The other day I realized how many women I know went to school to become nurses only to trade in their careers shortly thereafter to become full-time stay-at-home moms. My unenlightened knee-jerk reaction was to mourn the time and effort and money they spent going to school and jumping through hoops and suffering the trial-by-fire of on-the-job medical training only to end up doing something that requires no training, no degree, not even a basic skills test or competency exam. What a waste! And then I slapped myself upside the head because, hello, going to nursing school before becoming a mother is downright genius. What better background to have as a mom than expertise in bandaging wounds, bringing down fevers, and kissing owies (although I don’t think that last bit’s part of the standard nursing school curriculum).

Anecdotal wisdom tells us that women (and mothers specifically) are better and more creative multitaskers than men, and there’s no doubt that many of the skills we hone as parents (time management, conflict resolution, cramming down a sandwich while on a conference call and de-spamming our inbox and dusting the bookshelf) make us better employees. What I’d never stopped to consider, though, was how it works the other way around. What are the things we learn in school and/or on the job that directly translate into our becoming better mothers? (Did your time at the pastry academy prepare you for kindergarten bake sales, and do you deliver?)

Obviously, getting an education for education’s sake is a worthy enough goal in and of itself, so I’m in no way implying that women who want to be full-time SAHMs don’t need or deserve an education and practical job skills. Education is important for everyone, regardless of whether they plan to “use” it in the traditional sense, and having a learned background in just about anything can only benefit our kids, as it gives us a place to start from–whether that’s car mechanics or ancient Greek mythology or cell biology–as we teach them about life.

What I’m interested in here is not how general book-learnin’ knowledge has shaped your life as a parent but whether the subject-specific skills you earned in school or the workforce have had a practical application in your role as a mother. Nurses, teachers, cooks, chauffeurs…that’s easy; I get that. But as an editor, I can only hope that one day my talent for punctuation usage will come in just as handy in raising my son.

What career skills have helped you become a better mother? Did you choose your career with a mind to how it would fold into your role as a mother? If not, do you wish you had? Do you think women trained in certain disciplines make better mothers?