Woman, mother, career, and other floating definitions
March 03, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Chapter 2, Survey, Uncategorized, confusion, employment, feminism, online quizzes
My friend Peggy, aka the Career Encourager, has asked me to choose which of the following I would use to describe myself:
1 – I am a Working Mother
2 – I am a Woman with Children and a Career
3 – Other
Hmm. How would you answer that, readers?
The way I define myself keeps changing, is the problem. I’m going to be out of the mother business soon enough and never quite made it to feeling like a “Working Mother,” so I think the first option is out.
The second option,”I am a woman with children and a career” is a little better in that I was a “woman” before I was a mother, but it seems a little out of reach as well. I might, someday, get to call myself ”a woman with children and a job,” and then a few more years after that, I’d really like to retain the ”a woman with a job” part, too. But a “Woman with Children and Career?” “Careers” sound like such permanent and uninterupted things, things people have expressly gone to school to prepare for when they were young, worked away at for a three or so further decades, and then eventually retire from. Can the majority of mothers even do this? **Having a Career** sounds so intense and single-minded. While “intense” certainly fits me, what mother is ever free to be single-minded as well?
What I am is chronically multi-minded instead. And every one of my many minds is subject to sudden and unpredictable change as my children and my life and I all go lurching along together.
Which seems to leave only the last option: “other.” I’d probably have chosen that option anyway, being the obnoxious iconoclast that I am, but in this case I think it really is the only one that fits. In the end I think I choose “I am a woman:” or maybe, ”I (just) am,” period.
How about you?
Creative commons Child’s Drawing Photo by an0nym0usmus & Giraffe Photo by Timothy K. Hamilton (see great comment by Timothy, below!)
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Related Posts: Woman vs. rabbit hole: are we giving up too much?
Hanging in, and blonder, too
Trying it on for size: permanent 9-5 expat?
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Interesting question . . . I think that I am currently a mother who works. I don’t think I’m quite having a career at the moment and I spend more time busy with kid stuff than work life. My greatest work asset currently is being able to set my own hours and still having the fun (!) of running my kids around after school – that’s having it all in my book!
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Let’s see, since I am currently unemployed, and I have children at home, I would have to pick other. I don’t feel like a working mom. That is what a mom does in my opinion. On the other hand I don’t currently have a career, but I still have my children. When people used to ask me I would say I used to be a teacher but now I am staying home with my children. I don’t know why I felt the need to downplay staying home. I love being home with my children, however working was also part of who I was, am , whatever. So I guess I will go with other. I kind of rambled. I guess I could say I am the CEO of family S.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Doesn’t every mother work her butt off every day (and many nights too). Hmmm… I think I like “a mother who works at it every day AND occasionally gets a paid break (contract work)”
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I am so greatful for these great comments, all of which are so positively affirming of the work (you are RIGHT, Marsquat!!) of MOTHERING itself. I feel affirmed by these, too. I like Erica’s “CEO” title: very apt! (Reminds me: My friend Betsy recently gave me a great quote: “My working history is not the same as my employment history.”) Amen?!
I was thinking of Ann’s comment just now as I drove to pick up my daughter from something “last minute” today, which usually makes me grumpy but today I was thinking, “being with my daughter in the car, talking about misc. stuff and all — Ann’s right. This is a privilege.”
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I like the “woman with children and career” option. My work is with kids with autism (not autistic kids), so the identity-coming-first appeals to me. I also like that the children part comes before the career part (and very much hope this is how my daughter and son experience me).
I’m currently in the midst of deciding about a change in work location—and have the eye twitch to prove it is a stressful decision. It brings up the question of how many hours to spend working for money vs enjoying/helping/riding herd on my children. It makes me wonder if I can really “balance” both callings.
In my family, we seem to need both parents to work in order to live. I know lots of families make it on the amount of my husband’s salary, and sometimes I’d like for us to try . Then I could have one major “role” and no juggling. But, I have to admit that I would miss my paid work for more than the pay. It’s my creative outlet.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Thanks so much for your comment, Jan. What a beautiful parallel to draw from the kids you work with and the women we are, first and foremost, before attaching further labels. Because labels limit, don’t they? And labels fail, in our case, to take in account the many roles we are juggling, how complicated it is, and how individual our own decisions are and must be. Your answer also brings up again, for me, how vital it is for mothers to support each other and avoid the pointless “mommy wars” that depend on drawing harsh lines between us that don’t really exist. We are all trying, we all love our kids, and we all need both to eat and to live. And finally, I agree that sometimes work is not just about money. In fact, work is not “just” about any one thing, any more than women are “just” about one thing, and that’s entirely the point!
March 9th, 2008 at 3:57 am
Please put an attribution next to my photo, as required by my Creative Commons license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en
It should read “Photo by Timothy K. Hamilton”
Thank you, and thanks for using my photo.
March 9th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Hello Timothy,
Thanks for the note, and for making your terrific photos available for Creative Commons use! My intention absolutely (as a fellow artist) is to honor your CC license!! However, as a “learning point” here, I wonder if you can help me. I *did* give attribution by linking to your Flickr.com site, but of course didn’t know your real name from there. I’m also not sure I can wrap text and still put an attributive caption directly next to (or beneath) the photo and make sure it stays there, which is why I put attribution at the end of my post instead. (My reading of the Creative License itself is that it does not say HOW attribution must be made; however, it does require that attribution be given as the artist himself –e.g., you — requires. So in this case I will comply as you choose, if I can, or else remove your photo.)
Thanks yourself for helping ALL of us, and I will post your comment (and this response) in hopes it will help other bloggers (who generally poach pictures at will!!) with establishing a “best practices” here.
BYW: Would you consider contributing a guest tutorial about all of this? My previous posts on the subject continue to generate readers, and so it is an interesting — as well as important — topic!!
My posts on the subject:
Using photos on a blog
Copyright violation when blogging: a tricky subject)
Thanks much! “Almostgotit”
March 16th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Almost, I am still considering the question of how I would best name my priorities. I am clear on the order (wife, mother, worker, though I didn’t think of my work as a possible career until recently), but not the nomenclature.
Thanks for this, Mindy. I happen to know you are a highly-trained professional, and one who has been working for many years now, so I find it particularly interesting that you only recently started to think of your work as a “possible career.” Reminds me, as I need so often, that we can NEVER KNOW what other people’s lives feel like to them, from our perspective of looking from the outside in. (which is, of course, why envy is so stupid!)