I’m not a mom, but I can speak to this issue from the other side. I was raised by a single mother who, for most of my childhood, worked two jobs. At one point she was working two jobs while going to nursing school. She felt terribly guilty about it at the time even though it was absolutely essential to our survival as a family. She’s told me about the many times I asked her the same question and how it broke her heart. But the thing is, I barely remember the hours at day care, the babysitters, or the time I spent home alone. What I do remember, and quite vividly, are the special days when she would take me out of school so we could spend the day together. Saturdays when I would watch her clean the house while singing to Patsy Cline. Summer afternoons at the pool where we’d play my favorite game, “Shark.” And so many more. As a college student, I became a hospice volunteer in part to be able to accompany her on her second job as an on-call hospice nurse. Seeing her at work and witnessing how amazing she was with her patients and their families gave me a whole new appreciation for her as a nurse, as a mother, and as a human being. I continue to be inspired by her example every day.

I think the quality of the time you spend with your children is more valuable than the number of hours. Your kids may complain now, but what they’ll remember in ten years is the time they did get to spend with you. And I’m certain they’ll be inspired and proud of your professional achievements.

Cheers to you, Katie, and to all the working mamas out there!

Both my husband and I work (me – three days a week). Our kids are 15-13 and 4. The kicker is my hubby works in another town – 5.5 hours away. He leaves on Monday and comes home on Friday — NOT the ideal situation, but we can’t sell our house (we’ve been trying for 18 months). The 4 year old (girl) was wondering why daddy had to work so much. Response: to pay the bills. “What are bills?” Hubby response “things like food, clothing and lights” … remember … 4 years old. She is now the light police … “If you turn off the lights, Daddy won’t have to work as much!” Wasn’t our intention … but it’s kinda funny. On the serious side … the olders do understand that it’s a tough job market out there – and mom and dad need to work. Mom power!!!

Katie,

This is interesting timing because my husband and I are thinking of starting a family next year. I currently work full-time and always thought I’d want to stay at home because that’s what my mom did and I loved having her home all the time. At the same time when I think back to my childhood I remember the few times I stayed with friends of my family (neighbors) and how much I loved those times because they were so few and far between.

Currently I work in childcare and love my job. As we think about starting a family I am torn on whether or not I want to continue working or stay at home. I’m hoping to have the option (my husband brings in the majority of our income and mine is mostly just extra) I think it’ll be hard to change our lifestyle which we’ll have to without my “extra” income especially with the added cost of a child. It may end up I “have” to work but honestly right now I don’t know what I want to do. I think I’m leaning toward working because I would be able to have my child with me at work. I also know the benefits of childcare and wouldn’t want my child to miss these benefits. Selfishly I would also love to continue caring for other children in addition to my own. (without sounding too conceited, I know how great I am at my job.) Again, I know my feelings may change once I have my own child. I’ve never done it before so I don’t know how I’ll be. I’m glad you posted this because I’m looking forward to the responses as well.

I was a single mom with no support so I had to work, however, I always told my daughter that even if I didn’t have to work I would want to work because I thought that being with other adults helped to make me a better mom. I was more patient, had more to talk about with her and it kept me a well rounded person. It also taught her a work ethic that she has today. I did work for understanding doctors who allowed me to leave work if needed to attend a concert or school play so perhaps I had it easy in that regard. If I had it to do over again, with a two parent house, I would still choose to work – I would want to and would also have to m(for my sanity)

It seems to me the lesson in all this is that to be able to stay at home with your kids or to be able to work a job you love are both luxuries. If you are able to do one of those two things, you are very, very fortunate. The average mother likely enjoys neither of those luxuries.

Did you ever read the book “The Second Shift” by Arlie Hochschild? (In all your free time :)…) It might be a bit outdated, but much of it is still very, very relevant. Your daughter might even enjoy it. I read it for the first time as a teen and it made a big impression on me. (Although I was still a year or two older than your daughter.)

As a SAHM with 10 years of professional work under my belt before I had my children, I can unreservedly say I VASTLY prefer staying home full-time with them rather than work OTH. I work online in the evenings (after bedtime), so I do bring in a little extra money, but it doesn’t take away from the time I spend with my children. Part of the reason for this is that after 10 years, I was completely burned out and hating every minute of my job. That made it SO EASY to leave! If I had been working at a job I loved, perhaps the decision would have been harder. Also, since we had always planned for me to stay home, my husband made sure his career progressed in such a way that my income would not be missed much.

The position we’ve taken is that Daddy works AND Mommy works, they can just SEE the work Mommy does, while Daddy goes away to do his work. I have always referred to the houseowrk I do during the day as “my work” and they refer to it that way, as well.

I also think that staying home with them and teaching them the very real work that goes into running a household is valuable. It is essential for them to learn that laundry doesn’t do itself and clearn dishes don’t magically appear in the cabinets. We had a housekeeper when I was a child, so I had to learn from square one about how to keep a household running smoothly — but my kids will have that part learned by junior high!

