Is this my career?

My son called to say he had to stay after school to complete an interview, then stayed up late transcribing the info in order to make a poster. Turned out the interview was about geology and it was for his careers class.  I asked if he had an interest in geology but he said no, there had just been a limited availability of interviewees.  I said what about my career and he just rolled his eyes.

Wait a minute.

I never thought about this, though I’m sure lots of other people have.  There’s plenty of writing around about the worthiness of being a full-time parent in lieu of a paid work, if we’re so lucky to have a co-parent whose job can pay the bills, but we are never ever invited to talk to the class about our career.  What would the kid wear if they wanted to dress up as a trailing spouse for career day?

I never intended to check the “housewife” box –to be the primary caregiver for the kids and to cook most of our meals. I didn’t ever consider it when I was growing up and people asked me what I wanted to be when I was an adult. It’s not the actual work of parenting and home-making that I don’t like. What bugs me is my own expectation, supported by my education, media, and peers, that I ought to be doing something else. 

I’ve been talking with a friend lately about her impending return to full-time work and her concerns that she will not be spending enough time anymore with her three young children. I have encouraged her, saying that it’s fine for kids to see her working. There are a lot of ways to raise kids and a lot of ways that they will turn out fine. I think it’s most detrimental to them for their parent to be dissatisfied with how their life is turning out. I’ve spent years being dissatisfied, just perpetuating the message that not having a career outside my home leads to frustration and resentment. It’s not the example that I want to be.

Do I need to package it up to make it worthy in my eyes? My kids eyes? It’s hard to say how I’d want to promote this lifestyle as a career anyway, since it seems like it is a very dependent and vulnerable position. I tried putting all the pieces together of everything that I do and turning it into a positive spin description: joining forces with someone who you enjoy and explore the world together, open to possibilities, home-making in the most creative and challenging sense, as home changes every few years, exploring new cultures and cities, forming friendships around the world until it’s impossible to go to a place where you know no one. Learning to drive in all kinds of circumstances- how to dodge rickshaws and drive on the left (Dhaka), avoid hitting cyclists and spaced out pedestrians and to parallel park a minivan into a tiny space on a near-vertical street (San Francisco), and I will spare you another rant about Doha traffic. It sounds good for a minute, but I didn't try it out on the kids. 

Message is, you are going to school in order to be a person who gets paid money for the work you do. Staying home is a fall back. None of this is good for a trailing spouse’s self-esteem, no matter how hard he or she works at helping kids adjust to a new country and culture, learning his or her way around town and dealing with medical care, maintenance, procurement of everything from groceries to gas bottles to smoke detectors. There are even a lot of perks, including being able to be available to my kids during our major moves, take art classes, walk around Doha, all the way to the most mundane, like being able to grocery shop on weekday mornings.

There are a lot of memes out there saying live your dream, follow your passion but that’s not realistic for all of us, or at least it can’t be an instant fix. Qatar is a prime example of this- the millions of migrant workers here are not living their dreams, in fact some of them would likely describe it as more nightmare, though I have met people who have made it work- earning money here has enabled them to build houses, educate children, and start businesses in their home countries.  Others are lucky to make it home alive.

I went to college and then grad school and then started having kids. When the first two were big enough to be in school full time I got jobs at a couple of international kindergartens in Hanoi but then the third one came along and I stopped working again. here.

Last summer I worked full-time at a camp and I think I was a better parent than I had been in a long time. I still was primary parent for them because my husband had stayed in Doha. I loved it and I wrote about it

This story doesn’t have an end. I’m not done thinking about it, not done working on it. I love it when I have a job that challenges me and lets me use my skills and work with interesting people. I also love having the freedom to design my whole day, explore, make art, cook, and spend time with kids. I know I’m very lucky to have the time and resources to sit around thinking and writing about the subject.