Growing up, I always knew I would work for a living, even after getting married, and even after having children. I got my first job when I was fourteen, and from that moment on I’ve taken pride in earning a paycheck, interacting with coworkers and customers, and applying my skills, even if I didn’t always love my job and some days the only skill I applied was deftly stuffing hundreds of envelopes with nary a papercut. When I got pregnant last year, returning to work after my son’s birth was never a question; I would work, I had to work, I wanted to work. I didn’t start questioning this non-decision decision until after I became a mother and I realized that, for all the good having a job does to my bank account and my psyche, it’s also really, really HARD.
Read the rest of this entry

I never thought I’d become one of those women whose priorities so obviously shifted once I became a mother. Of course I’d want my family to think they were my top priority (because they are), but I also thought I could make my bosses and coworkers feel like work was my top priority, even if common sense told them it couldn’t possibly be. I just thought that in the best of all possible worlds I could be everything to everyone—the best mom, the best employee—and no one would feel like they were getting the short end of the me stick (except maybe myself, but oh, isn’t martyrdom the curse of the modern mommy?).

Read the rest of this entry