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Motherhood: Making Choices About Working

A good deal of research has been done on the options for working and childcare which can help you make an informed decision, but even with all the knowledge in the world, you still have to thread your way through a messy bunch of tradeoffs.

For instance, studies have found that mothers who work are healthier than mothers who do not.¹ Sounds simple, right? But behind that headline, there's a more complex truth. Research findings are almost always about the averages of groups.² Yet you are a person, not an average! If you read a statement like "mothers who work are healthier than those who do not," you might conclude, reasonably enough, that you will be healthier if you return to work. But the statement really means only that "the average mother who works is healthier than the average mother who does not." In fact, many mothers who do not work are healthier than many mothers who do. The crux is always individual: What's right for you and your family in your particular situation. Let's look at the details that have to be considered to come up with the answer.

The Benefits of Working
The many rewards of working start with the enjoyment and fulfillment you experience from the work itself. There could be the feeling that you are using an important capacity within yourself, like a technical or managerial talent. Working offers the satisfaction of accomplishing a specific ambition (e.g., to be a teacher), and some lines of work give you the sense that you are making a contribution to society beyond your family. Certain jobs or careers also have prestige or social status. Last and usually not least, there's the additional money a job brings. As Ann Crittenden has shown in her book The Price of Motherhood, our nation's laws and policies place economic burdens and risks on all mothers, but they weigh most heavily on those who stay home with their children.

There are also pluses for the children of a working mother. Some of the physical or psychological health benefits she enjoys from working will spill over onto them - like her feeling more fulfilled, or less cranky from being cooped up with a child all day. A second paycheck means more money to buy them things, like better food and health care, or enriching experiences. Childcare carries the benefit of time with other kids and caregivers, and some breathing room from mom.³ Then there are future benefits to a child if his mom works when he's little: by not stepping off the career track - especially the fastest ones - she will probably have a larger salary when he's older.

¹Though this apparent benefit is inflated by other factors; for example, women who work are likely to be better educated, which is associated with better health practices and less illness. They also tend to have been healthier in the first place, since ill people are less likely to seek work. ²We're using the word average as a shorthand term for the various statistical measures of the central tendencies of groups. ³Though, in all fairness, this can be accomplished without childcare, through spending informal time with other children and parents. Nor does one need to work to get a baby-sitter or to put a child in preschool. There are other things about working that are good for a mother, but it's possible to enjoy each of them without going off to a job, depending on the all-important details of your own situation. Knowing this gives you the choice of seeking that benefit through work or through other arrangements.

• Access to health resources. A good job (usually) offers health insurance and money for doctors, but your husband's occupation may already provide those without your needing to work.
• Sense of equality and clout with your husband. Bringing home a paycheck can help you to feel that you are on an equal footing with him and give you more say in how money is spent and the family is run, but some relationships operate that way when the mother doesn't work.
• General sense of accomplishment and recognition. This need may already be fully satisfied by being a full-time mother.
• Camaraderie and support with other people. You may already be fortunate to have a strong sense of community with friends, neighbors, and other mothers.
• Respite from children. Definitely a benefit, but it's usually possible to get a break by taking steps such as swapping childcare with a friend, or enrolling your child in one more morning at the preschool.

The Options for Working
The main options include:

• No work at all. Your partner, others (such as relatives), or savings support the family financially. Maybe you deliberately take on some debt, knowing you can return to work in a few years, and that a person's income normally rises as she gets older and more experienced, Benefits: Provides maximum time with your child, and easiest way to keep breast feeding. Drawbacks: you may feel isolated, unstimulated, or stressed with no relief.
• Be a student. More flexible scheduling than most jobs, often with more childcare. Class load can be increased or decreased depending on the needs of you and your family. Much schoolwork can be done at home, or all of it through distance learning. Classes could be related to current career, or you could go in a new direction; check with your accountant, but the costs may be tax deductible. Benefits: A very direct way to satisfy the hunger for intellectual stimulation. Drawbacks: No income from you, additional costs for tuition and books, and a potential disruption of nursing.
• Part-time. You could cut back your hours, job share, or work as a temp. Perhaps the most common job choice for mothers of young children. Benefits: You get to keep one leg planted in the world of work and bring in some money. Drawbacks: Usually means stepping off the fast track of career advancement, a fairly rapid weaning (if your baby is still breast feeding), and additional income is offset by extra childcare costs.
• Full-time. Benefits: Maximum income and career opportunities. Drawbacks: Maximum dependence on childcare, time away from children, and potential tension between home and office. Even greater impact on breast-feeding than part-time work.
• Telecommuting. Benefits: Eliminates the commute and allows you to shift gears more smoothly between mother mode and work mode. Drawbacks: Can be hard to fend off a young child who knows you're in the house, and hard to get much work done. Often goes well if you have in-home childcare, or if child is being cared for elsewhere some of the time you're home.
• Self-employed. Could be full- or part-time, at home or at your own office. Benefits: You're the boss, so it's not necessary to persuade anyone that you need some time off. Offers the satisfaction and potential financial rewards of building your own business. Drawbacks: Burden of responsibility and financial risks.