One the truly intensive years of parenting are behind us, I will probably go back to work full-time (and maybe hire that housekeeper!) but I intend to keep the same hours as they do, so I am there when they get home from school — ideally, until they graduate.

But you know what they say … people plan, God laughs!

I work in part to pay the bills but in greater part because I love my work and I want to work.

So I explain it to him (but he’s five) like this: Mummy and Daddy both work to make money so we can have a house and a car. We also work because we like to fix computers/write words. But the ONE thing I HATE about working is having to be apart during the weekdays.

In truth, working has given me a few great gifts as a parent. One is that I have been fortunate to expand my son’s world to include some gifted teachers/caregivers (Montessori daycare) and to be a part of that village and community. Two, my son gets to see my delight in him every day when I pick him up…when I was at home I was burnt out and looking for an escape -some- of the time, towards the end, and I think he sensed that some.

I’m a SAHM now, but I taught for 10 years before getting married. I loved my job like crazy. Being with middle school kids all day was difficult but SO MUCH FUN! Now that I’m home, I’m never, ever bored, but I’m lonely. My daughter (3) has recently started asking me why I don’t work, and I keep telling her that different things work for different families. I tell her that we’re very lucky that I get to stay home with her and her brother (2) while their dad is at work. I don’t feel defensive when my kids ask about it, but I about flip my lid when other adults ask me when I’m going back to work. Because, you know, being at home all day with a 2 and 3 year old is easy as pie. ;)

Different things work for different families. But I think you could honestly tell your kids, Katie, that you work to pay the bills, and you work because it is professionally and personally fulfilling–you like it. Even if you didn’t have your full time out of the home job, you’d still be writing, I’d imagine. It is part of the fabric of who you are. It is okay to have a job and like it, AND be a mom.

I work part time, cobbling together several freelance gigs. It is pretty tough and not very lucrative. But I feel it is really important to keep some professional activity. I stopped working full time three years ago when we moved so my husband could take a better job. And while I’m glad that I can have more flexibility to be with my son, I worry very much about being able to get back into the workforce, and having the security a job brings. My husband could get hit by a bus, or become disabled, and not be able to work. I want to be able to provide for my family as much as he does. And I also want to be able to support myself and my kids on my own if that situation arises. You just never know.

And, I just like it. I like to be able to use my brain beyond trying to figure out how to remove this stain, figure out grocery lists, and fit all those toys into the toybox. Not that that work is not important–there is just other work I’d rather be doing.

I am sure your kids are proud of the work you do. But kids can be selfish, too–I think you’re daughter’s comment was more a dig to get under your skin than anything else. I think if she is fortunate enough to find a career that she enjoys she will want to balance family and professional work rather than try to give one up for the other.

This is timely for me, just last night I was discussing this with my 7 yr old. I’m lucky in that most of my kids’ friends’ moms also work, so working moms are the norm around us. But our difficulty is that we don’t have family to help us, like many of his friends. They have grandmothers to stay with on school holidays or snow days. They have aunts who are SAHMs to keep them over the summer. But my kids have to be in camp all summer, and our summer vacations are minimal because I’ve used all of my vacation time to stay home on holidays and snow days. My son didn’t understand why our summer vacation was really just a long weekend, when many of his friends enjoyed two-week long vacations.

But on the flip side, I hope years from both of my kids will have learned one of those big picture lessons…about life being many shades of grey….about life not being just about them…about making hard choices and sacrifice. Or at least that’s what I tell myself to ease my guilt!

Just last night I received a rejection letter for a job I recently interviewed for. The job would have given my career a big jump and also raised my income significantly and since my husband is trying to finish his school, the extra income would have relieved a lot of pressure on us BUT the job would be an additional 30 miles away making my commute a total of 1.5 hrs each way. In my heart I was hoping for that rejection letter. It is hard enough not being able to be at my children’s beck and call 100%, but this new job would really take me out of their lives and that is very difficult when one is still only a 2 year old and the other is 8 with a learning disability that requires lots of patience, love, and time. I’ve done both stay at home and work and they are both difficult and rewarding. My 8 year old understands that we try our best to have a healthy balance and we make the effort to make it about the quality time spent together and not the quantity.
My dad was a long haul truck driver and still is and i can honestly say that I really appreciate the quality of the time we spent together even if the quantity was scarce.

@Alexicographer: “could you achieve the same end with greater flexibility using term life insurance?”

Of course not. That is, unless you know of term life insurance policies that will pay off if my husband or I becomes permanently disabled, possibly even to the point of having to spend the rest of his/my life in a nursing home; Maybe you know of term life insurance policies that pay off if we lose our jobs. Maybe you know of term life insurance policies that will pay off if one spouse divorces the other. Maybe you know of insurance companies that are dying to issue a term life insurance policy to a man who is a 5-year cancer survivor. (Fortunately, my husband had the foresight to get term life insurance before that happened – but now we have two children instead of one, and the option of increasing the amount is out). From a pure, cold, financial standpoint, the death of a spouse is not necessarily the biggest possible blow.

