Dear Bel, I have been both a working and a full-time mum (which I am now) since I started producing children eight years ago and I appreciate how lucky I have been to have had a choice. I love spending time with my children but miss the stimulation of work and realise (at 38) that I need to start building a new career to keep up my self-esteem as my kids get older (I don’t want to go back to the masculine commercial world I was in before). I need to make a long-term decision about my future in the next few months and am finding it difficult. I have the chance to do a doctorate at university, leading to a new, more fulfilling, career which, in the long term, will be great for me and better financially for the family. It will, however, mean working full time and spending a significant amount of my free time studying for three years. I will see much less of my children during this period. When I am qualified, however, I would be able to work family-friendly hours.
I love my children so much, and do not regret the time I have spent picking them up from school, taking them to after-school activities, wiping bottoms etc, and the prospect of handing this over to a nanny does not make me feel good. I also find the thought of a careerless middle age very depressing. My husband, to whom I am very happily married, works long hours and is the breadwinner at present and would have to continue to do this while I study. I feel confident that he will be supportive of any decision I make.
I suppose my question to you is: should I sacrifice the short term with my children for a happier long term for myself? Am I being selfish even considering this? Should I live life for now or for the future? Do you have a theory on finding the balance between family and intellectual life?
Annette
I don’t go in for theories, and the older I become the more repelled I am by ideas that force human beings into straitjackets — whether based on notions of ideology, gender or religion. So no — I don’t have one on finding the elusive career-children balance that preoccupies so many women and yet seems to pass the majority of married men by. I’ve always disliked knee-jerk approaches to the issue, which on the one hand called for 24-hour nurseries without worrying about the effects on children, and on the other attempted to shoehorn women into a version of the Nazi mantra “children, kitchen and church”, cranking up their guilt if they whispered “no”.
The recent death of Betty Friedan reminded me of how excited I felt to read The Feminine Mystique in 1971, eight years after she revealed to the world that a vast number of quiet American women were in fact the original desperate housewives. Friedan offered inspiring encouragement to all women to continue their education and develop core values that would benefit both their families and society. It wasn’t that she did not value the rearing of children as a “meaningful pursuit”; but she took the line expressed by Rebecca West years earlier: “One does not doubt that a woman ought to bend over the cradle; she would insist on doing so under any social arrangements. But one wonders whether it is not blasphemous for a woman to lay her strength on the ironing board, and burn her brightness to ashes on the kitchen range.”
Once I had children I saw the flaw in all this enlightened thought. No amount of feminist theory or of legislation can eliminate the fact that domesticity is equated with child-rearing for the majority of women, since you can ignore the ironing, but not the baby. It is the infant’s needy wail that echoes through the question posed by you and your friends: how can I love my children as they deserve without sacrificing so much of myself? And how can I fulfil myself without sacrificing my children?
The blunt answer to both questions — overstated as they are — is “You can’t”.
The mother who loves staying at home is fortunate not to be placed on the rack you are on; similarly, the career woman who employs nannies 24/7 is liberated by the knowledge that she has no wish whatsoever to pick the children up after school. But let nobody try to convince me that both sides live without any pangs of longing for the opposite. Guilt and sacrifice seem to go with the job description, and I often find myself trying to reassure working mothers (sometimes the family breadwinner, as 25 per cent of women now are) that it is OK to go on muddling through as best you can, and beating yourself up doesn’t make you a better mum.
Therefore my most important piece of advice to you is to realise what a wonderful mother you are being: first because of what you have already given those children; second because this level of angst shows just how much you care; and third, because your realisation that you don’t want your old career but wish to forge a new family-friendly one indicates the extent to which having children has transformed you. Let your self-esteem start right here. I wish more women would allow themselves full credit for what they do achieve, no matter how painful they find the juggling of life decisions.
I don’t think it is selfish to look ahead in the full knowledge that when the children have left home, the days will seem long and empty indeed if you have not kept up some activity to call your own — whether teaching or working in an Oxfam shop. You have to live life for now, but also be aware that no amount of well-wiped bottoms will guarantee you respect and attention when those same fundaments belong to self-absorbed teenagers, and therefore planning for your own future is sensible. Beyond worldly ambition, this is another version of that cultivation of the inner self I sometimes mention here.
I’m wondering why you have to complete the doctorate in three years. Part-time work and part-time study are pragmatic solutions for many women. Because you don’t tell me your field I can’t know if this would be possible, and the ages of your children must also have a bearing on the issue. It seems to me that given the devotion you display you will not be happy taking yourself away to do that doctorate until they are all at full-time school, and so if that means delaying it for one more year then I would make that decision. I’ve no doubt you should embark on this study that will lead to good things for you all, but postponing it for a short time may ease the transition.
If that isn’t possible then I think you should remind yourself that children who have a good live-in nanny will thrive, and that (intellectually fulfilled) you will find the energy to study late at night, so that you free up quality time before bed and at the weekends. You can do this. I’d also be sure to add new things to family life at the same time as you start — by which I mean a pet, or a construct like “Saturday craft club” (where you make things with them) — so that what you perceive now as loss (of your constant presence) will be mitigated by exciting gains. And long hours or not, your husband must surely try to adapt his routine to the family’s needs, even if that means some sacrifice on his part. Time for a family conference?
The important thing to realise is that you will be just as loving a mother when sitting in a library. Your essence will not change — nor will the best of nannies replace you in your children’s hearts. You will stress about an essay when taking time to go to a school play, but you will feel soppy during the play and the essay will get written — because that’s how it always is. If you can stop seeing life in terms of oppositions you will discover that sacrifice and gain are two sides of the same coin.
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