SURVIVING WORKING AND PARENTING
I never considered what would happen with my career once I had children. Many young professionals don’t consider the road beyond graduating from high school and forging the pathway to that sought after career. When life happened and I got married, within a year we had our first baby while both he and I were working and attending college. I was working in my chosen career and my husband was starting college. We’d never considered the cost of childcare and the rest is a speed trip we took into reality of raising kids.
As a mom who’d worked full time as an engineer through the birth of four kids and finding a way to pump milk to nurse each of them for an entire year after their birth while working, I can tell you, having a great partner who helps makes all the difference.
MINDSET CHECK
Family comes first, then career, and then anything else. As a working mom who is pursuing a career it takes more of a balancing game to be able to decide what is important to you at each phase of your career, marriage and parenting. Raising kids should always be number one since they are with you for life. Most careers have some leeway and give that if you have to take a job that you are able to get home early, have flexibility but the pay is low, doing so for the sake of the family is always best. For example, my mother in law was a social worker, but she and my father in law had six kids and she decided not to be a social worker, but to be a foster parent where she mentored other foster parents. When she was done raising kids, she went back to school for her Masters and within five years became a principle.
Parenting and working requires the tenacity to consider how a goal may not just affect your end game, but your family. Keep your mindset on a positive bent by feeding it with the care and feeding it needs. Finding other working moms, being there for each other, giving a positive word helps all of us succeed in the journey.
THE POWER OF SAYING NO
Saying ‘no’ isn’t easy for many ambitious working parents. You are so used to accommodating everyone’s needs. That needs to change. If you can’t do extra work after you get off the job, say so, and allow yourself to seek another job if the employer doesn’t have realistic expectations of the job.
PLANNING MAKES PERFECT
In order to survive managing a home, a marriage and your job, plan your day, your week, and your month. If you start to see unnecessary events that suck the time out of your schedule for rest, spending time with your kids, remove them. If you need to get stuff done around the house, delegate it. Everyone in the house should pitch in and if they have, but there is still much to do, hire it out or forget about it.
ANCHORING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH KIDS AND SPOUSE
With all the juggling of a career, raising a family, and maintaining a relationship, we sometimes forget to feed the relationships that count. Don’t push time aside from spending it with your kids and your spouse. Play with each other, cook together, shop together, watch movies as a family, make those relationships the priority over all else. When you anchor your relationships you have a continuous cheering section every time you get home from work.
By LM Preston
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