When I was nine years old, I decided that the most important things to me were figuring out how the world worked, and developing true self-awareness (figuring out how I worked). I had a vague idea that there were systems that governed human behavior: motivations, relationships, perceived rewards and deterrents, life experiences, and even genetics. I loved to read, and many of the books I loved explored these human motivations and revealed, if only briefly and in a limited context, the backstage governance of human behavior. To me, reading was like seeing a rip in the fabric of the human network and seeing the complexities and connections that held it together. It seemed to me that if I figured all this out, if I got a long enough look at it, that I could share that information with others. I wanted to be a writer.
One of the first things you learn about writing is that you have to write about what you know. That means that you have to experience a lot of things. You have to push yourself outside your comfort zone. This, along with moving frequently as a child, led me to a strong dislike for provincial attitudes. I also entertained a nagging doubt that the need to experience life fully would be hemmed in by being Mormon. How could I write about things that I couldn’t experience firsthand? I realized over time, though, that not every writer who has written a crime novel has committed a murder. Some experiences can be gained secondhand through interviews. I didn’t have to kill a bull. Nevertheless, I developed a passion for new experiences that continues.
At BYU, I dated Mormon boys for the first time. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but something about how they talked about their future made me uneasy. They talked about their aspirations, their career hopes and dreams, but there was an unspoken assumption that my career would come second, complementary to their own, if at all. Some boys seemed to view the girls they dated as potential plug-and-play partners in a future they had already planned out. A few times I felt like I was accidentally in an audition for a role I didn’t want to play. I was repelled by the idea of being someone’s “plus one.” I wanted to find someone who was interested in me as a real person, someone who didn’t have all the answers already about how the future was going to turn out.
I served a mission at 21, and eventually married one of my mission friends when I was 23. We were both students, finishing up our degrees. I did the unthinkable and actually completed a 4 year degree in 4 years (plus a mission) at BYU. Because my husband was younger than me and also went on to get his master’s degree, I had already been promoted several times at work before he had finished his degree. He was working a blue collar job that turned into an office job at the same time while I was working for a call center company. Neither of us made much money at the time, despite my growing responsibility at work.
When we got married I had said up front that I wasn’t sure I wanted to have kids. He felt I would eventually change my mind. When I decided I was ready to give it a shot, I was very cautious. I had never been around children, I didn’t really know how to take care of them, and I didn’t think I’d be very good at it. I had been a truly negligent and indifferent babysitter as a teenager. As an oldest child, he was confident it wasn’t that hard, and he had lots of experience with kids. I said it was a 20-year commitment, and I wanted to make sure that there was no assumption I was going to be the primary caregiver when I had such mixed feelings. I was 27 when our oldest son was born. My husband was right; it wasn’t that hard, although I often felt I didn’t have as much patience as my husband. I also discovered the secret all parents have learned: that your own kids are great, even if other people’s kids are irritating.
I had developed a life-threatening blood clot (DVT) during my first pregnancy. You know it’s serious when the doctor calls in all the residents and interns to see your ultrasound, and they were impressed at the sheer size of my blood clot! The treatment for DVT is subcutaneous shots of heparin, a blood thinner. At one point, I had to self-administer 8 shots a day; I was black and blue from my hip to my knee on both legs. My doctor cautioned me that I was at high risk for a repeat in future pregnancies and would have to do heparin injections throughout any subsequent pregnancies. The thought of another child after the heparin shots during the first pregnancy took some time to warm up to. I was also cautioned that beyond age 35, pregnancy would be too risky. We ultimately had three children, getting the last one in just a few months before my 35th birthday. She is ten this year. Given how much energy it took to handle toddlers, we came up with a rule: no two children in diapers simultaneously. Each of our pregnancies were planned, to the point that we made sure no two children had birthdays in the same fiscal quarter!
We tried several different day cares over the years. Some Mormon mommies needed extra money and would take in other kids. This worked for a while, but we found they were usually not committed to being long term child care providers. We had better luck with family members, and finally the best luck of all with the more expensive “preschool” style day cares that had certified teachers and curriculum, offered nutritious foods, and had supervised play areas. I noticed that our kids were resilient and made friends easily. They got used to the routine, and it was normal to them. They looked forward to seeing their friends every day. Despite not being home during the day, we were still the parents. We took turns to care for them when they were sick. I once asked my son if he had wished I had been at home, and he said, “Why would you be at home? What would you do there?”
As my business experience grew, I was promoted to the point of having over a thousand employees. At age 32, I had a breadth of leadership experience at my company, but I began to feel it was time to move on. I switched to a large financial services company, the same one that my husband had joined three months earlier. This was the first time it was very apparent to both of us that my level was higher than his. In my leadership role, everyone knew who I was. People would refer to him as my husband; at times it put a strain on him, but there wasn’t much we could do about it. I was the primary breadwinner. Eventually, we relocated to Phoenix when I was promoted again where we still worked for the same company but in different locations and lines of business. Our paths crossed less often at work, and we were much more used to our situation. Sometimes we would meet up for lunch which was nice.
