AMA #1: Prepare to Be Surprised
Parenthood, PhD's, and intellectual work
Hi everyone!
I was so interested by the wonderful questions you asked in the comments and by message after last month’s “Ask Me Anything” opening post. Thank you!!
Since there ended up being quite a few questions, I thought I’d do a few posts in response, grouping by themes.
In case you missed it, here’s that post again:
Back now? Good.
Today’s post’s theme is, in short, the relationship between intellectual life/academic work and parenthood.
asked:Do you have tips for finishing a PhD with young kids? I love my work and I love my kids but I’m struggling to integrate the two into something that doesn’t leave me feeling like a failure in one way or another.
Similarly,
wondered:How did you navigate the years post Ph.D. but also with kids? How did you decide the amount of time & energy you put into work (teaching, research, etc.) vs. childcare duties? Still in the early years of this and any tips you have for thinking about being a part-time academic mom would be great!
You had mentioned a while back that you were going to start working/writing alongside your kids while they do their homeschool work. How is that going?
I tried something similar and it always ends up with chaos ensuing and me being a more distracted, less kind mother/teacher.
Other moms asked similar questions over direct message, including one that stood out in particular:
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on the intellectual side of motherhood and how it is married to the physical (I’m expecting my first child, and while I’m thrilled, I’m also lightly mourning the PhD programs I had planned on applying to). In addition, I hear so much about what women lose in childbearing (or that they sacrifice the intellectual side of themselves completely, even if they feel this sacrifice is well worth it), and I’m curious as to whether motherhood is a transformation or a creation, especially when it comes to intellect/creativity/etc.
These are big questions.
First, a little background. I started my PhD program in history at Notre Dame when I was 23 and got married when I was 25. I finished my degree when I was 31, a mother of two young children, and living in Virginia, where I was a full-time homemaker, with some adjuncting on the side. (I now have four children and am an associate editor at Hearth & Field and a freelance writer for several different publications. I also have a book coming out!)
There are a lot of different points I could make in response to these questions, including:
You can’t control your fertility (even if you are using birth control) or who your children are or what they will need from you. Have the babies and trust.
You can influence things like your health and community support and income, but you can’t control those either.
Perseverance is key to any great endeavor.
Discouragement and harder seasons are part of the process.
Parenthood itself can be highly intellectual.
But overall, I think I’d like to say something like this:
Prepare to be surprised.
There are many ways to be a good parent, and if you — man or woman — have an intellectual bent, your intellectual life will be a part of this. Observing and responding to children can be highly intellectual work, and you will often find yourself quite mentally stretched to keep up with parenthood! Truly. Mothers and fathers benefit from having well-developed, well-tuned minds, and their kids benefit from such parents.
The question of what shape your intellectual life will take is one, however, that may surprise you. I have dear friends who are full-time professors or writers or editors who find this work meshes well with parenting; and I have other dear friends who have left such jobs in order to focus on homemaking or homeschooling and child-rearing and have no regrets. All have thriving intellectual lives.
But when you have a particular goal in mind — say, finishing a PhD, or freelancing while also homeschooling your kids — I would like to suggest that perseverance and patience are both key.
First of all: yes, it will sometimes feel chaotic. Try not to see the children as interruptions. People before things.
However, your work is important, too. And the kids can learn a great deal from your requiring that they respect your work, especially as they get beyond the toddler years.
It may not look ideal. But I say again — prepare to be surprised.
When I was finishing my dissertation, I worked on a quota system of about a page a day. When I had a very colicky little baby, it was more like two pages a week, with the help of a measly four hours from a college-age babysitter (who is now a dear friend and the mother of my handsome godson! Hi Susannah!). But do you know what? Two pages a week over a few months and all of a sudden…you have an entire chapter. And five chapters do a dissertation make.
In other words, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Maybe you won’t be able to do your Ph.D. in the same way you might’ve without children. Man or woman, you likely can’t spend 12 hours a day in the library if you’re a parent.
But you can still finish your dissertation. YOU CAN. And if you don’t want to — don’t, and don’t look back. But if you do want to — just do it brick by brick. Don’t expect miracles. Expect a slog — a worthwhile slog that will end in both possibility and relief.
And then, when you’re homeschooling those little darlings and you need to work from home, too, again — do not let your ideals stand in the way. Don’t work while they do schoolwork if, like for our wonderful Kelsie, it doesn’t work for you. Let that approach go. You might be surprised to find that evening work is better for you, or that it’s worth a 90 minutes of TV or movies every day for the kids in order for you to get some work done. (Why not? Will a little bit of Little Bear really hurt them so much, if it means mom can really attend to them in the other hours of the day, without being stressed about finishing her project?) Or arrange a babysitting swap three times a week. Or whatever.
At times I have enforced a one-hour rest/nap time followed by one-hour mandatory outdoor time. It was good for the kids, and it was good for me. Why not?
I will share that for now, for me, working in odd spots of the day is working pretty well, especially as some eye fatigue has made it better lately for me to work in shorter spurts. I have found over time that — as Erin implies may be the case for her — the biggest obstacle for me is my habit of attaching meaning to every little choice I make as a mother, not what my particular schedule is. If I am writing, and the kids start to fight, I will blame myself for writing. But is that accurate? Am I a failure?
