Peer to Peer: The Juggle and the Struggle of Parenthood
Post date: Feb 19, 2017 9:45:45 PM
Fall 2016
By Mark Lonergan with Anne Slater
(Written for Boston Teachers Union newspaper)
In March 2016, Marissa Cooper, a teacher, mother and blogger from the UK wrote on her blog that “I have felt like a bad mother. I have felt like a bad teacher. I have felt like there is no way to give enough time, enough effort, enough of me, to both.” Many of us who have the privilege of being both teachers and parents can relate to Cooper’s situation. After all, teaching can feel like a more-than-full-time job. Parenting can also be a more-than-full-time job. That can leave many of us who are trying to juggle both of these roles at the same time feel stretched, stressed and burnt out. “I feel like I am not enough,” Cooper says, “Because both roles are all-consuming. At times, it has nearly broken me.” She describes the stresses of trying to feel successful as both a mother and a teacher, but says, “Unless we can make teaching family friendly again, I am doomed to be in conflict with myself indefinitely, or leave the profession.”
Cooper did leave the profession. In April 2016, in her blog post entitled “Teaching: a break-up letter,” Cooper announced that her decision to leave teaching and focus only on her family was “an overwhelming sense of relief; I don’t have to pretend any more. I don’t have to choose.” This month in our Peer to Peer column we want to look at the juggle and the struggle that goes into being a teacher who is also a parent.
One of the biggest challenges for parenting teachers is trying to find balance. In his 2010 TED talk on “How to Make Work Life balance work,” author Nigel Marsh says, “Certain job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged in the day-to-day basis with a young family.” Heidi Fessenden, who teaches at the Haley Pilot School, says that sometimes she’s felt that incompatibility in her own life: “The hardest thing for me is teaching all day and then going home to be with my kids. All day I have to be incredibly patient with kids who do things slowly, need help, have strong emotional reactions, test my patience, etc. Then I get home and ... I have to be incredibly patient with kids who do things slowly, need help, have strong emotional reactions, test my patience, etc. And me at the end of the day is not nearly as good at it as me at the beginning of the day. So my kids get the short end of the stick. That is really hard.”
Another challenge is that the role of parents, and the expectations of parenthood have shifted tremendously in the past few decades along with changes in culture and technology. “In the wired age, parents are able to feel guilt all the time. There’s always something they’re neglecting,” said Jennifer Senior, author of the book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting.
Senior says that “parent” only became a verb in the 1970s. We may forget that in this era of helicopter and tiger parents, the expectations of parenthood were much different in previous eras. For example, Senior found that even though mothers today are much more likely to work full-time than they did in the 1960s, they also spend much more time with their children than the mothers of the mid-60s ever did. As Bruce Feiler said in his book The Secrets of Happy Families, “The old rules no longer apply but the new rules have yet to be written.”
As challenging as it is to juggle, there are parent/teachers who are able to make it work. Or at least trying to make it work. Kathleen Marsh, who teaches at Boston Arts Academy, said that she’s tried to break down the wall between her teaching life and parenthood by always making sure that her daughter was included in her school community. “When my child was a baby, she was socialized by playing ‘pass the baby’ at our first PD. She got carried off at one point and I had to get on the intercom to locate her. She grew up going to various school functions.” Marsh advises others to bring their kids to school events when appropriate. “It’s good for your family to see who shares your heart, and it's good for your school family to see those who are most important to you.” Kathleen’s daughter is now an 11th grader at BAA.
When I became a dad in 2004, I tried to follow Kathleen’s example. From day one, when the hospital’s lactation nurse turned out to be the mother of a student in my 3rd period class, I realized that it would be impossible to separate my teaching life and my parenting life. During their early years, my sons could sometimes be seen playing with their trains under my classroom desk, attending school performances and making guest appearances in my videotaped lessons.
I now believe that being a parent has made me a much better teacher than I was before I had kids: Parenthood helped me stop being a control freak and accept that unpredictability in life and in the classroom can sometimes be a good thing. Parenthood made me more efficient with time. It made me more appreciative of my colleagues. It made me more empathetic with my students and their families. And it made me better at asking for and accepting help when I needed it. For example, during the year when my sons were in three different schools and we only one car, my colleague Marc Seiden made sure that I got out of the school on time and drove me to the preschool for pick-up each day. It was a small detour for Marc, but it was a life-saver for me and my family.
Of course, every parent/teacher’s situation is different. Wisdom and advice from parenting experts and parenting veterans can be plentiful, but is often contradictory. For every expert that tells us to make checklists and find order, there’s another urging us to let go and embrace the chaos. In her book Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time, Bridgit Schulte looks at how modern American families juggle the competing demands of work and parenthood. She concludes the book with a quote from poet Carl Sandburg: “Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”
To help us prioritize and budget our time, Schulte suggests choosing just one thing that’s most important to do everyday. She also says that working parents should “recognize that children do, indeed, grow quickly. And that the moment to stop and enjoy it is now. And now. And now.” Heidi Fessenden echoes that advice in her own parenting experience: “You can't do it all,” she said, “So pick what is most important and let the rest slide.”
At the end of Overwhelmed, Schulte describes a research trip to Denmark, which is ranked first on the UN’s “World Happiness Report.” In Denmark, Schulte learns about the concept of hygge. Hygge (pronounced “heu-guh”) describes a sense of coziness, contentedness in the present moment, and an enjoyment of the simple things in life. In turns out that the Danes are happiest in part because they choose to be happy in the moment. Whether you’re a parent or not, we could all probably use a bit more contentedness and a bit less stress while we juggle the challenges in our own lives.
The Peer-to-Peer column is written by Anne Slater, from the Peer Assistance program, and Mark Lonergan , from the Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) program. This column is written by teachers and for teachers. If you have a topic you’d like us to explore, please let us know via email. And to find out more about what Anne and Mark and others do as peer assistants and consulting teachers, visit btu.org/whats-working/peer-mentoring/ or bostonpar.org. Anne and Mark want to dedicate this month’s column to to our colleague Sharon Abraham, who is just starting her journey as a parent/teacher. Good luck with motherhood, Sharon!
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