I was single when I adopted my daughters. I returned to work 2 months after the arrival at each-one at 9 weeks, and one at 3 years. After I got married, I continued to work full time-my partner was in Law School and then doing the lowest-paying kind of lawyer work there is, representing dependent and neglected children in Juvenile Court. We have always needed the money. That said, I would still choose to work, although maybe not full time. The adult interaction gives me the balance I need. Now my kids are grown-I just walked in to the family room where they are hanging out together on winter break from college and graduate school and asked them, “Hey-did y’all feel neglected because I worked when you were little?” They both laughed.

One of the most valuable things growing up that my parents “let” me do was help pay the bills. I was able to write the checks (they signed of course), seal, stamp etc. Being able to see your parents checking account balance answers many of the questions.

Since I was an older mom when I had children I am able to stay home for a time. I do plan on going bacl to work on some scale once my children are in school full time.

@Clisby, thanks for your reply. I can’t really read its tone but if you thought I was trying to pick a fight, I wasn’t: it was a serious question as well as one intended to recognize (in a larger discussion) that different people find different approaches to ensuring their (relative) security given that the future is unknown.

It did, of course, occur to me that either or both of you might be uninsurable. My husband’s not (uninsurable), but he’s expensive to insure (approaching his 6th decade and a smoker) and our coverage on him is modest (but he’s out of the paid workforce and his pension option is 100% survivorship, so that’s an overstatement), so the idea’s not entirely foreign to me, neither is the potential value of long-term care insurance, if available (but we don’t have it). I read somewhere on the internet (so it must be true) that there are now firms offering divorce insurance, but know nothing more about it.

Certainly, life’s uncertain and it sounds like yours may have held more bad experiences and/or risks than perhaps others posting here. I’m with you, honestly, on the both-able-to-support-ourselves-independently thing, but I also recognize that life’s uncertainty can as easily be presented as an argument for living more “in the moment” which for some (not me) would mean wanting not to be in the paid workforce…

Like Katie, I work at a reasonably senior level in the digital arena although for a major worldwide manufacturer in the ‘mess cleaning’ industry ;)
I work because for many years I had no option, as a single mother I had to supply for my children or rely on the welfare system having no support from their father. The latter simply wasn’t an option; whilst I could work, I would.
My children attended, and still do to a degree, high quality childcare which I’m lucky enough to access. However, I wish vehemently on numerous occasions when I can’t be there for a daytime school production, or when they want to have friends over straight after school that I could just be at home.

The reality is though, I’m a better mother for being a strong woman. My children are well aware of my career and will proudly tell all concerned that I was involved in the media campaign for my company when it shows on TV. I give them my absolute attention whenever I’m home and they benefit from opportunities that we simply can’t afford if I didn’t have the job I do.
However, more than that, I know myself and I’m an ambitious, target driven woman who would struggle to feel fulfilled during the hours they are at school. That’s not to say I’m not envious of those who do, there is a part of me who would love to be that way. But I’m not her and to try and make my life fit a mould thats not my own wouldn’t benefit my boys. I know that.
So it turns out that I’m a woman who has fought like a tiger momma for everything they’ve ever had and always will. I’ve done the 80 hour work stint and still managed to sew (albeit messily) an Aztec costume for the Year 5 assembly. I’m capable, resiliant and have a strong work ethic and if the only things my children take from my parenting is those three elements, then I don’t believe I can have done badly.

Do I feel guilty though? Of course..

I stayed home with my first for 1.5 years, then took a full-time job. It was a very difficult transition, and my daughter was understandably upset about me going back to work, which she expressed in many different ways. However, I have a doctorate, and always knew that I would be utilizing my degree even after having kids. Then, I landed the holy-grail of jobs, which is work I enjoy that provides meaning, and is also very well paid with top of the line benefits. If I stay with the company for 15 years, I will have free health insurance for myself and my husband for life. Needless to say, I’m keeping the job. My kids are too young right now to explain to them exactly why I work (4 years, and 4 months). But, when they are old enough, I will tell them that I have a very secure job that provides us with a house and health insurance, and also has enough flexibility that I am able to be at every well doctor visit, every scheduled dental visit, and any special event as long as there’s some advance planning.

Not working was never a real choice, so we’ve always been direct about working with our kids (15 and 12) and presented it as a standard of living. Work allows us to have a nice home, vacations, health coverage and the money for the extra’s that make life a little more comfortable. It was only when I branched out into some community service that my daughter started to ask why I did that and when I would be home with her.
She was fine with work, as it was always understood that work is necessary and helps support our family, but the extra is time away from her that shedoesn’t like. We discussed this, at length, how giving back to the community is important, being involved in one’s town/school district helps make it better for everyone. And the most important is that if you feel something is important enough, and you have ideas that can make it better/change it for the good, you get involved and give of yourself and time to do so. And then you make priority time with your kids so they feel they get just as much quality time as you give elsewhere.