Ditching Your Career in Favor of Stay-at-home Mom Status and Other Nutty Acts of the Later Mom by Pamela Francis
My sisters all have kids. My sisters all have jobs. My sisters are all younger than I.
None of my sisters had their children past the age of 35. I thought I was so special. So… counter-norm. So… Dr. Laura Schlessinger when I decided I would not return to work directly after having a baby. I was quite the judging Judy against younger working women who I felt literally projectiled an infant in their 36th week, and were back at work in their 42nd. Oh, what? The sanctioned maternity leave and its accompanying pittance have run out, so it’s back to work we go…? I shook my head in dismay. I will not be doing that. I will wait until after I’ve had a life before I have children. And then I will give birth, I will bond with my baby, I will start a home-based business, and I will become one of those millionaire inventor moms who come up with brilliant gadgets and ideas that get picked up by QVC.
Because I was older, I knew that there was more to life than getting back to my desk and my “venti low fat pumpkin spice latte” while some paid stranger swaddles my little one and I miss out on all the meaningful mommy-ing. Car line…? Yaaay! Starbucks drive-up line…? Booo.
But also because I was older, and prone to making these kinds of decisions and judgements, I also missed out on a critical time in our economy’s development; the changing of the skillset guard: the tech boom, that would so change the face of marketable skills and employment in our society. And at 35, just when I was being groomed to take on more responsibility and demonstrate my career character’s arc… I was blissfully breastfeeding and cutting out shapes in construction paper. And at 42 when I was just about out of the woods, and my only child was seven, and I should have been deeply established within my industry, there I was again, choosing motherhood. The up-close-and-personal brand of motherhood that I espoused. No nannies, no daycares, and unfortunately no income commensurate with my expenses or my Master’s degree.
My home-based businesses held up and supported me as best they could for as long as they could. They were and have been a source of revenue, joy and pride. But now, as 50 approaches and I watch my younger sisters speed steadily towards empty-nest-ville with their jobs intact while I still have an 8th grader and a 1st grader to house, feed, educate and equip with skateboards, surfboards, and platinum-plated iphone 17s… I wonder if I made the right decisions back when I thought it would be novel to be the oldest mom at the parent-teacher conference.
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