Making it Work as a Working Mom

Starting when I was four years old, my aunt Shannon asked me repeatedly what I wanted to be when I grew up. Each time I would answer, "A mommy!" much to her chagrin. "No!" she responded, "you have to be more than that! You have to have a career!" Needless to say, I didn't listen long. As a teenager, I eschewed the very possibility of having a family. "No kids for me!" I vowed as I planned my future with one dog and a posh apartment in New York City. I married in my early twenties amid renewed conversations about my familial intentions, but my husband and I knew what we would do. We would have kids, as we had planned, and we would both work. Although I never spent a day in daycare, I knew childcare would be an integral part of my future as a parent. Then, of course, came the time when I was pregnant.

For nine months I found myself surrounded by surprising questions about whether or not I would stay home once my daughter was born. I say surprising because it wasn't until I moved to Texas and saw the true definition of the Bible Belt that I also saw how being a stay-at-home mom is not only not a rarity, but it is very much a career choice that women make for themselves with unexpected (for me) frequency. As I grew closer to delivery, my dear aunt returned to this conversation and half-jokingly wondered if she hadn't planted the seed of my determination never to be a stay-at-home mom. I can't say for sure what made me so determined, but determined I was.

After Ellison was born I found myself caught up in my love for my tiny little person, but I was still determined to go to work and still equally flabbergasted at how women could want to stay home (in much the same way other women are astounded by my preference to work). I wanted some time to be with her before returning to work, but standard maternity leave isn't really possible for instructors. Typically speaking, a professor/teaching fellow either takes the semester off or works the duration. Ellison turned six weeks old to the day on the same day the spring semester started, and off to work I went. For her first day in daycare, she was there for two hours. For the first hour I sat on the floor, held her, and cried. She slept through the whole thing. On the second day I had less time, so I cried the entire way to work. I did the same thing on the third day, the fourth day, and every day after that for the first three months my daughter spent in daycare. I cried, I worried, I wondered if I was making the right decision all the while knowing I did not want to be a stay-at-home mom.

It's funny when I reflect on what so many stay-at-home moms told me about what pushed their decision. They talked to me about missing the first smile, the first laugh, the first step. They talked about the possibility of her getting hurt or growing more attached to a teacher instead of me, and so much more. Yet none of this dissuaded me from returning to work. When Ellison was old enough to begin crying when we dropped her off, I, too, began crying again everyday I left her in the arms of another woman. But I still knew I wanted to work.

Today, Ellison is two years and two months old, and she is in preschool. I still work, and she still spends seven to eight hours of her day with other caregivers. I don't regret taking her to daycare and I don't regret choosing to work, but I understand better now than ever before what I really worry about missing. I didn't miss her first smile, laugh, or step (or, if I did miss these things, no one told me), but if I had, she would have done it again, and she would not have realized I missed such a momentous occasion. In the same way, I don't worry about her experiencing an extra cold this year because of the other children around her, and I don't fret over the time she tumbled in school while trying to play in the bathroom. At least, not anymore than I would have worried otherwise.

Instead, when people question me on the events I may miss because I am a working mom, I think about days like today. Today, my daughter was dressed and ready to go when she decided to grab her favorite book and say, "Mommy, we read this first. Then school." If you're reading this blog, you probably can't imagine her large blue eyes looking at me so matter-of-factly, and you definitely can't imagine the innocence in her small little voice as her head bobbed in agreement with her words. Yet these are the moments I worry about missing. How can I possibly tell this perfect little person that we can't read today because Mommy chooses to read to other people instead? What about yesterday when I went to prepare her breakfast and found my speed impeded by my thirty pound daughter who insisted, "I hold you!" while I cooked? These, I fear, are the moments I don't want to miss, and they are the moments I don't want to hurry through in an attempt to get to my out-of-the-home job.

When I first started working I was certain that those hours I spent crying after I dropped Ellison off were undoubtedly the hardest I would endure as a working mom. Needless to say, I was wrong. These hours are harder. These hours are also different because now I know what I'm missing. I still love my job and I would still rather work than stay home, but I have a better understanding of what it means now to leave my child with someone else and miss out on "the moments." I work fewer hours outside of my home now (one of my privileges as an instructor), but I also take comfort in the knowledge that I appreciate each and everyone of these moments because they are so few. I never tire of my daughter, and I never think her messy hands, runny nose, and ear-splitting screams are anything less than adorable. I treasure all of these things because, as her mom, that is also part of my job.

Which, of course, brings us back to when I was four years old. I said I didn't want a career, and I was wrong. When I was a teenager I said I would never have or want children, and I was wrong then, too. When I was pregnant I said I would never regret working, and for once, I was right. I don't regret working anymore than I regret the dissertation that isn't progressing as it should because today, just when it was time to rush out the door to spend hours reading Alice Childress, August Wilson, and the likes, well . . . today I sat down on the floor and read Dr. Seuss instead. And I don't regret that either.