To stay home or not to stay home?  Since long before my daughter was born, I had determined that I would never be a stay at home mom.  I couldn't imagine having to "give up my career" for my children, and I didn't want to become one of "those" moms.  Did I have a lot to learn.  The struggle between being a stay at home mom and a career women has long divided women, not only creating rifts among moms that choose different paths but also within moms who wish that they could do both.  Many feminists argue that stay at home moms are unhappier because they're alone all day and have fewer interactions with their peers, while stay-at-home moms argue that career women are unhappier because they have to work long hours and miss opportunities to spend time with their children.  How does one decide what to do when this issue still seems so unresolved in our society?

I started my own internal conflict with this probably much earlier than I needed to.  I have much older siblings whom I had the opportunity to observe making these decisions for themselves.  One sister chose to stick with her demanding career and get a nanny for her two kids while the other decided to stay at home with her three.  It still amazes me that the seemingly simple decision to stay at home versus go back to work can tear two sisters apart.  I realized that if I didn't come to terms with this issue right away that I might be subject to this happening to me as well.  I decided that I wanted my career to come first.  So, I planned out the next ten years of my life.  Go to grad school, do a post-doc, get a job, have a baby, then get tenure.  Well...things change.  One unexpected, but welcomed, pregnancy later, and I found myself having to make new decisions.

Despite ten years of lengthy discussions on the subject, all my thoughts went out the window when I met my daughter for the first time.  Motherhood was nothing that I expected it to be.  I loved being a mom more than I ever could have imagined possible.  But I still loved my career.  At first, I was determined that I could have both.  'What was all the fuss about?'  'Of course I could have both.'  'I just have to work really hard and prove it.'  'All those other moms out there are just whiny.'  So, I strapped my daughter to my back with my trendy baby-carrier and went to work.  I finished my dissertation and my husband and I both went on to start postdocs, both hoping to eventually start tenure-track professorships some day.

Two and a half years later...I was exhausted.  I was bitter.  And I was ashamed of myself for thinking I was better than all the other mothers that came before me.  Being a mom is hard.  Being an academic is hard.  How in the world did I think I could do both?  I found myself yelling at my daughter and husband too much, angry when they kept me from doing my work.  And I found myself hating my work when it kept me from being a good mom.  I felt like I was failing at everything.  I needed to make a change.  My postdoc was just about to end and my husband had finally landed his dream job.  Now was the time to make that change.

When I began to consider my options...I was discouraged. I didn't want to give up my career, but I was so burned out.  Everyone I talked to in my field would tell me the same thing.  "Keep your foot in the door.  If you don't, you'll never get back in."  How could I do that when I didn't even have the energy to try to find a job?  Or the time?  I certainly didn't have any extra time to find a job for after my postdoc and my daughter wouldn't have understood if I had come home every day from work and spent that time job searching rather than loving her.  There were options for me at my husband's new job, but if we both started a new job, who would take care of getting ourselves and our daughter settled into a new home and a new life in a new state?  The thought of how much stress that would be paralyzed me.

Why is it that a woman who is just entering the workforce during her most important years for childbearing has to make a long term decision to "give up" her career?  When my daughter starts preschool, I'll be 30.  The average woman in the US lives to be almost 80.  That's 50 more years of my life after my daughter starts school!  No wonder women are so stressed.  They are told that if they choose to stay home with their kids, they're going to have to give up their careers for the next 50 years of their lives!  Even if I have another kid and can't start my career again until I'm say 34 and I decide to retire at 65, that's still 31 years that I can have my career!

So that's where I am today.  I've decided to take the year off from my career to spend some time at home with my daughter before she heads off to preschool.  I want to spend this year removing stress from my life so that we can have a calm and peaceful environment for our whole family.  I want to be a loving mom and a patient wife during my husband's first year as a professor.  But I'm NOT giving up my career.  I'm just taking a sabbatical.  The decision is different for everyone based on their own needs and preferences, and the decision can even vary during a woman's life as her own needs and preferences change.  Right now I'm a mom, and next year I'll go back to work.  Maybe there will be things in my future that will prevent me from going back to work, but I'm not going to let it be my doubt that holds me back.  I can't do this alone, though.  I need your help.  We all need each other's help.  So, please follow me through this next year while I'm at home with my 2 year old and my PhD. Help keep me sane and help encourage me to come back stronger than ever next fall.  And hopefully through this blog, we can inspire other women to challenge the confines of "the system" and move our society forward.

Comments?  Email thescienceofmotherhood@gmail.com