Here's Why I'm a Better Mom When I'm Working Part-Time

By Cara Strickland

‘I refuel with work the way I eat, or hydrate, or wash my hair.’

Kyle Nieber for Unsplash

I still remember exactly how I felt when I saw the positive pregnancy test, my blood pounding in my ears. I wasn’t unhappy, exactly. I was already feeling protective of the potential nestled inside me. My body shook and my teeth chattered. I wasn’t just scared, I was petrified. 

Rewind just a few months. I was happy with my work as a full time freelance writer mostly writing about food, travel and beverages. For at least part of my job, I got to eat in restaurants, stay in hotels, sip craft cocktails, and mix with people I deeply respected in the food and drink world. For the other part, I was staying up until 4am to meet a last-minute deadline, hustling for new clients and meeting daily word counts. It could be stressful, but it was a job I’d built from scratch. I loved everything about it. 

As I drove to my partner’s workplace, thoughts raced through my head. I wasn’t worried about what he would say—he had been excited about the prospect of having kids. I was the one who wasn’t so sure. I was skeptical of the idea that I could have it all—and I liked what I had so much. 

I told him the news and he cried and we hugged. We walked for a while, letting it sink in. “I had really hoped to go to Greece before I got pregnant,” I ventured. 

“We can take the baby,” he said. 

I thought about that for a minute. International travel with an infant, waking around the clock somewhere other than my cozy home. 

“Maybe in a few years,” I said. It was hard not to think about all I might have to give up. 

‘We’ve come to measure our worth as mothers in units of time expenditure, as if the sheer number of hours we choose to spend with our children is the most accurate reflection of our love…’

It turns out I’m not alone in these feelings. Dr. Molly Millwood, author of To Have and To Hold: Motherhood, Marriage & The Modern Dilemma, spoke to me both from her experience as a parent and a clinical psychologist. “Somehow we’ve come to measure our worth as mothers in units of time expenditure, as if the sheer number of hours we choose to spend with our children is the most accurate reflection of our love for them and our commitment to their wellbeing,” she says. “This myth fuels an enormous amount of maternal guilt, driving women to feel vaguely uneasy at best, and painfully guilty at worst, when they are away from their young children.” I was already feeling a pull to do things without my child, and she hadn’t even been born yet. 

*

There were things I could do to prepare, I thought. I was finishing up a Master’s degree in nonfiction as I began to feel sicker and sicker. I said yes to every project and assignment, not sure how long it would be after the baby arrived before I’d be able to take on work again. 

I could write while the baby slept, right? If I couldn’t write, surely I’d be able to read? I was clinging to myself, to the things that had always made me me. 

I finished writing an assignment the morning I went to my last doctor’s appointment. I went straight from there to the hospital to be induced. The next day, at 4am, I held my daughter in my arms for the first time.

I was surprised by the euphoria I felt after giving birth. My pregnancy had been physically and mentally hard, and as my symptoms eased, even my recovery pain felt better in comparison. I began to embrace parenthood like any other assignment—I did research, I listened to the experts, I took advantage of the tools at my disposal. 

This I know how to do. It felt like that first cup of coffee at the beginning of a productive day—a shot of energy and purpose. 

But no amount of research or lactation consultation or renting of huge breast pumps could get milk from me into my daughter. There was no procedure to prepare me for being so tired that I once literally sleepwalked to bed. I still couldn’t understand anything she was trying to tell me, no matter how she persisted in trying. 

Just a couple of weeks after she was born, I took a meeting with a new magazine. I met the publisher for coffee, still walking with pain in every step. But we talked about the local food and drink scene, about my ideas for stories, and suddenly something clicked into place. This I know how to do. It felt like that first cup of coffee at the beginning of a productive day—a shot of energy and purpose. 

Kendra Wesley for Unsplash

I had planned to take off four months for a DIY maternity leave, but I only made it three. The lure of sinking into work again proved too strong. I accepted an essay assignment, a reported piece. I interviewed a baker sitting at a grocery store while feeding my infant a bottle. 

