Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer "radical empathy" and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety.
For Mother's Day, the show has a special episode on dealing with guilt while being a mother. Here, the Sugars offer advice to Debating Mom, who is struggling with balancing her career ambitions and her new role as a mother.
Dear Sugars,
I am a 30-year-old living in Brooklyn, N.Y. I have been ambitious my entire life and have had a very successful career thus far. I have always loved my work, taking pride in it, and I currently make more than my husband.
For a good portion of my life, I thought I would never have children due to medical complications. We were actually not trying to have a baby, but three months ago our miracle arrived! He is the new joy of my life. I wake up every day and go to bed thinking of him. I never thought I would debate going back to work or not, but I am at a crossroads. I love my little boy and I can't imagine not being present for all of his firsts. The thought of going back to work sickens me and I don't know what to do.
Due to the nature of my profession it is impossible to be part time. I have never been a person to not give 100 percent of myself. That's why I was so successful at my job, and why I feel like going back will not allow me to give the same 100 percent to my son. Do I quit the job I thought I loved to stay home with my baby and hope to regain my career once he's older? Or do I join the millions of other women who juggle motherhood and professionalism daily?
Yours,
Debating Mom
Cheryl Strayed: I want to just say to you Debating Mom, welcome to motherhood. This kind of conflict is part of being a mother, even if you don't have a full-time career. We have a very strong narrative in this culture — "Who's the good mother?" Even though many of us reject this notion, it's the mother who doesn't work outside the home, it's the mother who is great at baking cookies, is always there for everyone and volunteers at the school.
I know lots of women who do fulfill that, and they're great people, and they too feel conflicted. They say to me, "Oh, I sometimes wonder if I should be modeling for my kids having a career and being more independent in the world." I don't think a woman who has a career is any more independent than a woman who doesn't have a career, but I think these narratives about who mothers are have been really put in black and white terms.
And so, Debating Mom, I think you should do what you want to do. If you were writing to us and saying, "I really love my son and I want to give him 100 percent, but I really miss my job, should I go back to work?" I would say go back to work. But what you're saying is ...
Steve Almond: "The thought of going back to work sickens me." Right. As a culture we have set for mothers two impossible tasks side-by-side. There's nobody who thinks they got the balance right. There's no mom who's in this situation of two very strong drives — the drive to be with the baby or babies at home, and the drive to continue the work, the important work that they feel they're called to do in the world. It seems to me that there's nobody, no mom, who says, "I did it right, I did it perfectly."
The dilemma that Debating Mom is facing is that it's really her ambition against her baby. That sense of "I want to do it 100 percent" is part of the culprit here. It has the feeling of the kind of expectation that we put on ourselves that makes ambitious people succeed, but that oftentimes makes them very unhappy along the way. There's a stark choice that you have. The way that you framed it, maybe you need to try to reframe it so it isn't just work or the baby. My sense is this is a dilemma that lots of very ambitious moms are facing.
I think I would ask you to consider whether it's a good idea to give yourself a moratorium. It doesn't have to be five years, it doesn't even have to be two years. But just give yourself a few months to be at home with your baby and see how much you really enjoy that life. Try not to see it as a binary where your baby is the enemy of your ambition, and your ambition is the enemy of spending time with your baby.
You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. This week is a special Mother's Day episode on guilt and motherhood. They further consider this letter from Debating Mom, and take on a second question from a woman struggling to take care of her dying mother in the first months of her newborn son's life.
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