Parenthood Juggle Archive

  • Finding My Path to Motherhood

    Posted on November 15, 2013 | 8 Comments
    –by Ginger C. Hanson, PhD As a genXer, growing up in an active LDS family, I struggled with the seemingly contradictory messages I heard about the role of women in society. My parents and church leaders encouraged me to pursue an education. The messages I […]

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  • Planning for Now, Not a Maybe

    Posted on November 4, 2013 | 26 Comments
    Naomi Watkins, a former middle school English teacher, earned a B.A. in English education from Brigham Young University, a M.Ed. in language and literacy from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. in teaching and learning with a literacy emphasis from the University of Utah. When […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: I Have to Be Me

    Posted on May 6, 2013 | 2 Comments
    In the next few weeks, I will turn 40. I know it is very cliché to have a mid-life crisis at 40, but apparently there is something to it. I guess I have been moving toward this moment from the moment I was born, but […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: What Gives?

    Posted on April 29, 2013 | 2 Comments
    For better or worse, I think I’ve become a legend in my department amongst graduate students.   I’m in my 7th year of a graduate program.   I met my husband a week or two before it started and we were married the following summer, […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Only by Working Together

    Posted on April 24, 2013 | 3 Comments
    In order to tell my story properly I have to jump quite few years back before I was even born. My parents grew up in poverty in the Philippines. My mom was particularly affected by this. Her parents could not afford to put all 10 […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: I Wouldn’t Change Any of It

    Posted on April 19, 2013 | 2 Comments
    I met my husband at law school. We got engaged the summer before my final year but at my husband’s insistence did not get married until after my final exams (he had already graduated and did not want anything to interfere with me doing so). […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: It’s Enough for Me

    Posted on April 15, 2013 | 5 Comments
    At the party store yesterday, my son was choosing decorations for his fifth birthday bash, coming in just a few days. I quit my job without a backup plan in December, and my husband is a stay-at-home dad, so it’s been a tough few months […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: We Co-Get-It-Done

    Posted on April 12, 2013 | 4 Comments
    When I was a young mother, a series of events occurred that changed my life. In 1995, a woman the same age as me became a widow. She had three children, roughly the same ages as mine. One day, her husband took a nap and […]

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  • Ritz Crackers (& Other Debacles)

    Posted on April 10, 2013 | 4 Comments
    “Raul’s mom brought fruit kabobs.”     This revelation comes to me from the back seat. I immediately hate Raul’s mom.   I imagine her creatively shaping mangoes and pineapples in her immaculate kitchen and I silently fume.  This disguised condemnation has been issued by […]

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  • Stages and Flexibility: My Communications Career Juggle

    Posted on April 8, 2013 | No Comments
    Before becoming a mom, I spent three years in magazine editing and high-tech public relations. The birth and adoption of our first son coincided with a move across the country for my husband Glenn to begin doctoral studies. It made sense for me to stay […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Wanting it All

    Posted on April 5, 2013 | 1 Comment
    I was intent on having career (not just job) options with my humanities degree, no matter what educational step I took next.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: “You Don’t Need to Go To College”

    Posted on April 3, 2013 | 8 Comments
    Seek an education, but FIRST seek to get married and have children. Of course there was also the underlying suggestion that the husband's education would take priority.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Depression and Poetry

    Posted on April 1, 2013 | 25 Comments
    "I started writing poetry before I had kids and was struggling with infertility. [ . . . ] Poetry became increasingly important as I grappled with the strong emotions of being a mother. Writing poetry helped me navigate days when, within minutes, my feelings would swing between euphoric and frighteningly negative."

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  • Parenthood Juggle: I Never Had to Ask For Permission

    Posted on March 29, 2013 | 3 Comments
    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.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: How I Became a (Mormon) Female Executive

    Posted on March 25, 2013 | 13 Comments
    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: […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Piano Lessons are Worth It

    Posted on March 22, 2013 | 5 Comments
    I didn’t yearn for a career.   Sometimes it feels like-looking back-that I just fell into it.   I was an excellent student in high school, but never felt like I knew what I wanted to do one day when I grew up.   One […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Only One Body

    Posted on March 18, 2013 | 4 Comments
    If I'm honest, I was more ecstatically happy the day I found out I was accepted to school than the day I found out I was pregnant.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself

    Posted on March 15, 2013 | 14 Comments
    Now it's time to stop waiting and get to work.

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  • Parenthood juggle: A view from 50 years out…

    Posted on March 13, 2013 | 5 Comments
    My mother and I started school in 1965. I went off to 1st grade at our little town’s three room elementary school, and my mother went off to college, at the ripe old age of 31. She’d come to realize, after 11 years of marriage […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: It Takes a Village. . .

    Posted on March 11, 2013 | 9 Comments
    Perhaps it was my cheerless state of mind that caused the tone of quiet desperation in The Feminine Mystique to stick with me

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Of Dreams and Reality

    Posted on March 8, 2013 | 14 Comments
    When I was eighteen, I awoke from my beautiful dream with a harsh reality. I was going to be a mother.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Full-time mom/part-time rocket scientist?

