EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
KID
QUIPS
During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
First Years
|
||||
|
The first working mother I knew was my own. With my arrival, she became a single mother of three. She worked out of necessity. She had two more children and, despite a marriage here and there, retained her working status. Again, by necessity. It wasn’t uncommon in the 1970s for women to work outside the home, as they say, though it became a heated debate. Should she or shouldn’t she? Many mothers, like my own, didn’t have the luxury of choice. Women of a certain class have always labored outside the home a fact unacknowledged until more middle-class women joined the work force. How’d she do it with five, I wondered as I returned to full-time work when my single child was 16 months old. I’d maintained a two-thirds workload for a year, just to retain health benefits. Once, a colleague suggested I return to 100 percent sooner: I simply said, “I can’t imagine doing one single thing more than I am doing right now.” And I meant it. How did my mother do it? She worked as a waitress and occasionally in offices. When permitted, I did my homework at her workplace after school until her shifts ended. I occupied a corner table with my books and pencils and paper and obeyed her anxious admonitions about silence and good behavior. More often, she took risks. I became a so-called latchkey child and later, a latchkey child and after-school care provider to two younger siblings. While management might tolerate one well-behaved older kid, three were another matter. A nearby elderly relative helped when she could. But, most often my sisters and I were home alone, though it wasn’t a MacCauley Culkin kind of movie. My husband and I are fortunate to teach in higher education, with shifting schedules every semester. And even more fortunate to have supportive administrators. Our priority is to arrange our teaching schedules so one of us is free to care for baby. When that’s impossible, eager grandparents step in. So far we have kept child care in the family, or at least in the neighborhood. On the one day when neither a parent nor grandparents are available, the mother of a neighborhood playmate watches our little one. Still, that leaves working itself. Teaching, like so many jobs, is consuming it requires an ongoing intellectual and emotional commitment. It isn’t just hours in the classroom, it’s also meetings and preparation and grading. Since the baby’s arrival, I have learned to say no. No to yet another committee, no to a new program. And my colleagues, bless them, have learned not to ask. Sometimes they even remind me to refuse something for which I’m about to volunteer. I am learning to manage my time more efficiently. I still do my job but differently. This shift is echoed at home. Yes, standards have relaxed. Our home, always cozy, always casual, is now, well, even more so. Everything gets done eventually. What about the issues that can’t be measured? Energy. Health. Relationships. The family. Sometimes I arrive home at the end of my workweek and wish I could just dig a big hole and crawl in it and sleep. I eye my son’s spade and shovel. No, this isn’t a death wish. It’s a hibernation wish, a rejuvenation wish. There is just so much of me to go around. I do feel stretched, though not in a yogic way. My mother didn’t stretch. She drank. She took it out on us, the kids, in all sorts of ways that forever changed our relationships with her. I have what my mother did not: a true co-parent; a support network; a workplace that does more than tolerate children. Indeed, when the time comes that our little guy can outrun his grandparents and our schedules no longer accommodate his needs, I won’t have to park him in a corner of my office or classroom or send him home alone. My workplace, like many others, offers a licensed child-care center on campus (part of our early child education program) where he’ll not only be cared for but also learn in a nurturing, intellectually stimulating environment with Mom literally only steps away. All this helps to make me stretch, helps ensure that there’s enough of me to share with my son at the end of the day. My experiences as the daughter of a working parent help me understand how the decisions I make affect my child. The little girl who studied while her mother waited tables is still learning lessons. She knows she’s fortunate, privileged even, and that there are others out there who struggle more than she. She knows it’s a different world but that too many children often still have no place to go. Her son is a lucky one. Lisa Alvarez, an English professor at Irvine Valley College, lives in Laguna Beach with her husband and 16-month-old son, Louis. She is a regular contributor to this column. |
||||
RSS Subscribe
Digg This ArticleSEARCH THE SITE
