood

when it hits me

this wave of melancholy

and real tears sting my eyes

It is Monday

Back at home

my husband is getting out of the shower

my daughters are dazed and bed-headed

and I’m driving away from them

The feeling of longing, of missing

starts at the peripheries

and slowly plunges inward

Then the guilt seeps in

ousting the longing, the missing

I press my foot firmly on the accelerator

and just keep driving.

Peering back, I’m struck by how my experience of being a working mom has changed over the years. My daughters are both away at summer camp as I write this post, so there are no dazed and bed-headed little girls to leave when I get in my car and drive to my office. I no longer feel the rhythmic waves of longing/missing/guilt that I once did. I have certainly missed them while they have been away at Camp for the past three weeks, but I feel so overwhelmingly positive about being able to provide the summer camp experience for them that the missing is almost negated. And were it not for the fact that I resolutely press my foot firmly on the accelerator five days a week, we would not be able to afford things like summer camp for our children. It’s all very circular.

Sadie & Eleanor, off to summer camp, June 2014.
Sadie & Eleanor, off to summer camp, June 2014.

Working motherhood is hard. And motherhood is hard work. But I wouldn’t trade the way I have done it for any other way. What is the saying that I love? If we threw everyone’s problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back. In spite of (or maybe because of?) the fact that I spent long hours away from my children when they were young, they are confident, intelligent, happy and healthy. I’m obviously biased, but I believe that one reason that they are engaging, genuine and likable young people is because my husband and I have had to rely on trusted nannies and babysitters over the years to help us raise them. They have learned things from these bright young women that I could not have necessarily taught them if I had been with them more, and they developed loving, lasting relationships with people outside our nuclear family. I also believe that I truly cherish the time I spend with my children because it comes in such intense, poetry-worthy bursts. I take a lot of pride in the fact that my daughter, Eleanor, when asked what she wants to be when she grows up, answers: “I want to be a lawyer who helps scientists like my mom!” My children know that the sky is the limit. Not because Ryan and I tell them so, but because we are demonstrating it to them every single day.

To all you working mamas who are in the trenches of balancing your career and raising young children, know this: your journey is dynamic and ever-changing. If you are unhappy and feeling the longing/missing/guilt, it gets better. Keep pressing your foot firmly on that accelerator.  Remember that there is so much good in what you are doing and the sacrifices you are making. One day soon, not long from now, you’ll look back in amazement at how far you’ve come and what remarkable young human beings you are raising every step of the way.

fam

 

Kelly
Kelly lives in Terrell Hills and is a full-time working mom of 4 in a never-a-dull-moment blended family. Her twin stepsons, Eric & Grant, are high school juniors. Her daughters, Eleanor and Sadie, are in junior high and elementary school. She and her husband, Ryan, are both attorneys. When she is not working and "air-traffic controlling" her busy brood, she and her family enjoy exploring San Antonio and the surrounding area.

4 COMMENTS

  1. I do work and sometimes it is hard being away from Baby Boy for so long, but knowing that I can afford things for us makes it what I need to do. I love the experience I get from my job and knowing that with this, I can provide more opportunities for us (not just money).
    Thank you for posting this. I needed this.

  2. This made me cry. 🙂
    Bravo, Kelly, for your words. I know you helped a whole lot of working moms today. Well done.

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