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 at home rather than looking for a new job in our new location — plus, I’d promised in many a desperate infertile-woman prayer that if I could just be a mom, I would give it everything I had. I spent virtually every second with my baby boy. I felt guilty when I put him in the baby swing so I could work on freelance editing jobs.
Glenn’s program proved to be a bad fit, so we moved back to Utah. I started working part-time for my last employer, just one day a week in the office (baby at Grandma’s) plus several hours at home. My husband found work in his field at an engineering firm. We adopted our second son just nineteen months after our first.
When the kids were 2 and 4, Glenn found another Ph.D. Program — take two! We moved to California. With a one-third cut to his paycheck and the higher cost of living, we started sinking. The first year there left us $20,000 in debt. We should have asked for help from the church or the government that year, but I’m sure there was some denial involved about our level of need, and really, I didn’t even know where to start. I sold some stories to the Friend magazine, and that kept us in groceries. I began shopping my qualifications around locally, thinking I’d just pick up freelance work, and won the chance to write a few press releases for Glenn’s university.
Then, in May, the university opened a full-time PR position. I applied. I worried a lot about whether it was right for me to leave my kids. When I prayed about it, I received an answer very clearly: they would be fine, and we needed to stabilize financially for the kids who would join our family in the future. When I got the offer, I accepted. The university is in a small, isolated town, and the fact that a perfect job for me opened up there is hard to see as anything but a huge blessing. I loved that job more than anything I’d done before. Working for a non-profit was so fulfilling, and I began to think of myself as a science writer who could tackle just about any topic.
The boys went to a daycare at a local Lutheran church. Pickup and drop-off were simple with them both at the same place, and the unstructured summer setting worked fine for both of them. When school started, I enrolled our older son in kindergarten and my younger in preschool at the same place. But our first son had behavior challenges and was asked to leave the school. It broke his heart and mine. The public school was much better equipped to help him, and he was diagnosed with ADHD within a month. The new setup made pickup and drop-off more complicated, but my son was much happier.
That particular juggle worked for a good two years. Then we got our beautiful, spunky newborn daughter in foster placement.
We knew foster parenting was right for our family. But in spite of the classes and reading we completed to prepare for it, we didn’t comprehend everything it would require. Home visits, birth family visits, and extra medical appointments all took time from my work. When our daughter was seven months old, we said yes to what was supposed to be a temporary placement of a 3-year-old boy. Weeks stretched into months, and it became clear he’d be with us forever. That was great, but twice the foster kids meant twice the appointments, twice the visits. Because he was eligible for full-time Head Start at no cost, we had three different pickup/drop-off points for childcare, eating up an hour in the morning and an hour at night. And he was 3. He was like a tornado. A really cute one.
We carried on this way for about a year, sharing parenting duties as equally as we could. But Glenn needed to complete his Ph.D. — his funding wouldn’t last forever. I cut back to 30 hours a week so he could focus. Only then did I realize how much he had been helping. An extra ten hours a week didn’t cover it. My stress levels went through the roof. I remember driving around for three hours one evening trying to get everything we needed for the boys to play soccer — fuming and yelling the whole time. It probably wasn’t safe for me to be on the roads.
I took the kids on a trip to see my parents, leaving Glenn behind to work on his dissertation. During the long hours on the road, I concluded that something had to give, and it couldn’t be the kids. It had to be the job. On my return, I gave notice.
I worked half-time for two months while we found and trained my replacement, and then my family spent the rest of that academic year getting food assistance from our loving ward, which was a humbling and enriching experience. I let my health insurance lapse, because $200 a month seemed impossible, and I racked up a $12,000 emergency room bill for a kidney stone. I spent nap times and evenings helping Glenn with his academic job search, because there simply had to be a happy ending for all of this. He got lots of bites, and even interview trips, but no offers.
Still, it was a glorious day when he got that Ph.D. He then worked part time for the university as an instructor and part time for a grad-school buddy at a government agency. We completed the adoptions of our two foster children that summer. In the fall, more than a year after I’d quit my job, Glenn landed a job as a research professor in Montana, and we packed up and left.
After a year, Glenn moved to a tenure-track position. I was planning to wait until his faculty tuition benefit (half-off!) kicked in, but when our daughter started kindergarten in Fall 2012, I was bored. I started asking, and things moved quickly. In January, I started a Master’s program in Technical Communications with a full tuition waiver and a teaching assistantship. Considering how small and specialized a school Glenn’s employer is, it’s shocking that there’s a program here that’s so well suited to my interests. It’s challenging and exciting and fun. My older two boys (now 13 and 11) are able to handle themselves at home when I have afternoon classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For my younger kids, I trade babysitting with a friend.
My juggle has been about stages. My career isn’t where it would be if I’d worked without stopping for the last fifteen years, it’s true. But I have had great career experiences and been able to freelance during the periods when I haven’t been employed full time. That’s partly because when I have been in the workplace, I’ve made sure I kicked butt at what I did. I have not had an employer who didn’t want my services as a freelancer. So there aren’t gaps in my resume. This sounds a little snobby, I’m sure, but it’s important if you want a flexible career to choose a field that’s in demand (science communications is great!) and that you’re really good at.
I’ve glossed over the extra challenges that come from having kids who are not typical in the way they learn, develop, and behave. (ADHD is far from being our only challenge.) That’s something that no workplace is really prepared to support; parents of special-needs kids very often have to devote their lives to working with and advocating for their kids. I’ve done some of that. And I don’t regret having made it a priority.
My current stage is ramp-back-up. After I complete my Master’s at age 40, I’ll be able to have a flexible schedule as an instructor for a few years until my husband is eligible for his first sabbatical. At that point I may complete a Ph.D. of my own. Whether I do that or take another path, I’ll have lots of good years left for career focus and success.
–Submitted by Ana
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