Last week, Jennifer Romaniuk wrote the Motherlode with a passionate parental quandary. “I voluntarily walked away from a promising career,” she e-mailed. “I had no idea how long it would take to claw my way back.” The decision to stay home seemed like the right one when she made it. Spending more time with her children would be fun; ending the race between work and child care for her two kids would make life feel less daunting for her and for her fast-tracked husband.
But when the child-care pressures began to ease, Ms. Romaniuk was a different person in a different employment market, overqualified for the entry level but not experienced enough for senior positions, and facing businesses (in her case, law firms) who aren’t taking many chances on employees any more. Re-entry hasn’t just been hard, it has been making her regret the choice she made almost a decade ago.
It’s one peril of all the conversation that surrounds the choices parents make when their children are young (primarily mothers, but fathers as well): when we emerge, we may feel less like one person in the midst of a transition than like some sort of cautionary tale, or icon of the ways policy and culture undermine women and parents. It’s hard to view ourselves with compassion when judgments are more common than understanding. Parents moving in and out of the job search right now aren’t the only ones in transition. The ways we see work and gender and balance are shifting as well. The result is a world in which it’s nearly impossible not to find some way to regret our choices while at the same time being forced to contemplate how “lucky” we were to have the ability to make the choice.
But this conversation was exceptional, both for its relative lack of harsh judgment and for its willingness to accept the premise that as “lucky” as Ms. Romaniuk might have been to have the financial ability to stay at home with her kids, she might indeed be feeling pretty unlucky now. Readers had much direct advice for Ms. Romaniuk. I also heard from Carol Fishman Cohen, co-author of “Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home-Moms Who Want to Return to Work” (sorry, guys, no gender equity in that title), who vehemently disagreed with Ms. Romaniuk’s frustrated declaration that “if you choose to step away from your career, you might never get it back.” She sent me seven steps to restarting a career (which I’ve invited her to post here in the comments section) that aptly summarized many suggestions: network, open yourself to new options, volunteer, persist.
But many of us, myself included, heard in this mother’s frustrated words a need for something more than career advice. When a person has identified with a particular career for much, if not all, of her (or his) adult life, changing that is rarely easy. But most parents change it at a moment when the need for that change feels overwhelming: a new baby, or the “daunting” combination of child-care needs, employment pressures and “grumpy, hungry children” that Ms. Romaniuk described. It’s a relief to just let one side of that see-saw drop.
It’s later — when the grumpy, hungry children are older, when the baby is walking herself to school, when the wild immediacy of life has calmed — that the full impact of the change intrudes itself. Even people who loathed their former jobs, or who left the business world planning an eventual shift to art or writing or entrepreneurship, or who are more than happy in an at-home role, can find themselves blindsided. When the baby is tiny, or the children are all under 5, or the special needs demand constant advocacy, we don’t have to find our place in the world — our place has got an iron grip around our knees. It’s only when that grip loosens that the onus is back on us.
And that’s the tough part. How many books have been written to ease us through transitions and change? How many poems and songs and odes and Web sites dedicated to figuring out who we are in the world? Oodles. One transitive moment is not the time to look back and assess — it’s anything but.
So my advice to Jennifer echoes the words of lynninny, AW, and CC Mom: try to take the long view (or maybe, for the moment, don’t take any view at all). It’s not just that “what’s done is done,” but that the way you really feel about your years and choices is colored by your current discouragement.
I’ve been there. I think most of us have. There is a moment, in any transition, when you are at the bottom of the next climb and the whole slog just looks impossible. My advice with respect to the slog is to find a way — any way — to enjoy it. If you’re a list maker, make the best lists you can and relish every check mark. Love interviewing? Relish every interview for itself. Get dressed every morning whether you’re going to work or not. And check out my friend Amy Gutman’s Plan B Nation blog for a way into a community that’s more about the economics and social impact of the challenges of a career change at this moment than about the way parenthood affects that journey. Sometimes it’s time to step out of that part of your identity socially as well as in the career sense. (I found that community in The Well a decade ago, when I was certain I would never, ever be able to create a real career again. You can get a sense of my emotions at the time from my username: kjinexile.)
Career-wise, find a few people who you “want to be when you grow up” and look at their arcs. Ten years ago, where were they? What were they doing? Can you do any of it? That’s another great way to try to break through what feels like an impasse. “Think outside the box” is solid advice (and it appeared many times), but it helps to have a starting place for those thoughts.
I see this — the “re-entry” — as just one more thing parents of both sexes need to keep out in the open. The conversation may provoke judgment, but it also promotes change. People who were able to work straight through having a family may remember that different circumstances — a move, a child with particular needs, social pressure — might have changed their course, while parents who’ve “on-ramped” can work to make it easier for others in their fields. Every single parent, everywhere, of any sex, solved the problem of having babies who needed full-time care at some point. Every single parent of young school-age children daily solves the problem of where those children will be from 3:00 on. We need to recognize those things far more often, so that when our solutions are failing, or we’re changing stages, we know right away that we’re not the only ones who’ve “been there.”
A shorter version of this post appeared in print on Oct. 18, on Page D2.
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