I
always assumed I would return to my job at Drexel Burnham Lambert after
maternity leave. Three years into a promising investment banking career, I
couldn’t imagine a better way to spend each day. There was fast-paced
excitement, big stakes, challenging work, and a close-knit working
team—everything I hoped for in a career when I started business school.
But before I could go back, Drexel collapsed and I was out of work, with a
new baby and a serious case of mixed feelings. I loved my firstborn son and was
applying my customary intensity to becoming a good mother. At the same time, I
wasn’t sure I was ready to relinquish my self-image as a career woman. Back in
1990, no one in my female peer group had even been pregnant, let alone left work
to stay home with a child. While the same friends and business colleagues who
had marveled at my pregnancy now stared curiously at our newborn baby, a part of
me longed to be back with them in their high-paying, high-status positions.
(Continued below ...)
As the first year of motherhood passed, I slowly adjusted to my new role. I
gradually stopped defining myself in terms of career—or the lack of one. By the
time my second child was born seventeen months later, I had thrown myself into
motherhood with enthusiasm, and no apologies to myself or anyone else. As any
mother knows, there are highs and lows. But I loved it and derived profound
satisfaction from providing a caring and enriching environment for my children,
including our third and fourth, who arrived within the next four years.
No longer feeling the tug of the workforce, I began to volunteer at our
children’s school. For the next five years, I poured my energy into making their
school the best it could be, serving first as treasurer, then co-president of
the school PTO, enlisting scores of talented new volunteers, securing a major
technology grant, and leading our school’s fight in a contentious citywide
redistricting campaign. But as interesting and rewarding as I found these
pursuits, there also seemed to be a never-ending pile of laundry, dishes,
doctor’s appointments, and the like at home. Gradually, troubling questions
started to gnaw at me: Why, despite my education and experience, was I in the
same place as women of a generation before me—the traditional
volunteer/housewife?
—Carol
The Floundering Period
Like Carol, some of you may go through a floundering period during which you
feel vaguely dissatisfied with your life, but aren’t quite sure what to do about
it. You’re still deeply enmeshed in your children’s routines—getting them up and
out in the morning, transporting them to after-school activities later in the
day—and in community volunteer projects, especially school-related ones, but you
aren’t getting the same satisfaction out of them as you once did. Floundering
can manifest itself in resentment, anger, desperation, or a combination of these
emotions. If it’s misplaced, it can be directed at your spouse or kids, but in
truth it represents discontent with how you perceive yourself after a number of
years at home. Once your children become more independent, you may start to
think of yourself as a dependent. This may feel especially awkward to those of
you who earned substantial incomes in your former careers. Over time, you may
begin to look at your husband’s income as your husband’s money. You may begin to
feel guilty about buying things that are splurges just for you (even if you can
afford such a purchase). Melissa, a highly accomplished former management
consultant, confided: “I would never spend my husband’s hard-earned money on
anything purely for my own benefit if I didn’t perceive it as absolutely
crucial.”
In addition to unwelcome feelings of dependence, you may experience a sense
of worthlessness. Once your children enter grade school, you’re no longer
critical to their lives on an hourly basis. You still shuttle them to
activities, supervise their homework, monitor their free time, and help them
solve their childhood or adolescent traumas. Throw in the shopping, the cooking,
the housework, and the almost mandatory school-related volunteer work, and
you’re quite busy. But once the kids are out of the house, motherhood feels less
like a full-time job and more like underemployment. And if you had a challenging
career before, you may suffer from this syndrome all the more acutely.
Let’s start at the beginning. Remember when you first quit work to stay at
home with your children? Remember that long, painful adjustment period of
feeling like a nobody because your self-image was so tied up in who you were as
a career woman? In the introduction to The Price of Motherhood, Pulitzer Prize
nominee Ann Crittenden poignantly captured this sense of lost identity when she
related: “A few years after I had resigned from The New York Times in order to
have more time for my infant son, I ran into someone who asked, ‘Didn’t you used
to be Ann Crittenden?’?”1
For Judy, a corporate lawyer, the transition was particularly difficult.
“Making the decision to stop working was really traumatic for me. I felt like I
was jumping off the edge of the world. I had worked really hard for years, had
become a partner with a beautiful corner office, and I’m giving this up? We have
all these opportunities, but we also have children.”
