"My mother is perfect.": My Fears & Anxieties About Being a Working Mom

My mother is perfect. I know everyone says that about his or her mom, but mine actually is and everyone else is mistaken.  She is a woman who has worked a full time job my entire life and taken care of everything in and around our house. For years, she got me to school on time and got herself to work on time. She was home in the evening to cook me dinner, help with my homework, do everyone's laundry, all the dishes, and she even used her Saturdays to cut the grass.

Even when I was younger I would look at this woman with amazement. From five in the morning when she woke to up to 9:30 at night when she would put me to bed, she never stopped moving. Her entire day was booked and to this day I have no idea how she does it.

In reflecting on my own mom's success at being a working mother, I can't help but wonder about my own future. While she's always seemed fulfilled with her work and her role as a mom, my mother is perpetually exhausted. As a woman who wants both children and a successful career, I am admittedly intimidated at the prospect of juggling the caliber career I hope to have and the size of the family I want to build.

The career I'm pursuing is going to be demanding, both in terms of time and energy. I am pursuing a degree in Public Relations and hope to work for a non-profit organization. This is a career path with moderate financial security and will be much more time consuming than the eight-to-five cubicle jobs my mother has always worked. I worry because, not only do I want to have more children than she did, but my job will no doubt have to be a significant part of my life if I want to be successful.

Yet, at the same time, I can't imagine not having a big family. Both of my parents came from big households of six or seven kids and while I only have one younger sibling, I've always wanted a big family like my parents grew up with. I just genuinely don't know how that's going to work with my career.

The content of this course has also lead me to ponder the possibility that I could have a child who is unhealthy or disabled, a challenge my mother, gratefully, didn't have to address. This issue is discussed in great length by Jane Taylor McDonnell in "On Being the 'Bad' Mother of an Autistic Child." No matter the number of children I have, one thing that would certainly change the way I approach my career would be having a child with Autism or another mental disability. McDonnell discusses the challenges of balancing her research and work with raising a child with Autism. As she points out, she faces much criticism from other people in her son's life, including a teacher who asked how many hours she spent working each week and not spending time with her son. Working mothers of autistic children face obstacles that I do not know I could handle. Raising a healthy child is difficult enough. The prospect of raising one who needs even more of my attention and still striving for the same career I would if they were healthy is unrealistic for me.

In my pondering of what kind of mother I would be, I worry a lot about the time, money, and energy I will need to have the family I want and how my career will affect my ability to do that.

Realistically speaking, I believe that I will strive to be the kind of parent described by Catherine Connors in "In Defense of the Selfish Parent." She asserts that it is not always necessary or good for a parent to wholeheartedly put their children's needs ahead of their own. She writes, "I cannot be a mother without being myself. I will not be myself if I sacrifice myself entirely on the altar of motherhood." She admits that there are tradeoffs when it comes to making your children as happy as possible. I, to cite an example that Connors also uses, want to live in a larger city, and in fact will probably have to for my career. While my children may be happier in the long run living in a small town or in the suburbs, my career and myself as a person would flounder there. As Connors points out, it is my duty as a parent to create a life for my children that allows them to achieve reasonable happiness and the key to happy children is happy, fulfilled parents.

I believe It is important for each parent to remain their own individual self, not just for them, but for the better of the children as well. How effective of a parent can you really be if internally you are lacking
in fulfillment. I want to be someone my children can look up to; someone successful. I want to work because I want to give them a future and because I want to give myself a purpose outside of my family.

- Audrey Imes