The question of how busy moms can balance their time was raised in HubPages' "questions" section. My immediate response to that question is as follows:
Three words: Don't sleep much.
Since that, I'm guessing, isn't what the person asking the question had in mind, I'll offer what worked for me when my three children were young.
Most of us have heard that over-used saying, "You can have it all, but you can't have it all at the same time." Well, with a three-year-long adoption process with my eldest son, a job, a house, and school problems that would become evident once my son started kindergarten; I couldn't have it all at the same time. Instead, I had most of it. When my son began kindergarten, and I had his baby brother six weeks early, I decided to abandon any plans of working full-times and instead work part-time by doing projects from home. So, maybe I wasn't able to swing "having it all" (in terms of a full-time job), but it seems I ended up doing it all; because my husband worked long hours that meant he'd get home late and fall asleep on the couch until he'd get up and "go to bed right". So, without a husband who was available to do anything at home or for the children, I was, in many ways, like a single mother.
With all the usual things associated with caring for two small children, there were the house, the pets, the cars, the work projects, the pediatricians, the opthamologists (for two), the school meetings (for my eldest son), and on and on. My daughter was born when my eldest son was eight and my youngest son was three. I was doing part-time work from home, working on some projects of my own, and doing some newspaper writing (that involved leaving the house some evenings, telephone interviews, or uploading my material over the phone and a cable that went to my (now defunct) Radio Shack laptop computer. My husband had two elderly parents. I had one. There were trips to visit his parents, who didn't live nearby; and that "doing-it-all" I mentioned included things like all birthdays, gifts, holidays, and anything else that didn't come under the category of "my husband's full-time job". I guess the difference between those of us mothers who don't work or only work part-time and those who work full-time is that those of us without full-time, outside, jobs do have the luxury of "doing it all". Those with full-time, outside, jobs can't always do it all, so they have to find someone else to help them with doing it all.
What I found important was first figuring out who and what would require my time, and building structure into my weekdays
No comments:
Post a Comment