Two years ago, I took an international assignment in Singapore running our operations across 14 countries. My travel time went from 25% to 75%. The dependent spouse of an ex-pat is called the “trailing spouse.” Our ward is comprised entirely of ex-pats, many of whom have SAHMs as the “trailing spouse,” although several have dual incomes and a couple are like us, with the wife on an ex-pat assignment. My husband (who is a CPA) took a job in Singapore. Working in Asia, “face time” in the office is expected, including working long hours. Most of his colleagues worked well past 8pm every night and most weekends. This wasn’t feasible for him with my travel schedule and three kids. It also wasn’t a work ethic that either of us espoused. In my role, I had a more flexible schedule, despite my traveling. After a year of barely making it work, he decided to give notice and leave his job. The money was not an issue for us at this point, and he put his accounting skills to work volunteering as treasurer for a Cambodian women’s charity, the Tabitha Foundation.
Throughout our entire married life, even when we were both working, he has been the one who knows when the parent-teacher conferences are, what school projects are looming on the horizon, and who needs a ride where. The kids are close to both of us, but he’s far better at the logistics of parenting. If he were suddenly not there, I suspect that these things would simply not get done. The kids’ teeth would rot out (as would my own), we wouldn’t have up to date shot records, I’d forget that they need to be enrolled for school, and permission slips? Well, those already get forgotten plenty.
Most people think of their career as a means to an economic end. Mormons tend to think of it in terms of supporting their families, and therefore are better at avoiding the traps of long hours away from home and the materialism that causes some people to overextend their credit. But in the push to be a breadwinner and to support a family, people can forget their own need to feel they are growing and learning, to feel they are a part of something bigger that matters, to leave a professional legacy.
Work is not a panacea any more than motherhood is. I also know plenty of people who feel that their work is not fulfilling to them; they are just doing time to get the money they need. The downside to work is that you are developing and using your skills toward aims that are determined by the corporation, customers, and markets. Your values may or may not align with the needs of those constituents. Even if you are not contradicting your values, you may simply be doing something that you think ultimately won’t matter. I once confided to my boss that I didn’t think anyone would care about a project we were doing 5 years from now. He agreed, adding, “I was thinking 5 minutes!” That’s a common feeling in business, that our work reduces costs or increases revenues, but it’s not necessarily toward a noble goal beyond increasing profits. If we are lucky, we leave a legacy, but more often we toil in obscurity. On a good day, I feel I make the workplace better, fairer and more fulfilling for the hundreds of employees under me. My legacy is in the people who improved and became more successful because of the culture I created. On a bad day, I have to make decisions about things that ultimately don’t matter.
Now that I’m finishing my ex-pat assignment, we will return to the US. When I talk about what I want to do next, I think in terms of my personal growth, what will challenge and excite me, where I can feel like I’ve made a big contribution and am valued. Having lived abroad, we are more mobile than ever before. We’ve learned that we can go with the flow and find something similar to what we’ve done before. I also recognize that working in business can be a grind. People burn out. I oil paint on the side to keep my artistic balance. I’ve been blogging since 2008, and I also admin at StayLDS and recently joined BCC.
As a leader for over twenty years, I have learned a lot about human nature. I have learned a lot about myself. I haven’t unlocked the secrets of the universe yet, but I have developed something essential to leadership: insight. What will I do with it next? Life has a trajectory, and it’s hard to change course. I recently did some interviews, and it reminded me what I love about corporate life: envisioning the future for a group of people, creative problem solving, and simply having fun with others I would not know if not for our work association.
-Submitted by Hawkgrrrl
See all the Parenthood Juggle guest posts here. Go here for this guest post invitation. Submissions should be sent to guestposts@dovesandserpents.org (please see our guest post guide).
I love this post, this story, and I’m glad for the extra insight into Hawkgrrl, who I see around the blogosphere. Sounds like we have a lot in common… I still need to write up my post for this series!
I would love to read that! I always enjoy your comments.
Yeah, Jenn . . . ;)
Hawkgrrrl, you are a big inspiration to those of us women who are career oriented and trying to figure out how to do the motherhood thing too. My career is firmly established and I am having my first child in a few short weeks. I never even consdiered staying at home, what WOULD I do there? I feel like I can’t be a good mother when I am bored and not mentally challenged like I crave. I know motherhood will be wonderful, but I believe I can appreciate motherhood more by getting away from it regularly.
Bear in mind that Susan Smith was a SAHM, so it’s certainly not for everyone. Motherhood vs. career, IMO, is a false dichotomy. We do have to find balance, but all or nothing isn’t balanced. Good luck to you!