No. The kids will fight anyways. I may as well get an essay done while they’re doing it. I need to take it all a little more lightly sometimes, in other words. It’s okay. In fact, it is good to push back about these feelings of failure because there are many good ways to divide time. Few will actually lead to harm done to your children.
It is worth stepping back and asking some wise friends for objective feedback on this…and realizing that young children want to be every second in their parents’ attention, but that this is not actually good for them (excepting, of course, for the youngest babies). They can learn to parallel play while you do some work or they can be helped to extend their attachment to you to an additional stable, loving caregiver for a little time here and there.
You don’t have to follow a track or a rubric in order to do good work. Observing yourself and your children and responding accordingly is the best way!
And then again…you may be surprised. Melody asked about part-time work after the Ph.D. and balancing it all. Many mothers do this — and childcare is a necessity in many cases. And that’s okay! But what has helped me most has been to be honest with myself about how part-time work was serving me. When I was regularly adjuncting or otherwise teaching, I enjoyed the hours in the classroom but I had no time for prep and was exhausted and felt demeaned by the low pay, which was not enough to pay for something like babysitting. I found that for me, it isn’t good to just add part-time work to all my other work. I need either to add work that really energizes me, making it worth all the multi-tasking, or I need some support with the kids or schooling or the housework in order to make space for my outside work. Burning the candle at both ends is no way to live for very long.
One year I finally decided that adjuncting wasn’t worth it. And that was the year that, unbidden, a freelance and editing career opened up in my life, once I had made a little space for new ideas. It didn’t happen until I let go of the work that might have been considered a normative pathway for a PhD looking for part-time work — and yet it has led to a book contract for a manuscript based on my dissertation.
It didn’t happen until I was honest with myself. And then, of course, I had to persevere (and still do!).
So, please:
Be honest with yourself at all stages. Never think that if you say no to something now, you’ll never have another chance, or that something equally good will never again come along. Never believe that there is something wrong with you if you aren’t fitting easily into someone else’s mold of parenthood or professional life.
And in the meantime, persevere at whatever it is that you value. Time is your friend, not your enemy. At the beginning of parenthood, it is hard to fathom that things will change. But they will, and you will have the freedom to adjust, as well.
And please remember that there is room in parenthood for ALL of who you are.
Becoming a mother or father will transform you, but you will be the better for it. Don’t think you have to give everything up; you are just entering a chrysalis. Sometimes it feels like a crucible, yes! This also is true. Motherhood, in particular, can feel like a crucifixion, especially pregnancy and labor and delivery and the newborn period. But do you realize that new life comes forth in a resurrection from this — and that it is not just the new life of your child, but also of you yourself?
You are not a sacrifice. You are a gift. You are being transfigured. You are going to thrive. You may not yet know how that will look, however. You have to be a bit patient about it — but don’t lose your open mind. Remember that letting go of a dream of getting a PhD now, for example, really truly does not mean that you will never have another chance to get one or to do something else equally (or more!) interesting. And persevering in that dream is also something you very likely can do — if that is what you want and will help you and your family. You don’t have to say no. Don’t give up.
Be patient. Pray. Persevere.
Don’t miss the joys along the way.
And prepare to be surprised.
Warmly,
Dixie
I love how you revealed a bigger and more expansive vision in this response than a straightforward response about logistics would have been. (There's a time and a place for those kinds of conversations, too, which you've also given us! We all love a good, practical glimpse into how-it-gets-done-behind-the-scenes.)
Selfishly, I also appreciate hearing from someone who didn't/doesn't have a ton of family help with childrearing, a husband with a flexible-work-from-home schedule to balance the parenting load like we're back in pre-Industrial times (haha), lots of money to burn, or endlessly ideal conditions or resources to make it all work. Yes, perhaps I am just a bit tired of hearing how moms make anything work... with the key seeming to be one or all of those factors. :')
But truly, we all appreciate your perspective. You know how to encourage both aspiration and realism, gentleness and resilience.
I'm not at all a "letting go of / trying to finish the PhD" mother. I actually kind of mourn the time I seemingly squandered in my single 20's when I could have been doing things I wish I could do now! For me, it's been kind of the inverse in motherhood - discovering I might actually want to incorporate more into myself and motherhood than I thought in my younger years. So, the same but different, and still figuring it out. We all have our particular lives to deal with, I suppose. Which is why I so appreciated how you answered these questions.
I have spent an enormous amount of time studying dyslexia and the science of reading (from various angles) in order to teach my kids to read. Learning differences run at least in my husband’s side of the family. Sometimes I wish I could get credit for this. I completed an online training program that reading specialists with MAs do as continuing education, which I do have a “certificate” from. I read aloud more so that my kids can have access to material above their reading levels (we use audio books too.) I have done all of this for one child in particular, though it has or will benefit all my children, I hope. Who knows, maybe it will benefit others in the future too.
Anyway, this is just one area in which I have grown intellectually as a parent, although no degrees have been involved. It’s likely that I could have completed some sort of degree program in the time I have devoted to this study and extra homeschooling time, but God called me to this specific work when he gave me my children. I did have different plans, but so many of my plans have had to be laid aside for various reasons.
Glory to God for all things.