The Costs of Working for You
Now comes the other side of the balance sheet: the benefits of working need to be netted against its costs. Physically demanding work - involving heavy lifting or exertion, or standing on your feet all day - has been associated with poorer health in mothers, especially during the first year after giving birth. Jobs that offer the employee little say in when and how specific tasks are done, especially low-level clerical positions, are a risk factor for cardiovascular problems in mothers. Moving from physical to mental health, you could feel uneasy, worried, or even upset at being separated from your child. Or guilty, perhaps, at not being the sort of mother you want to be.

If nothing else, working means spending less time with your child, and sometimes missing special moments or milestones, like the first steps. To have as much time as possible with her children, an employed mother typically sleeps about five or six hours a week less than a stay-at-home mom. Working also means spending more time in traffic (unless you work at home), with the aggravations and expenses of commuting.

Meanwhile, the hassles of investigating, managing, or changing childcare usually land on you; as the difficulty of arranging for childcare rises, a mother's health tends to decline. Once everything is set up and work looks like clear sailing, your job still gets disrupted when a child is sick or needs to be taken to a doctor, and your partner can't or won't handle it. And if you are already heavily burdened, such as by a colicky baby who keeps you up at night, or by personal health problems, a job could be the proverbial straw that breaks your back. Adding it all up, it's not surprising that full-time employed mothers of infants report greater stress than do full-time homemakers with infants - and they often neglect their own health to cope with their total workload.

The Costs of Working for Both You and Your Family
Stresses from work can wear you down so you have less to give at home. Business travel causes separations that could be upsetting to you and your children. Going to work also means needing to find places and occasions to pump breast milk if you have continued nursing. These hassles are a major reason why returning to work (especially full-time) usually leads a mother to wean earlier than she otherwise would, which means losing the benefits of breast-feeding. In addition to the ways that nursing can be emotionally fulfilling for a mother and her child, continuing to breast-feed seems to help shield a woman from the effects of stress. The other benefits for children include a boost in IQ and fewer illnesses - some of the reasons why the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that mothers nurse for at least one year, and the World Health Organization recommends at least two years.

For the family as a whole, mornings and evenings get especially frenzied when both parents work. At the beginning of the day, everybody zooms around getting dressed, packing lunches, and schlepping kids to childcare. At the other end of the day, you've got to shove so much into a small sliver of time: hugs and kisses for children, questions like How did it go at preschool? or Was Rory nice to you today? and housework tasks that get pushed into the evening or weekend. When - finally - you get the kids to bed and the last dishes done or the laundry folded, it's hard to have much energy left for yourself or your relationship. Adding to your stress, kids are often cranky from long hours in childcare and more frequently ill from exposure to other children who are sick - and this brings us to the complex, sometimes touchy subject of the impact on kids of childcare. Some research has found that moderate, high-quality childcare, especially past the first birthday, has, on average, some benefits for language and social development without disrupting the attachment relationship between a typical parent and child, though it does seem to make some kids more aggressive. But the actual childcare the majority of kids experience is completely different: it lasts for many hours each day, sometimes 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.; it is performed - often by one adult for four to six children - by poorly trained, poorly educated, and poorly paid staff with high rates of turnover; and it starts when children are just a few months old. Plus, the research instruments used to assess potential psychological injury to children cannot fully measure many subtle issues, such as a person's lifelong capacity for a deep, trusting intimacy. Then, even if one assumes there is no injury to a child, no lasting impact, there is still the matter of suffering: most young children do not like being separated from both of their parents. Finally, research on childcare may not apply to your own child, who may be more sensitive or vulnerable than some other kids.

Our point here is not to make anyone feel guilty about using childcare. Your child may do very well in childcare or preschool, especially if it's a well-run program. And if your options are not so great but you still need childcare, you pick the best setting possible and compensate for any less-than-perfect care in other ways. It's simply that childcare needs to be used with a sensitivity to the possible impacts on your own unique child, for her sake as well as yours.