“But in the push to be a breadwinner and to support a family, people can forget their own need to feel they are growing and learning, to feel they are a part of something bigger that matters, to leave a professional legacy.”
I wish in the Mormon world, we honored this need, for both men and women. Some people, but not all, fill it through parenting. Some don’t want children. Some want a mix of both. But assigning whether it’s a valid need based on someone’s sex makes the world a decidedly worse place.
I also really loved the idea that you don’t have to change the world through your professional projects, but that meaning and import can be found in something like making work better for others. I used to buy into the pressure of having to do something integral for a noble cause din order to justify having a career while being a mother. Now I realize that even being a full-time mother has costs to my family and that my own feelings about the work I do should guide the judgment of whether it is worthy of my time.
I can relate to some of this, although I haven’t been as successful on the same scale, I still feel successful in my career. I married a man my same age, but because he went on a mission and I did not, I ended up being promoted twice in my career before he was out of graduate school. It just seems natural for us both to want to contribute everything we can to our marriage, our family, but also to ourselves. I support him in his initiatives and career, why wouldn’t I expect him to do the same for me? It’s why when we’re doing the parenthood/career juggle together, we’ve coined a phrase that represents what we have developed when we say to the other, “Thank you for being a wonderful partner to me.” Something about that word *partner* means that we’re in it together.
Hawkgirl,
Thanks so much for such a personal and thoughtful post. My family and I are about to head out to Asia (Korea) as I think I have mentioned to you before somewhere on the bloggernacle. I particularly like you articulate your ambivalence to working in business. As a business professor who thinks primarily about organizations I think there is something noble about simply making people’s work lives and experiences better. I would hope most Mormons would choose to work in companies and industries that they felt were at very least economically valuable and non-exploitive but I agree that having a relatively neutrally valued job and finding ones meaning in sevice elsewhere (family, church, charity work) is completely valid.
I know you have mentioned it elsewhere, but I would be really curious to hear the range of experiences you have with how Mormon men in your wards come to grips with your professional success and how they are able/unable to leverage your professional skills in the ward setting. If you were a male with that type of position you would have been tapped for all kinds of bishopric callings and be very valued as a confidant by leaders (even if you didn’t have an official calling). I imagine you have had the whole range from great to ugly. I believe the expat ward in Korea has one or two families with female expats though it is largely a military ward with female trailing spouses (I don’t know any Mormon military women with trailing spouses but who knows one could show up!). I think it is wonderful that the girls in the wards you are a part of can see different possible ways of making choices regarding family and careers.
I would add that it’s great that the girls AND the boys in the wards you are a part of can see different ways of making career/family choices. I find myself too often thinking, “The YW need this” and “I want for my girls to hear or learn or read this,” but really–the YM need it just as much, as does my son. Clearly, these Parenthood Juggle posts have demonstrated the importance of having BOTH partners on board with all of this. So even if we were to involve our daughters and the YW in these conversations, that alone will not be enough.
Totally agree Heather. Wouldn’t it be great if we were all raised believing we had options to make our lives work best for ourselves and our family? We pigeonhole men and women!
That’s an interesting question about how men in the church respond. Mostly I feel they listen to me because I am confident. I definitely haven’t been tapped for a lot of leadership callings. I think with my travel schedule, mostly I am viewed as off-the-table because I don’t have time to do things during the week (and personally when I’m home, I want to be home). So I generally get Sunday-only callings, which works for me. I do think my husband gets some flack at times from other men, though, but I’m hopeful that will cease in the coming years. He seems to be getting more comfortable with it. As ex-pats when you introduce yourselves, it’s funny that everyone assumes it was his job that brought us here. When they find out it’s mine, they can usually shift gears pretty quickly because they all work with women. It’s only the men who work in male-dominated fields who don’t always have social grace, but there aren’t too many of them. I’ve had lots of bishops who introduce me enthusiastically with reference to my job title. They even work it into setting me apart or blessings. I would say people are very supportive and sort of proud by association in a way.
My visiting teachers are both career women, also for big companies (Microsoft and HP respectively), so we have plenty to talk about.
Good luck on the Korea move – shoot me an email if you want to discuss further. Moving halfway around the world, there are some things that are probably the same regardless of where you go.
Good point Heather!
Agreed, awesome point, Heather. I think it is such a shame my husband never even considered being a stay-a-home dad… we only turned to it because circumstances demanded it. But he’s good at it, and happy and fullfilled; our kids are thriving and so are the parents :). But he, in his late 20s, has had to learn how to cook, do laundry, ask the right questions at dr appointments, get the social fulfillment all humans need that toddlers can’t provide, and still feel macho enough even though he is more of a mom than his mom ever was:).
YM need to know what it means to be a partner just as much as YW do.