Job Wanted: Part-time position starting in September. 30 hours a week.##M:[more]## Must fit between the hours of 9 and 3 when children are in school. Must allow time off to volunteer for field trips and help with the class party. Must allow time off to stay home if children should fall sick. Must allow departure promptly at 3 to deliver child to dance class in timely fashion. Must allow generous summer vacation plan and time off during school holidays. Must include generous compensation package including benefits and creative release.
Hmmm. Not quite the right tone.
Job Wanted: Nights and Weekends so I don’t have to look for child care
Hmmm. Reveals too much. Not the right tone either.
Desperate! Hire me! Will work for food!
The fact is, I’m seriously thinking of jumping back into the workforce by fall when the half-day kindergartener becomes a full-day first grader. While I will always write, I’m also looking for a real job, the kind that comes with benefits and a steady paycheck.
It’s been six years since I last reported on air for Fox television. Six years since I last signed off “Euna Kwon, Fox5 News,” and signed on to pretty much full-time suburban motherhood. I miss that clearcut identity. I knew exactly who I was and where I worked, and so did everybody else who tuned in. I was given my story at the start of the day and by air-time it was packaged and ready to go. My deadlines were absolute, and when the newscast was done, so was I, at least until the next story the next day. Motherhood is anything but so cut and dried and topped with a bow.
I’ve missed television news and would love to get back, though the logistics boggle the mind. When I left TV we had two kids and had just moved to Plainsboro. It took me two hours each way to commute to the Fox studios on the Upper East Side, first NJ transit, then the E train, then the 6 local. We had an au pair, Bill’s work was based in Princeton, and a commuting mommy was okay.
Now the dynamics have changed completely. We have three kids and Bill has a demanding new job in midtown Manhattan. I can’t justify a four-hour commute. Philadelphia could work for TV, but that commute is no picnic either. Though I know people who do it, having two commuting parents is a tough road to take, so to speak.
Should I try for an overnight shift, or one that starts so early I could commute and be back in time for the kid rush hour at 3 o’clock in the afternoon? Should I try to report on weekends and let Bill handle three sports schedules on his own? Do we hire live-in help again and trade the intrusion for the convenience of having a third adult around the house?
Do we trust someone else to drive our kids, especially after we had a succession of three different au pairs get into three different accidents, thankfully all minor, thankfully with none of our children involved, but incredibly stressful nonetheless? Or do we brave our children’s screams of rebellion and move to New York? At what point does a second paycheck and career fulfillment become worth the turmoil when a stay-at-home mom decides to resume her career?
We’ve been very lucky that I’ve been able to stay home, that the economics of the situation have worked out over the last few years. But if someone had told me that I’d turn out to be more like my mother than I had imagined, I would have been horrified.
You see, I was going to dodge bullets in Beirut. I was going to be a world-trotting correspondent reporting from one hot spot after another. I would interview world leaders and travel with the rebel guerillas in the Peruvian mountains. I was one of those baby boomer women who would have it all and be it all. No one gave me a word of warning of what would happen when I threw marriage and children into the mix. No one prepared me, gave me a guidebook. That’s because for women of my generation, there weren’t any.
The recent Newsweek cover story about “The Myth of the Perfect Mother” spoke to me. At first I was miffed. Hey, that was the book I was supposed to write. Then I was intrigued. Much as misery loves company, so does bewilderment. What do you mean I can’t have it all? I’m supposed to. I followed the program. I went to college, worked hard, and steadily climbed the career ladder. It was having three kids and moving to the suburbs that upset the applecart.
In my high school yearbook I announced to the world that I would follow a career in journalism or medicine. Was Suburban Mom part of my planned future identity? Not really. But did I have any idea of how it would all work together? Absolutely not. We didn’t have role models. We had our mothers who stayed home and stood for all that we would want to rebel against. And we had Gloria Steinem who preached wonderful ideas about womanhood and feminism but had no children of her own to put a dose of reality on the whole thing.
I heard a wonderful line on the radio the other day. About how all of us women think everyone else has the work/family/life balance figured out but no one really does.
Maybe I’ll be a Starbucks barrista. Benefits after 20 hours, flexibility, all that wonderful coffee, and the chance to research a book. A job at the Gap would fit nicely between 9 and 3 and get me a great employee discount to boot. Maybe I’ll start my own company with women like me who want to mother when the kids are home and work while they’re in school. I don’t know. That’s why I’m still composing job wanted postings in my head and coming up with no clear answers. If someone has any, please let me know.
The Suburban Mom has created a “blog” featuring some of her favorite columns that have appeared in the WW-P News over the last year and a half. Find it at suburbanmom.typepad.com. She welcomes comments and suggestions for future column ideas.
