Having read a number of anguished writings from women who have felt cultural pressure to give up career aspirations in order to devote themselves to motherhood, as well as women who have chosen to pursue a career and feel the weight of disapproval or shame from family and church community, I have realized how very fortunate I have been in my own life trajectory. I have experienced no head-shaking, no suspicion, and no discouragement at any point along my route, and, with the single exception of a high school social studies teacher who told me that I must have taken an aptitude test wrong because “girls don’t score well in math and science,” have never felt any expectation attached to my gender.
I grew up the eldest child in a relatively small, flexibly religiously observant family in what was then semi-rural Utah. My father was in a science-related field and traveled frequently, and my strong, totally self-sufficient mother was a full-time mom until I was in high school, at which point she began to work in the executive office of a large corporation. She had worked before I was born, and it never occurred to me one way or another that she would or wouldn’t return to the workforce when her kids were a little older.
From the time I was small, I felt my parents’ support and encouragement in all my academic endeavors. As I grew, no one was prouder of my accomplishments than my mom and dad, who attended every ceremony, every graduation, during a long academic career through multiple undergraduate and graduate degrees. My dad got teary with pride every time; my mom sported her corsage in the colors of whatever institution I was graduating from at the moment.
At some point along the way, I got married and had my first child while I was writing my doctoral dissertation. My spouse at the time worked, and I also taught at my doctoral institution. I handed off my child to daddy during my teaching periods so that one parent or another would be present at all times. I recognize that this situation is a luxury: not every working person gets to select the hours of presence in their office in the way that academics do. For us, it was natural, and it ensured that my spouse was as involved in parenting as I was.
When I finished my PhD, I took a university position and became the breadwinner for our family, while my spouse became a full-time dad to our first child and a new second child. This continued until we divorced (and lest you jump to conclusions, it had nothing to do with gender roles or satisfaction quotients or my ignoring my family as a working mother; it was just sad incompatibility). At that point, we divided custody into exact half-weeks, which continues to this day. For the times during the week when my children are with me, I attend to them 100%, leaving my own work until after they’re asleep. When they’re not with me, I devote my entire schedule to my professional obligations. It’s true that time-management is difficult: I work between 60 and 80 hours a week, and I cram all that work time into hours when I am not onstage as a parent. But I don’t imagine for a moment that this is a gender-based challenge (their father faces the same time-juggling issues that I do, and resolves them in much the same way). With time so scarce, the thing that usually gets sacrificed is sleep, and I’m okay with that, because I find my parenting time and my professional time equally fulfilling and enriching and am unwilling to surrender either part of my life. Again, I recognize that the profession I have entered allows me to set my own schedule, to work around my time with my children, in a way that many professions don’t.
So, that’s my trajectory. And while questions of scheduling aren’t as rigid in my case as in others, the point I’d like to make here most strenuously is that my solutions to crunched time arose as a natural part of having a career that I never felt I had to ask permission to pursue. For my parents, it was a foregone conclusion from childhood that I would pursue advanced degrees. I don’t remember hearing any discouragement on that front from church teachers in my youth (though in fairness, I took a break from attendance through a lot of that adolescent time that many women report as having been damaging to their sense of self-worth and possibility). My former spouse was certainly proud of me in my professional development, but neither of us ever really considered that it was a matter requiring his ratification: I was already on my career path when he met me (we were both getting advanced degrees), and there was never any question about where I was headed. My wards have known me only as an academic, years ago in the context of a couple of successive graduate schools and now as a professor. I’ve never seen a single eyebrow raise about my career, my mothering decisions, my unchanged native name, or anything else. These days, I happen to teach at the big flagship church institution, and have been unquestioningly supported and encouraged at every level there as well, from my students through administration.
In some ways, I feel like I’m occupying a different universe than many who’ve experienced shaming, lectures, and other push backs, and I wonder why that would be. Could I just be oblivious? Could I be so matter-of-fact about my life that it never occurs to folks to push back? Could it be that I’m so openly left-wing across the board that there’s no purchase for critics on the discrete matter of mommies in the workforce? (Actually, I’ve never received any push back for being a progressive, either.) I’m not sure, but I know that my presence at my institution provides students, male and female alike, with a crucial model for one possible future-a model they may not have had in their own homes. I’m a devoted mother, an active scholar, a diligent teacher. Moreover, I am better-more patient, more available-at mothering my children because I spend so much of my non-active-parenting time exercising my mind in ways I find stimulating. And I am better at my job, which requires a lot of flexible thinking and creative reexamination of preexisting ideas, because I spend a good deal of my week playing with children. My two passions feed one another.
There are many women who choose to be full-time moms, and I admire what they bring to that position, and support them in making the choice that feels most true to their desires. My own strengths have led me to the choices I have made, and I am most grateful that I have felt free from the very beginning of my consciousness to make those choices without feeling like I had to justify them.
My great desire is that every person-of any gender, of any religion, of any race, of any socioeconomic class, of any sexual orientation-will feel the unstinting support that I have felt my whole life, the encouragement to expand my capacities and to make the decisions that have been right for me. The body of Christ has many members; a body doesn’t need twenty-five hearts and one elbow. It needs all the parts, bringing what skills they have to the cause of compassion, love, and mutual lifting.
-Submitted by Olde Skool
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I hope an ever greater number of Mormon women have your experience! I think they are and will.
Thanks for the cheerleading, rah–I appreciate it, especially since I respect so much the perspective you’ve provided in all kinds of discussions. I confess that I had mixed feelings about submitting this post, because I fear it may seem either dismissive of the very real and painful challenges faced by many women in our culture or snobbily “above” such challenges. But I decided, ultimately, that it might be useful to acknowledge, at least, that it’s possible to experience a different narrative about one’s family/career, even in this culture. Also, I sorta wanted to celebrate my parents.
Thank you for this post. I’ve had a similar experience in my life. I’m a physician, wife, and mother. I never felt push back from any church leaders about my decisions to pursue a career. Almost all of the mormon women role models (including my mom) that I had growing up were of women who worked outside of the home to support their families, as I was raised in a very poor community. Growing up, I figured that I was going to have to work someday, so I better like my job and get paid well to do it. Is my #1 priority my home and family, yes. Is it difficult to balance, yes. Have I ever been belittled or put down at church because of my choices, no.