This all jives with Dr. Millwood’s conclusions. “For many, if not most, mothers, our ability to foster our children’s well-being is increased when we can step away from them. When we can cultivate a sense of separateness from our children and nurture the parts of our identities that are distinct from motherhood, we are much more likely to show up for them as our best selves.” At those meetings, or immersed in a story, I did feel like the best version of myself. 

I planned to hit the ground running in January, to start finding new clients and reconnecting with current ones. My daughter was born in the summer of 2019, so you can guess what’s coming next. January and February were on track, I was writing almost as much as I had before, taking advantage of two naps a day and some generous care from my mom a few hours a week. But March brought lockdown, a pause for the food, drink and travel industry, and to seeing anyone but my husband and daughter. We were alone. 

‘For many, if not most mothers, our ability to foster our children’s well-being is increased when we can step away from them.’

In the months since my daughter was born, I’d fought hard to maintain my sense of self. We went on dates. I read books while she slept on my shoulder. Occasionally, I’d see a friend. But now everything felt dangerous. Preserving myself began to mean something different. 

Or did it? 

In those months where we relied on my husband’s paycheck, I would do a little writing. I pieced together something that looked an awful lot like a book, or work on an assignment. After I’d finish for the day, I felt like I could breathe again, leaving me relieved but conflicted. 

Recently my husband and I were working through some of the Gottmans’ Love Maps questions. Where do you feel most competent? Was one of them. It stopped me in my tracks. I knew without question that for me, that place is work. There, I know what I’m doing. There, I feel like I’m my best self. Why wouldn’t I want to be working more? 

In so many other ways, I feel out of my depth in my life. I’ve never been a parent before, and never navigated a pandemic. Relationships of all kinds are hard at the best of times. Work is one place where things don’t feel like they have completely changed. 

It turns out I’ve intuited something data confirms. “Research shows that the happiness we associate with parenthood is generated more by reflection and meaning-making than by the concrete acts of caring for and being with our children,” says Millwood. “Many of the women I work with describe feeling overwhelmed with joy and love when they are not actively engaged with their children—when they are gazing upon their sleeping faces at night, or looking at an old video on their phone, or reflecting on a sweet moment earlier that day, or writing in their journals.” At the end of my time away from her, I’m eager to see my girl, ready to read that book for the millionth time. I take a little of my best self back to her. 

For so many reasons, it makes the most sense for our family for me to stay home with our daughter right now, back to a few hours a week of childcare from my mom. It makes sense for me to carve out the time to work when I can, allowing those stolen moments to help me better savor the great portion of togetherness. One day, probably much sooner than I think, this arrangement will all change once again. 

At the end of my time away from her, I’m eager to see my girl, ready to read that book for the millionth time. I take a little of my best self back to her. 

In these days, I have learned to savor my work as if it was a good bar of chocolate. I sink into it like the most luxurious bath. My work as a parent is valuable, but it is also fleeting. The things I do in my day to day with my daughter might not be the things I do by the time you read this essay. In parenting, the days are long and the years are short, we are told. In my chosen work, I don’t care how long the days are, and I hope the years stretch on for decades. 

I still wrestle with what kind of mother this makes me, sometimes. I grew up with stay-at-home motherhood as an ideal, and it’s hard now to reconcile that with my own desire to work as much as I can. Was I just not built to be a mother? It’s a little late for regrets. Most of the time, I end my wrestling matches thinking about passion—it’s what I bring to my work, to my relationships, to my snuggles with my daughter. The more I tap into it, the more it flows through and around me. I refuel with work the way I eat, or hydrate, or wash my hair. My need to work with my brain is just as real. I leave my daughter empty, but I return full. 

Read More:

I Finally Have Help With My Kids—But I’m Still Not Happy

Cara Strickland is an award-winning writer specializing in food and drink, relationships, parenting, and books. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Salon, Slate, Southwest, eHarmony, Time Out, Atlas Obscura, JSTOR Daily, The Rumpus, and others. Connect with her further at carastrickland.com.