    Posted on March 6, 2013 | 3 Comments
    Only since September, when I participated in measuring the noise from a solid rocket motor, have I been able to claim the “rocket scientist” title, but it’s been almost 13 years since I got my Ph.D. in physics and watched my path to part-time physicist […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Every Step Felt Necessary and Right

    Posted on March 1, 2013 | 1 Comment
    At the end of my senior year of college, I got married.   My husband and I talked extensively about our hopes for the future.   He wanted to go into teaching.   I still hadn’t determined a career path.   We both wanted to […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Doing What I Was Meant to Do

    Posted on February 27, 2013 | 8 Comments
    When I was just a young girl, I remember my parents getting ready to go to the church to make posters about the ERA.   I was happy to go along, knowing I would have many friends there to play with and knowing I would […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Twists and Turns

    Posted on February 25, 2013 | 4 Comments
    As I was graduating from BYU with my MBA I got a piece of advice from the assistant dean, herself a single mom whose husband left after she put him through medical school. She was meeting with the women in our graduating class (all 13 […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: “One Step Enough for Me”

    Posted on February 22, 2013 | 6 Comments
    The funny thing about planning the course of your life is that as much as you think you know what you want, you really have no idea.   I decided to become a physician and married my husband during my first year of medical school. […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Because my Career Matters to Me

    Posted on February 20, 2013 | 2 Comments
    I had big plans as a young girl. I was going to help cure cancer. Or become a chemist. Or maybe a physicist. I made good marks in school, especially math and science. My parents, strict adherents of traditional Mormon gender roles, were very supportive […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Rice and Beans

    Posted on February 18, 2013 | 5 Comments
    I always knew that I would be a work-outside-the-home mom.   The working part came first, as I trekked through college, grad school, med school, residency, and fellowship on my path to becoming a radiologist.   During part of med school and most of residency, […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Academic Freedom

    Posted on February 15, 2013 | 3 Comments
    During these first few years of adjuncting and mothering, my favorite time of day was the afternoon nap. Both of my babies took naps at the same time and sometimes they would both be asleep for several hours.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: “The Smart Girl”

    Posted on February 13, 2013 | 2 Comments
    In my family, we were taught that education was the most important thing to pursue. My parents did not complete their college degrees and always struggled to make ends meet. I knew I never wanted to be in that position and that education was my […]

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Working-Mostly-at-Home-Mostly-for-Free Mom

    Posted on February 11, 2013 | 3 Comments
    After BYU graduation, I worked full-time, putting my husband through his last few months of classes and his internship, right up until my first baby came. Then I quit everything. I even abandoned my hobbies.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Musings on Gender Roles in Mormonism

    Posted on February 8, 2013 | 4 Comments
    So if you're a stay at home dad, awesome. I salute you as a brother. If you're a full time, cookie baking, stay at home Mom with a Master's degree? Very cool. I love white chocolate with macadamia nut cookies.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Picking Up Where the Other One Leaves Off

    Posted on February 6, 2013 | 6 Comments
    We make this work for us, and appreciate that it is a balancing act. Since we did it this way, I was able to breastfeed and mother my very little children.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: F**k

    Posted on February 4, 2013 | 12 Comments
    Truth is, I don't know. The past is set and I can't change it. All I can do is look at where I am right now and move forward from there.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: On Path Renovations

    Posted on February 1, 2013 | 9 Comments
    I've also realized that while my life hasn't followed the path I thought it would, or any of the path renovations I imagined along the way, I have been blessed with the ability to be flexible and accommodate the needs of my family while still carving out some pieces of my life for my own personal growth.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Figuring It Out As You Go Along

    Posted on January 30, 2013 | 7 Comments
    How have we taken care of our little ones? The first year of my son's life was a complicated, sleep-deprived blur, and I'll spare you the details.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: To Put Off School or To Not Put Off School

    Posted on January 28, 2013 | 5 Comments
    I really wish that someone had told me that marriage does not always change your life plans, but having children does. I wish that I had not had a baby at 20. I wish that I had grown up a bit more and really realized how the world worked and networked better in college.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: I Wanted to be a Mother, so I Needed a Good Job

    Posted on January 25, 2013 | 24 Comments
    There are distinct benefits to the academic path I chose. Being in constant need of money is the way of life for many students. Being surrounded by impoverished students helped me to remained focused on saving money for yet another adoption application, surrogacy contract or otherwise.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: A Crooked and Twisting Path

    Posted on January 23, 2013 | 2 Comments
    And this is where I am now. I work part-time in my son's school and next year our youngest will join us for part-day kindergarten. The year after that, they will both be at school for six hours a day and I will have enough experience behind me to qualify for tuition support if I decide to earn a teaching certificate.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Reflections of a Career-Oriented Mormon Mommy

    Posted on January 18, 2013 | 16 Comments
    My career aspirations, even my choice of career, have been with me from the beginning, an integral part of me, coded in the DNA in every cell in my body.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: This American Life

    Posted on January 16, 2013 | 5 Comments
    Should we all move to Sweden? I hope that we won't need to. My hope is that America will begin to adopt these notions of equality, flexible roles, and support for the family unit.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: The Provider, the Bacon Bringer-Homer, the Winner of Bread

    Posted on January 14, 2013 | 9 Comments
    We need to be there through the good and bad, thick and thin, silly times and serious times.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: The Most Important Thing is to Have Options

    Posted on January 11, 2013 | 7 Comments
    The other thing is that there's really no such thing as "having it all." At least, not for me.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: The Blessings of Both Worlds

    Posted on January 9, 2013 | 3 Comments
    My job provides a different type of stimulation, adult conversation and a sense of pride since I am good at what I do.

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  • Parenthood Juggle: Just as Valuable

    Posted on January 7, 2013 | 7 Comments
    As a woman, I wasn't supposed to be actively seeking someone to marry, right?

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  • Parenthood Juggle: From SAHM to Single Parent

    Posted on December 31, 2012 | 10 Comments
    I couldn't quite believe my bishop had confidence in my ability to be in charge. "Are you sure about this?" I asked him. "My life is falling apart right now."

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