Tales of The Part Time Working Mom

This seems like the ideal set up. In a lot of ways it is. Part time working moms get the best of both worlds. We get a fist full of life outside the home and a baby and kid to coo over all afternoon when work is finished. We can wipe clean our workday and see our kids with fresh eyes and perspective as they enter into the wider world beyond our home cocoon. 

More income is coming into the household, not a lot of income in my case but something to help with the daily round. My kids get to see me more then they would if I worked full time. I actually miss them in a day verses being so overloaded with parenting I am ready to ditch as soon as my co-parent arrives home.  I have time to pick them up from school or day care, hear about the day and go home to some play, dinner prep, down time and nursing. I get to role model for my girls a confident mama in the world taking on big projects with her family alongside her. Recently Sweetpea told me she wanted to work at the Botanic garden when she grew up. I have a reason to get dressed up in the morning, wash my nice clothes and throw a huge spit rag over it all in hopes I won't be blurped on before I get to work.

Our minds are filled with the details of our jobs as well as the details that make the engine of a family running steady. My partner shares the parenting load more. Home life and work life are split up and we both play an integral role in each place. A level of respect and harmony floats around us when I have a moment to notice it. 

I have others looking after my young ones who love, respect and care for them. I use the mantra it takes a village to raise a child and trust my babies are taken care of and its good for them to experience life and culture with more then just me and daddy. There is energy in the part time working mamas home. An energy of accomplishment, being present and a little bit of chaos. Two non-profit jobs cannot hire a cleaning person so we settle for a bit of dirt and clutter that gets scurried away when we have a party or friends over for dinner. 

Part time work has a lot of pros but like most life choices it is also not as dreamy as it seems.  The part time worker is not paid as well. We get no benefits except the benefit of more time with our family. We forgo a lot of self-time for work time. Creativity is an after thought that lives burning in my heart and only get touched upon occasionally. As a women and mother I often put the needs of my family or job first and suffer from not being authentic to the creative well within. Exercise only sometimes happens and usually involves taking an unwilling kid along. As a part time worker my experience is so unique. So many other part time workers have such a varied experience. Some work from home, or have to take the office with them everywhere. Some are on call, some have their own business. It’s a hard way to relate to others experience when the experience can look so vastly different. We are all united on having kids and making some money at the work we do but the similarities often stop there.

 There is no handy acronym for the part time working mom, not SAHM or working mom, you are kind of a hybrid. Finding good, affordable childcare that caters to working parents as well as SAHM is rough too. Full time day cares are too expensive and not what I want but part time day cares like mothers day out only sort of work and are full of SAHM so you feel a little isolated as a worker in their midst. 

Going from SAHM to working mom was a huge shift as well. I constantly compare my experience with my first to my second and try to measure up to what I did the first time around. I cannot be there for everything with Little Pickle and it is heart breaking. At the same time it is relieving to have more income and knowing she is being well taken care of by others so I can also do important work in the world.

As a part time working mom you feel the urge and pressure to do everything a SAHM does but half the time to do it. You want to take on the PTA and volunteer projects at the school, you want to make muffins and have long kid directed play times after school. You have the expectation that you can get all the housework done and dinner ready every evening. But there is just not enough time for it all. So it happens in chunks. Chunks of self-care used for writing dates and calling up dear friends to talk. Going to interesting events around town. Time to snuggle up with your husband and watch a show in the 2 hours between when the kids fall asleep and when it’s your time to turn in. Chunks of time and patience are key to well being. 

I salute you fellow PTWM! You are kicking butt on so many levels, now stop and give your self a much needed bath and book date.          

Kids & Stuff

As an activist and penny pincher for most of my life I have figured out a lot about not being materialistic, making do and up cycling most things. After becoming a parent I had to figure out a new relationship to stuff. There was all the baby stuff, needs verses wants I am still unclear of, we got almost all of it used but still accumulated a lot more things in our lives. Then it became toys, we love toys as a family and daddy and I kept a lot of childhood stuff we eagerly have passed onto Sweetpea. Then presents from family and friends just kept adding up. It worked in our favor that we moved so often so we could not accumulate too much but still our stuff factor is higher then I would like.

I am not only talking about what we own but also what my kid desires. Daddy and I recently had a very different take on what desire and stuff should look like in our lives. Daddy says that there will always be stuff my daughter will want in this world. He thinks we should support her desire to want things and be perfectly happy not getting any of it. His philosophy is she can always ask for it. This falls under the "we have integrity to set a firm boundary and stick to it style of parenting. "Also, she can desire all she wants knowing that she will not necessarily get whatever she has momentarily attached to.

Daddy and Sweetpea on their Saturdays together often head to the mall. They usually window-shop and spend spare change on the little rides there. They look at everything, she asks for it and for the most part he says no. Then they move on. She is so used to this interaction now that it does not seem to faze her that she will not get most of what she is asking for.

I never take Sweetpea to the mall. This window-shopping would drive me bonkers. Her asking for everything she comes into contact with overwhelms me. I only go to stores with a specific purpose and let her know ahead of time what we will be getting and that is it. She is not confused by our different styles and can get pleasure out of both experiences. 

We recently ran into a divergent point around some dolls. Sweetpea desired dolls that resembled tweaked out partygoer divas complete with gogo boots. I deemed the dolls to adult like for Sweetpea to be playing with at her age, daddy agreed, but seeing how much she liked them, printed out a picture for her to carry around of the dolls as if she had them. I was not sure how I felt about this but tried to be open and see what would happen. Would only sort of having them lead to her more greatly wanting them or would it curb the obsession? After a week of carrying the picture everywhere I decided to hide it. I was done having conversations about these bazaar dolls I was not ready to have my 4 year old playing with. Once the picture was gone she has not asked for it sense or brought up the dolls. 

Kaya' Bedroom James Mollison

  This was an experiment, mixing our two styles of parenting around stuff, in this case my "get rid of the temptation and the desire will go away" approach seemed to work best. Though I really appreciate my husbands chill nature around objects and desire. He can be very practical and light about it. Growing up I felt a burden to really want something in order to get it. I remember feeling guilty if I said in the store I wanted something and then when I came home not wanting it anymore and not knowing what to do. This happened more in my teen years but still brings up that fresh confusion around how crazy our culture is around stuff and the need for it.

How much do we actually need? I feel the desire for things now even stronger with the closing date for our first home approaching. Suddenly I am staring at websites looking at furniture just a few months ago I would never have considered a necessity. I know my little one is watching me react to stuff and the importance or lack of importance of it. I want her to see an un-materialistic and happy family valuing togetherness over money and objects. Still she lives in this culture that just seems to be getting more and more obsessed with us personalizing and buying everything, ahem, the new cokes with names on them, makes me gag. 

By Katrin Wells-Stein

Ultimately I want a healthy, happy kid who can read between the lines when she is being sold a bunch of crap she knows she does not need. I also want to be flexible enough myself to remember what it was like being a kid and saving up my allowance for weeks to buy a Barbie doll. I remember the feeling of excitement getting an American Girls Catalog and leafing through every page. I turned into a radical person who listened to riot girl, was self educated and traveled the world. I don't think Sweetpea needs to see the world through my adult eyes.  I will watch out for her and these more and more garish versions of kid’s stuff they seem to come up with but will at the same time not trample on her desires. It’s a fine balance as is all of parenting.