My daughter is working a few jobs this summer, saving for her semester abroad in the fall. One is a paid internship where she's learning about non profits, writing, communications, graphics, event planning, volunteerism, and all those good things. One job is driving a disabled man to and from his school and group home. One is babysitting two young children each evening for a few hours between their camp time and the time their parents get home. Which do you think is the most valuable?
I bet a lot of you would pick the one in the office. At first glance, that makes the most sense. She's working in an professional environnment. She's picking up business contacts. She's working on important projects. She's learning about what life will be for her in two years -- if she decides not to continue on with graduate study after college -- or three years -- if she finishes her graduate degree -- and she enters the work force.
But I don't pick job number one. I also don't pick the job two -- it's great that she's helping this disabled young man -- and his parents are friends of ours -- and she's making a little extra money, but this is only a couple of days a week and really is all about the driving.
Yes, I pick job number 3.
In this job, my daughter's seeing a lot of actual life right in front of her. Both parents are professionals with high powered jobs. They live and work within a couple of mile radius, and they have two young children about eighteen months apart in age.
My daughter is seeing what happens when you have a two career family. She's seeing the parents basically always trying to keep their two kids' care straightened out. They drop their little ones off early for day care/camp and then my daughter picks them up at 5:00. She brings them home, cooks them dinner, tries to work with them in the work books their mother wants them to use during the summer when school's not in session, plays with them for a bit, and bathes them. Their harried mother or exhausted father comes home anytime between 6:30 and 9:00, when the children are ready for bed or already asleep.
In between, they touch base with my daughter throughout the day. Is this one going to be home early enough to bring the kids to their t-ball game? Is that parent able to pay my daughter for the week? Who will get the extra car seats out of her car for the weekend? Who has the longer day? How long will they get to see their kids for that evening?
My daughter grew up in a very different household. When she was very young, I worked half time in New York, half time from home, and I remember the frantic feeling when the babysitter called at 5:00 am after her son had gotten sick overnight and we couldn't figure out who was going to stay home; how guilty I felt when I didn't cook dinner because I was too tired when I got home, and the myriad of details about basic life that I worried about all the time. When my daughter was three, I left my job, pregnant with my second girl, knowing I needed it. I was fortunate, and I'm clear about that. However tight we've been financially all these years, at least I had a choice.
I never felt as impassioned about my career as I did about raising my children. Some of that may have been the time I was raised in, or how I feel about work and life in general, or a whole other host of factors, but for me, the two simply weren't going to mesh. For so many others, this issue is age-old, and now as my daughter prepares to become an adult in the world, she's having to ask herself, or at least think about, what she wants and how she might go about getting it. She says she definitely wants children, but she also definitely wants a career. She will work hard over the next however many years to establish that career, and then a time may come when she is ready for children. It's how to blend the two that will come into play.
That's what this babysitting job is very handy for. She's seeing first hand that something will likely have to give. Will it be her sanity? Will it be the children? Will she wait and hold off on kids so she can enjoy a career first? Will she have them and hire someone full time to care for them, and then, will she be the kind of mother she plans on being? Will she have two kids instead of three, or one instead of two? Will she career for a while and then stay at home for a while and then career again? Will it be okay if she misses t-ball games or that she won't see her kids for more than a few minutes some days? That's what this job is teaching her. Everything will come down to choices, and some will be choices she won't like to make.
I support whatever she chooses to do -- work outside the home, work inside the home, career, no career, kids, no kids....I've got her back. But I do feel badly for her: the choices she will make, as a modern woman with a career and a family (if she decides to go that route) will sometimes be painful or agonizing. They are not decisions I've had to grapple with in a long time. I don't know the answers.
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