Resources for Childcare
The Anxious Parents' Guide to Quality Childcare by Michelle Ehrich
The Unofficial Guide to Childcare by Ann Douglas
The Nanny Book by Susan Carlton and Coco Myers
Child-Care Research in the 1990's by Deborah Vandell
National Network for Childcare: www.nncc.org
National Childcare Information Center: ncclc.org
Single Parent Central: www.singleparentcentral.com/childcare.htm
www.home-childcare.com

Your Options for Childcare
The main options include:

• Mr. Mom: Dad stays home and watches the kids, either full- or part-time. Besides being the ultimate way for the father to fully engage the parenting role, this option sometimes makes economic sense, since a growing number of women make more money than their husbands.*
• Relatives: Could be the child's grandparents, older stepsister, aunt or uncle, or other kin. Care by people who consider the child "family."
• Nanny, baby-sitter: Possibilities range from a live-in, professional nanny to an older, good-hearted child who plays with a preschooler while Mom does work at home. The caregiver is not distracted by other children, but is often more expensive than a childcare center. Also lacks the safeguards against potential abuse that exist in childcare centers with other people present. Generally zero state regulation. You are legally responsible for paying employer taxes.
• Home childcare: Frequently in the neighborhood close by. Convenient, informal, inexpensive. Often run by a kindly woman who is a mother herself. Typical ratios of one adult to two to six young children; caregivers may be spread thin. If solo caregiver, no checks and balances provided by other caregivers. Depending on the state, zero to moderate regulation.
• Childcare centers: Sometimes conveniently located at job sites or preschools. More formal and usually more expensive than home childcare. Usually moderate state regulation.
• Preschools: Same pluses and minuses of childcare centers, plus a more explicit educational component (e.g., Montessori, Waldorf), and sometimes a religious one. Moderate state regulation.

*This option and the two that follow naturally need to include appropriate time for your child with other children.

Summing Up the Pros and Cons
The sensible way to think about work and motherhood is to consider different options (Work or not? Full- or part-time? This job or that one?) in terms of this mother with this child and this partner in this family with this childcare possibility at this time. Let's suppose a mother, Jane, is debating whether to return to work or to continue staying home with her toddler, Tommy, and his big sister. Grace. If Jane is bored out of her skull staying home + Tommy is easygoing and would adapt quickly to childcare + her husband is up for doing more housework + Grace is doing fine in preschool + there's a good home day care site just down the street + Jane already weaned Tommy months ago = Returning to work probably makes more sense than staying home. But what if the opposite were true? If Jane feels deeply satisfied with being a full-time mom + Tommy is anxious and clingy + her husband works very long hours + Grace is jealous of her brother and wants a lot of time with Mom + and Tommy is still nursing = Staying home probably makes more sense.

Of course, in real life, the case for one option or another is usually a closer call: Suppose Jane is climbing the walls at home and her husband is fine with doing more housework, but Tommy is anxious about separation and the childcare options don't look very good. The needs of children must be balanced against the needs of their parents, who have rights, feelings, and wants that count, too. Even when you consider only the child, there are still tradeoffs: sometimes a "cost" to a child (such as adequate but less than optimal care) in one area is balanced by an even greater gain to the child in another area (such as a mother's greater patience because she is less stressed). Complicating things, there are the tradeoffs between present costs and benefits, and future ones: perhaps Tommy will be quite stressed at this time by Jane working, but he'll benefit in a few years from the additional income and seniority she'll have from continuing to work.

Overall, it's a tough decision, and either way Jane goes, there will be problems. But the right decision for any mother, whatever it is, will be the one that considers all aspects of her situation - and then evaluates them in light of her purposes and priorities in life.

Using Purpose and Priorities to Inform Your Choices
When you are clear about your purposes and priorities, it is enormously easier to make fundamental decisions about working or not, and to inform daily choices. Say your boss offers you a plumb assignment, but it entails a day or two of business travel each month. If you know that your priority right now is maxing time with your family and you're deliberately treading water in your career, then you'll feel more peace of mind about turning down the opportunity. On the other hand, if you've decided to put more energy into your career, you'll feel easier inside about telling your child every few weeks that you have to go on a trip overnight, but you'll be back really, really soon.

When you have a clear direction in life, you don't have to continually reevaluate your choices, or agonize over the ones you've made. It helps you deal with people who are questioning, sniping at, or resisting the choices you've made. You know what you feel in your heart, and you're more able to explain your actions (if you need to). Even if you can't fulfill an important purpose right now, or be entirely true to your priorities, clarity about what's awry helps you let go of self-blame, feel entitled to mourn what's missing, and be motivated to work on creating a life structure that's a better fit with your values. So how do you come up with your essential purposes and priorities? Just as one sort of job might suit you but not another person, some ways of clarifying life purposes will speak to you while others will not. Therefore, here's a sampler of different methods (please see the resources below for additional ideas):

