Sacrificing Career for Kids

So earlier this week a job opportunity came my way. Well--opportunity sounds lofty. I learned about an interesting teaching job and pursued it to the extent that I talked to a fellow teacher at the school and had planned to send over my CV to the headmaster. It's a temporary position, a few months this spring, at an independent middle school teaching history and Language Arts. I like my current job fine, but change is good, and since I'm adjunct I can always take a semester off and come back (this is the positive spin! The negative? They can always choose not to rehire me). A new job at a new school could be a walk down a new road. You never know, right?

A road. In California.

I was excited about it for a minute, and discussed it with B. over dinner-making the other night.

"So it's eight to eleven, every day, so you'd have to drop off L. at school every morning," I said. "And the job is so far up in the hills I'd have to drive. So you'd be biking L. every morning. And, wait, I volunteer at L.'s school every Friday, so I guess I'd have to ask the board to approve me as a non-participating parent, and pay the extra couple hundred dollars a month to be a non-participating parent, and not get to do that anymore. Hmm."

"We'd also have to start paying for early-morning care," B. said. "I can't get to work as late as 9:30 every day."

Pause. I thought about logistics for a long second. Here is what I thought to myself: We are a one-car family. It rains in the winter in Northern California. So some mornings, the bike doesn't work, and what would B. do then? Furthermore, I have committed to participating at L.'s school. I like participating at L.'s school. L. likes it when I participate at his school. And even if I made more money than I do now at this new job, the added costs of early-morning care and non-participation and gas would potentially make this job financially disadvantageous. For a one-semester gig? That might open a door, sure, but who knows?

So I let it go.

"Is that a real bummer?" B. asked me.

And that's what I've been thinking about. Was it a bummer?

The bare truth is that no, it was not a bummer. It was actually, really, totally, okay.

Bummer

But the experience has gotten me thinking. I'm always interested in momming and work, and the choices we have to make as parents. A friend with two teenage kids told me the other day that though she'd looked into a great graduate program that she desperately wanted to attend, she realized she couldn't do it because it would be way too stressful for her children. These opportunities come up, and sometimes, because we have kids, we miss them. I realize that my current job is dead-end. I realize this a little too often. Everyone knows that adjunct lecturing doesn't usually lead to tenure-track professoring, lots of prestige, or lots of money. Hell, I don't even have benefits through my job. But what it does give me is some stimulation, some experience, enough money to justify the hours I work unpaid (on writing, on blogging, on housecleaning and laundry) when L. is at school. And those things are not to be sneered at. When L. is older, maybe I will have a more prestigious work life. But that time, I'm afraid, is not now.

Eek--what would Anne Marie Slaughter think?

How about you, readers? What career sacrifices have you made for your kids? How do you balance working and parenting?