Career Advancement in the Field of Motherhood

I am a career mommy. I’m revisiting blogging as I contemplate adding another child to our family.

This post is a little on the overwrought, serious end of the spectrum, but I wanted to delve into this a little before I tell you my kids say the darndest things stories.

I think of myself as a career mommy for several reasons. The biggest of these is that this is the job I’ve always wanted and planned on and for. I have hobbies outside mothering, but I’m happy and comfortable with the fact that much of what I read, think and write about is related to being a parent. I think this is similar to many other dedicated professionals who are engrossed in their fields. I also don’t have any plans to leave the field in the near future. In fact, I view the decision of what to do after my children no longer require full-time care with trepidation. Although I tentatively plan on four children (a number some people already consider excessively large), early retirement is inevitable.

I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. Granted, as a child and teen, I imagined that I would have a fabulous professional career before I embarked on this second domestic one. I was never very sure, though, what that career would be and, I suspect not at all coincidentally, it never materialized.

This truly is my dream job. It lacks a fabulous salary and (most) people are not impressed at cocktail parties, but it’s the thing I always imagined and hoped to be doing with my life and it has turned out to be even more fulfilling, challenging and interesting than I anticipated. It’s also much harder, but, in a sense, that difficulty validates the worth of the work I do. If it were easy, would I feel so sure that what I’m doing is essential and valuable? I doubt it.

I have to acknowledge the degree of luck involved in my being in this position. I did not select my spouse for his ability and desire to support a family on a single income (though I did firmly establish that he wanted children). His professional and academic status figured into my attraction to him, but I appreciated it primarily as something that spoke well of his intelligence and work ethic and granted social status. On one hand, given my desire to be a stay home with children, this seems bizarre. On the other, I believe that my refusal to be single-minded and business-like in the pursuit of a life partner was a major contributor to my having ended up with such a good one (but that’s a separate topic).

My major complaint about this line of work is the lack of satisfying professional evaluation. In short, no one tells me I’m doing a good job. Learning to get by with mostly intrinsic validation is a struggle, but one that I think is worthwhile and dovetails nicely with my attempts to raise my children to be internally motivated.

I told a friend over a glass of wine a few weeks ago that in deciding to have another child I was giving myself a promotion. I said it lightly, but the aptness of the metaphor keeps striking me. We are planning on having a third child in a year or so and my feelings about this are difficult to explain. Of course I know that this will complicate my life and increase my workload. I see the symmetry in our current family of four. My children are no longer babies and become easier (in some ways) to live with all the time. But I’m not done. These amazing, fascinating, aggravating, beautiful children are my greatest work; I relish this work and am up for more.