• Imagine that you're nearing the end of your life. What do you want to make sure you are glad about, in terms of the choices you have made? What do you want to make sure you don't regret?
• Consider what you love doing: What are my passions? What situations or activities make me very happy?
• Reflect on your moral commitments: What do I care about deeply? What larger cause(s) do I want to serve? How do I want to make a difference?
• Consider how improving your functioning in some regard, such as remedying physical depletion, or cultivating psychological growth and wisdom, could be the catalyst or foundation for many positive things. Perhaps that form of personal healing or development should be a priority for the next few years.
• Think about the people you admire, your role models, and your heroes and heroines. What are the characteristics or actions that inspire you? What might you like to emulate, in your own way, in one or more of these people?
• If this is meaningful to you, ask God for guidance as to what you're meant to do with your life in general, or with regard to work at this time.
• Make a collage from pictures and words cut or torn from magazines. You can do this on poster board or on individual sheets of paper in a notebook. The theme could be very broad, such as your purpose in life, or quite specific, such as how you want your transition back to working half-time to go.
• Ask your mate what he thinks your priorities should be at this time. He may have a fresh angle, but don't be overly swayed; the heart of the matter is what's in your heart.
• In one sentence (present tense), try to state your overall purpose in life.* It's not set in stone, and you can have a different purpose later on. Some examples: My family is healthy and happy, and so am I. I live a life of health, happiness, and contribution. My life is an expression of Radiant Being. I am love, communication, and aliveness. I leave the world a better place. I live with integrity, humor, love, and grace. Also, try to state your purpose as a mother.
• Consider how the priorities of family and career may not be in conflict, but could serve each other. For example, being successful at your job could be an important model for your children. Similarly, creating a solid, loving foundation at home could help you feel secure in venturing forward in your career.

Resources for Life Purpose and Priorities
A Year to Live by Stephen Levine
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow by Marsha Sinetar
Creative Visualization by Shaku Gawain
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Once you've clarified your purposes, it's worth taking some time to acknowledge the losses that are inherent in any choices you've made or will make. You can't have more of one thing without less of another, and we've never known a perfect arrangement of home and work for any mother.

Next, we suggest you step back and take a long, honest look at your life. Start by asking yourself where you are living true to your purposes. Let yourself feel really good about that. Then - big breath - ask yourself where you are not. When you reflect on any gaps between your ideals and your actions, consider first whether it is possible, in fact, to close them. Maybe it just isn't right now: perhaps your family simply can't manage without your paycheck, or no matter how much you want to get back to your career, a chronically ill child needs you at home. If you can't pursue some important purpose at this time, the best you can do is to be compassionate with yourself about that, reach out for support, and keep trying to figure out how to fulfill your dreams.

On the other hand, maybe you could actually accomplish your purposes. Then it's really important for your well-being to try. If the problem is external, like no transportation to get to work, you could look into ride sharing or other jobs that are closer to bus lines. Usually there's some action, internal or external, that will give you a jump start and get the snowball rolling. For instance, a shy person could invite her former colleagues out for a casual lunch, and then, once the ice is broken, she could steer the conversation to her going back to work and see if they have any ideas.

Above all, seek the balance of family and work that will be truest to your nature, rather than conforming to what other people think. Perhaps you've run into one-size-fits-all thinking in the form of social pressure to work, or to stay at home. Advocates for either side can talk as if there's just one natural way to be, and selectively use scientific studies to make their case. But in truth, there is wide variation among women in their natural interest in mothering and working. One of Rick's clients had to muster up her courage to tell him: I feel really bad about saying it, but a lot of the time, taking care of my daughters is really tiresome and irritating, and I just want to get away. There's no doubt I love them. But when I hear other moms go on about the bliss of motherhood, that's just not me. I have to work, or I'd go crazy - and that wouldn't be good for them, either.

On the other hand, a different mom (who used to be a stockbroker) was laughing gently at herself one day in his office: About a month before I was due with my first child, I sent out a letter to my clients saying I'd be back full-time after six weeks - not to worry. But I just fell in love with the little guy and something completely changed inside me. What had I been thinking?! There was no way I could be away from him all day and leave him with people who could never love him the way I did. Forget it! So we cut back, I stayed home, and I can hardly believe it, but now several years later, I've become fulfilled by being a mother in a way I never imagined was possible. I can see a time ahead, maybe when he's in grade school, when I'll want to work again, but that's a ways off, and when it comes, it'll be natural. The shape of your nature - as individual in its contours as a baby's footprint - may not fit neatly into the hole defined by one cultural model or another, and trying to jam it in or act like there's no friction puts needless stress on you and your family.

*A variation on this method is found in Stephen Covey's discussion of a personal mission statement in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.