As emotionally difficult as that transition from work to home might have
been, you got over it. You channeled all the energy and talent that had made you
successful at work into being the best mother you could be. And most importantly
(most of the time), you loved it! Or maybe, like Janice, a former social worker,
you didn’t: “I feel like all I do is move kids and things from one place to
another. That is, when I’m not filling out forms.” Shelly, a physician,
commented: “When I was working, I was really there for my patients intensely and
could be calm 95 percent of the time. But home wasn’t the same. I felt more out
of control at home. It was tougher to be at home.”
Regardless of your reaction to those euphoric/exhausting first few years of
at-home motherhood, things shifted when your oldest child started school and you
charged into the PTO volunteer arena, finding all sorts of ways to let your
professional knowledge seep into the classroom.
Maybe you’ve only been out for a year or two, or maybe you thought you’d only
be out for a year or two, but in the wonderful tangle of child rearing, year
stretched into year, and suddenly you woke up one morning, like Rip Van Winkle,
five or ten years later, only then realizing how much time had passed. In any
case, suddenly, for the first time in recent memory, you confront a gaping hole
on the fridge calendar— those hours from eight thirty to three when your
youngest child spends a full day at school. Even if you still have a toddler at
home, you can see it coming—the day when that time will be yours and you are
ready to make yourself the priority.
But what does this mean? Should you dust off your old loom sitting in the
basement and sign up for a weaving class? Should you join a women’s volleyball
league to reclaim your college jock status? What about the piano lessons you
always wanted to take, but never did? Or should you become a professional
volunteer, contributing your time and energy to worthy causes on an unpaid
basis? Some of you realize that you would only be satisfied with one thing: a
return to the paid workforce. So you begin to contemplate a relaunch of your
career.
Pros and Cons of a Relaunch
This is no simple decision. Unlike the choice to pursue nonwork passions, the
decision to return to work has the distinction of not being completely on your
own terms. It involves an obligation to others beyond your family and you. The
last thing you want to do is take on a professional commitment and not deliver.
Therefore, make sure you decide whether or not to return to work not by default,
but after exhausting all other ways you may want to spend your time.
On the other hand, returning to work has the potential to satisfy so many of
your long-suppressed desires. It allows you to contribute to the family income
and be recognized for doing so, interact with adults on intellectual issues,
focus on challenging problems for extended periods, and experience the unique
sense of accomplishment that comes from finishing a complex project and getting
paid for it.
Reasons Behind Your Uncertainty About Returning
Your Husband’s Attitude and Work Situation
Before pursuing paid work, you have to consider one of the other major
passions in your life, your husband (if you have one). Where is he in his
career, and can he be the point person for family-related issues during some
predetermined ramp-up period you may require once you start a job? What type of
job does he have? If he controls his hours, then taking a job with
unpredictability or heavy travel becomes more of a possibility for you. However,
if he has a job with a crazy schedule or a huge amount of travel, it will be
difficult for you to take a position with similar characteristics.
Another relevant factor is how he handles his own job emotionally. Is he
under a lot of job stress? Is he new to his current job or has he held it for a
number of years? Is he happy with his situation or will he be looking for a
change soon? The more stable his career, the easier it may be for him to help at
home.
What kind of money is he earning? If he’s making enough to support all of you
in style for the foreseeable future, he may legitimately wonder why you see the
need to earn money yourself. However, if your income will materially improve
your lifestyle, either now or in retirement, he will probably be more gung-ho.
Finally, is he open to the prospect of taking on more domestic
responsibilities? Is he threatened by it? Does he think he can’t handle it in
addition to his workload, or has he become so accustomed to your doing
everything at home that he dreads the thought of its being any other way? Even
those husbands favorably disposed to the notion of picking up more child- and
home-related responsibilities are shocked by the amount of time involved.
We mention husbands here because their employment status and their feelings
about your going back to work will have a fundamental impact on your thinking.
Nevertheless, if your husband is the only one holding you back, don’t
necessarily let him stand in your way. You’ll have to take his schedule and
attitude into consideration, but in most cases, if you’re thoughtful, committed,
and persistent, you can relaunch in a way that strengthens, rather than
threatens, your marriage.
Continued....
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