Working part-time as a mom, part one

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ended a post on Em for Marvelous with “well, I’m not sure if this will be helpful for anyone, but here you go…?” …and then it has turned out to be one of my most popular posts. In fact, in a survey a few years ago, a reader specifically called out that exact line, saying, “If you say ‘I’m not sure if this will be helpful,’ I know it’s going to be one of my favorite posts!”

Reader, I am tempted to write that disclaimer on this post, because it feels deeply personal and highly specific to my unique circumstances. However, having written here for some time now, I know there’s a kind of inverse relationship going on, and it tracks with what I learned as a poet: that the more specific detail you can bring to a piece of writing, the more universally it will resonate. The details that seem so idiosyncratic are actually what make writing come alive for others, because in those details they can see the nuance of their own life.

I hope that holds true here. I want to write about working as a mom because it matters deeply to me, and I want to share this conversation with you smart, wonderful ladies, and I also want to capture it in the moment for my children to read one day.

And there’s one more reason: it’s important to me to be truthful about what I share here. That doesn’t mean sharing everything, but it does mean (so far as it’s possible) not misleading you – even unintentionally, even by omission. Many of you know me as a working parent. I would hate for one of you to look at me, having classified me as such, and wonder why you can’t fit all that I do into a week. I hope shedding a little more light into what working looks like for me right now can help with that.

As always – however similar, or not, our situations might be – I hope watching me wade through my decisions empowers you to make your own thoughtfully and confidently.

This is a long post (with more parts to follow!); I thought it might be helpful to break it up with headings. Settle in, friends!

Though not accurate to my day-to-day, it’s still the ultimate photo of me as a working mom :)

Some background on my work history:

I have worked for the same company my entire adult life – 13 years and counting. When I began, I worked a standard 9-5, Monday through Friday. When June was born, in 2016, I reduced my hours to 9-4. I was so grateful to be able to do this – it gave me the space to pick her up from daycare, come home and spend time together, and still get dinner on the table without our days feeling rushed. This schedule worked well for several years.

Annie’s birth and June’s entry into kindergarten lined up neatly, and when I returned from maternity leave in fall 2021, I reduced my hours again (to 9-3) to match June’s school hours. This was a specific goal I had been working toward for basically my entire career: once a child was in elementary school, I wanted my work to fit into their school hours, and to be there for pick-up and drop-off. (John and I share pick-up and drop-off duties, but it was still the goal!) This schedule, too, worked very well.

As you know, as of August 1, I kept my 9-3 hours and shortened my work week for the first time. I now work Monday through Thursday. As of January 1, I’m scheduled to drop one more work day, for a total of three each week. I anticipate that shift being more challenging than the five-to-four shift, but perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The reason for shortening my work week:

There are two main reasons and a number of smaller reasons.

First, we now have three children. That’s three people who have scheduled and unscheduled days off from school, who need to go to the doctor and the dentist, and who occasionally get sick and need to come home in the middle of the day. We wanted a parent who was more readily available for all of those things, so that each teacher workday or call from the school didn’t throw us into a resentful panic. Opening up a “free” day in the week goes a long way toward this.

Second, we now have three children :) After Annie was born and as our kids got older (and went to bed later), it became increasingly clear that much of the work I was doing for the household was being squeezed into hours that we (John and I) considered unideal: for example, grocery shopping at 9:30 at night. The addition of a third child and all the logistics that came with her (school paperwork, a wardrobe to maintain, food to prepare… you don’t need me to list it all) seemed to be a tipping point for our life. Things that we used to easily fit into our days, like evening walks and stretching, were getting squeezed out entirely. So together, John and I made the choice to essentially give me daytime “work hours” to do the increasing work of our household I’d already been doing, so we could both have more equal time to relax in the evenings and on weekends.

Some secondary reasons:

• Travel logistics are complicated with three young kids, and we travel a good bit (even if just across the state for the weekend). We wanted someone who could manage our exits and entries more smoothly.
• I hoped to feel less defensive over what felt like the little time I had to spend as I pleased in the evenings. Hoarding my time, as I think of it, is one of my least favorite tendencies of myself, and something I actively work to improve. But if there were structural things that could change so that John and I were more equally free to enjoy our unscheduled time, that felt like something we should pursue.
• Finally – and this, for me, was one of the harder ones to admit – I wanted to be more free to enjoy this unique season of my life. I wanted to meet up with a friend with our strollers and take a morning walk. I wanted to help a friend with a pop-up shop just for fun. I wanted to have more time to share my thoughts and the story of our life through my writing. I wanted to volunteer in our kids’ schools. I wanted to enjoy the fun (for me) work of household management that often felt rushed or got skipped.

Some things that were not reasons for shortening my work week:

As I approached this decision, it was important to me to be equally clear about some things that were NOT reasons for shortening my work week.

First, and most importantly, I was not shortening my working hours to spend more time with my children because I thought they were suffering in my absence. This is admittedly a sore spot for me, because over the years, I have listened to many women resign and give as the reason for doing so that their children needed them. Or that them being home would be better for their children. And while those are valid reasons for resigning, and they surely were not thinking at all about how saying so would affect their teammates, it was hard to hear that and not resent the implied judgment on the working parents who remained on the team. Again: objectively, I know this is not rational (repeat after me: we all have different situations!!), but it’s important here (even if just for myself!) to state this clearly. Our children, praise the Lord, are thriving, and with this switch their school schedules will remain the same.

Second, in this reduction I did not want to add more tasks to my plate. Though I did have a backlog of things to tackle (that I’m still working through!), this change was largely about shifting the timing of tasks (from evenings/weekends to the workweek) versus adding new tasks or responsibilities.

Third, I did not want my children to stop seeing me doing the work of life. This was not about hiding all of the work away during the day so that we could play non-stop once they got home. This was not about making everything look or feel perfect or effortless. Working alongside each other is a great gift of families, and such an important way of passing on skills and values. I’d never want to take that away completely. Accordingly, I’ve prioritized shifting the tasks that are primarily digital or particularly complicated with the ages of our kids in this transition.

Let’s pause there for part one! In part two, I’ll tackle why we chose me over John to shorten a work week, why we chose shortening a work week over other solutions to the pain points we were experiencing, and the financial impact. And then in part three, I’ll give you many examples (I’ve been taking notes!) of what my Fridays have actually looked like.

If you have other questions, I’d love to include them in future segments – feel free to leave them here! I can’t wait to hear your thoughts! :)

Part Two: Why we chose me over my husband, why we chose going part-time over other solutions, and the financial impact
Part Three: My role, negotiation, and how I structure my time at work
Part Four: What my days off have actually looked like (so far)