Tara Ziegmont loves her job as a high school science teacher. But for an entire year, the Etters resident cried nearly every day as she got ready for work. She couldn’t even truly enjoy weekends because she’d spend the time wallowing in the knowledge that she had to go back to work.
Ziegmont had a debilitating case of working parent guilt.
“The first year of Grace’s life was the worst,” says Ziegmont, a full-time working mother to Grace, 2. “I didn’t want to leave her at day care; I wanted to stay with her. And she couldn’t talk to me about it.” Ziegmont is one of many parents who battle some guilt or sense of loss because they work full time outside the home. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2007 showed just 21 percent of working mothers with minor children believed full-time work was the ideal situation for them, down from 32 percent who said this in 1997.
The survey also showed that mothers working full time gave themselves slightly lower ratings as parents, on average, than did at-home mothers or mothers employed part time.
“It is certainly a 21st-century stress, the lack of time working parents feel they should be spending with family,” says Marie Bell, director of family life services for Family-Child Resources in York. “Whether it’s warranted or not, they feel they should be doing better as a parent.”
For Ziegmont, “doing better” simply meant being the primary caregiver to Grace all the time. “When she was really small it was like, ‘how is it fair that I’m taking care of other people’s kids and leaving my kid with someone else?’” she says.
Like Ziegmont, Kate Grohman of Mechanicsburg found the transition from mother’s arms to day care or a babysitter rough. “I felt guilty, more so when he was an infant, not being able to spend that one-on-one quality time with him when he was that young,” says Grohman, who works in the accounts payable department at Maguire’s Ford Lincoln Mercury. Grohman’s 3-year-old son, “Tre,” spent his first year being cared for by Grohman’s mother while Grohman was at work. Still, it was difficult to leave her baby behind, Grohman says. “I had separation anxiety for at least two or three weeks,” she says. “I had to call a couple times a day just to see how he was.”
Those pangs of separation can be felt by parents of older children as well. Mandy Rineer, spa manager at Felicita Garden Resort and Spa, spent years adjusting her part-time work life to suit her growing daughter’s needs. Today her daughter is 13 and Rineer works full time, but she still has moments of intense guilt for not being home with the teen all the time. “[The guilt] can bring tears anytime. It is definitely hard, especially at her age, when she’s wanting to do more and be more independent,” Rineer says. “It’s hard to not be there watching every move she makes.”
Not everyone has such a rough adjustment from childless professional to working parent. There are many full-time working parents who are perfectly at peace with their choices to remain in — or rejoin — the workforce.
Seventy-two percent of fathers in a Pew Research Center survey said a full-time job is the ideal for them. Shane Elliott, an auto tech with Faulkner Honda in Harrisburg, says he believes his full-time job is just part of his role as a parent. “Obviously I’d like to spend more time at home, but I do feel it is my responsibility and my job to provide for the kids,” says Elliott, who has three children, ages 4, 3 and 19 months.
However, he also believes in the importance of a stay-at-home parent. Aside from needing an occasional part-time job to help with the family’s finances, the children’s mother has been able to stay home with them, Elliott says. “I feel that it’s best for the children, but there are lots of situations nowadays where that’s impossible,” he says.
Ryan Longenecker, general manager at Felicita Garden Resort and Spa, works long hours, but he feels good knowing his spouse’s job allows her to be home with their kids, ages 12 and 9. “We have it set up pretty well,” says Longenecker, who often works an 11-hour day during the busy summer season. “My wife didn’t work until the children were older. When our 9-year-old was in second grade, she went back to work as a preschool teacher, so she has limited hours and she’s off in the summer”
Not all families are able to work out the kinks of surviving on one income, rendering a setup like the Longeneckers’ impossible. Ziegmont and her husband, Joe, crunched the numbers and tried several options to allow her to stay home with Grace in the beginning. But it just wasn’t possible, Ziegmont says.
Luckily, as Grace got older and was able to communicate with her parents, it became clear that she loved day care and wanted to go. “Even on Saturday mornings she would say, ‘School, school!’” Ziegmont says. “So that was the end of the guilt. I still felt selfish, like I wanted to be with her full time, but I didn’t feel guilty about it anymore.”
The guilt may be gone, but Ziegmont still is working toward her dream of staying home with her daughter. When Grace was born she began blogging about her experiences as a parent. In time, the blog, www.feelslikehomeblog.com, has turned into a brand all its own and has led to other online writing and editing opportunities.
Of course, now she feels guilty about the extra time she’s spending on her hobby-turned-second job. But she’s hoping it’ll pay off for her family in the long run. “I am hoping that in six months or a year [the income] will be big enough for me to be able to stay home,” she says.
Robyn Passante is a freelance journalist and mother of two who lives in Harrisburg.
Pointers for Working Parents:
Whether they spend 40 to 50 hours a week working outside the home, or work from home but can’t stop checking e-mail and taking business calls, all working parents occasionally feel the stress of there being too much work and not enough family time.
No matter how busy you are, there are ways to make the most of the time you have to reconnect with your kids, says Marie Bell, director of family life services with Family-Child Resources in York.
1. Have realistic expectations.
“Women are sometimes guilty of having too high expectations of themselves,” Bell says. “They think they should have an immaculate house, a well-balanced, attractive meal on the table seven days a week and that they need to attend all the activities their children want them to attend. At some point you have to say, ‘Wait a minute. I’m only one person, and there are only so many hours in the day.’”
2. Routines are important but shouldn’t be rigid.
Having consistent routines, particularly for mornings and evenings, gives kids the security of knowing when to expect things to happen relative to daily family life. But parents can get into the bath-books-bed rut, where the routine becomes just another mindless chore to accomplish. Don’t be afraid to hit the pause button for a few minutes and live in the moment, Bell says. “Maybe just looking at that mealtime routine and saying, ‘Well, if I just put that off for 5-10 minutes, I can sit out on the swing with my 5-year-old, kick off my shoes and talk about what happened today,’” she says. “That’s going to put off dinner by 15 minutes, but that child’s going to feel like ‘I got that attention I was seeking.’”
3. Think quality over quantity.
You don’t have to load everyone in the car and head to Chuck E. Cheese in order for you to feel like you’ve reconnected as a family. “Just take the dog for a walk; just do an errand together,” Bell says. The important thing is that those connecting moments happen on a regular basis with each child, she says.
4. Tune out technology. Tune in to family.
Pick a regular, recurring special time that the parent and child carve out together when there will be no interruptions: no phone ringing, no text messaging, no “I’ll be right back, I just have to feed the baby.” Ignoring everything but the child is powerful, Bell says. “A real strong message is being sent to the child: You’re important.”
5. Don’t let your parental judgment take a backseat to the guilt.
Parents who feel guilty about hours spent at work tend to indulge their children’s wishes, even if it’s to their detriment down the road. “It’s hard to say no to a child you don’t see all that much. We do the wrong thing for the right reason,” Bell says. “We love our kids and we want them to be happy, so it seems like giving in to a later bedtime or fixing a different meal ... makes up for the fact that we had a long meeting last night.”
6. Use family meetings to your advantage.
Round up everyone on a regular basis to go over issues affecting the household, chores that need to be done and fun things to do as a family, whether it is the next big vacation or next Sunday’s Family Game Night.
7. Rethink your routines.
You have to get creative if you want to streamline your daily to-do list and have more time for your kids, Bell says. “Maybe beds get made when they get home from school. Maybe baths are done in the morning,” she says. The point is to think outside the box.
Whatever routines and goals you come up with as a family should be revisited every so often as the kids grow and their needs change.