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Home › Articles › Child Care › To Work or Not to Work

To Work or Not to Work

The Mother's Dilemma

By Tamar Krantman Weiss

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It may strike when you catch yourself dreaming of purple and green dinosaurs, or humming a nursery rhyme while cleaning apple juice off the floor for the seventh time in a single day. Many women immersed in the exacting schedule of a toddler's day realize that they crave something more mind challenging than reasoning with a 2-year-old. The urge to return to the workforce, particularly when your child begins to assert independence and enjoy being around other children and adults, is not at all uncommon.

Life Beyond "Mom"
Shlomit*, a mother of twin boys, noticed that at the end of the boys' first year, she began to get depressed a lot. Being a stay-at-home mom is absolutely a full-time job, and Shlomit felt that at a certain point she wasn't able to give her kids what they needed because she needed something for herself. "I needed to rediscover and redefine myself," she says, and for her this meant finding a part-time job (she still insisted on being with the kids for the majority of the day) where she could explore and fulfill her potential outside of being a mother. Shlomit also feels strongly about contributing to her family financially; she notes that it lends her marriage "a greater sense of balance." For Shlomit, the decision to return to work was for the good of her family and herself. She says that the family as a whole is happier now because she personally is "more secure, happier and fulfilled."

"Study after study shows that children do not suffer when a mother goes to work," says professor Joan Williams, co-director of the Gender, Work and Family Project at American University, and author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It


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