Tough Choices

This morning I received an unofficial job offer. An offer for a position that I could accurately describe as my "dream job" -- the entire reason I tried to get a PhD in the first place. Networking, professional experience, a strong academic reputation, and a strange twist of fate converged (despite my lack of PhD). This morning, I was offered the chance to teach introductory physics, part-time, short-term, at Smith College, my alma mater and a truly wonderful school.

This morning, I turned that offer down.

For all the women who read my blog as part of their own family planning, I warn you: if you want a career and a family, you are going to have to make very hard choices. I object very much to the deeply ingrained cultural ideal (and lie) that says, "You can have it all."

You can't have it all. Nor should you try. If you try to do it all to the maximum, all at the same time, you will do none of it well and drain the joy from most of it. Harsh words, I know, but I believe it to be true.

This is not to say that you must choose one at the complete exclusion of the other, to work or to raise your child, just that you to have to prioritize and you have to compromise. Compromise does not always come easily, particularly not for a certain type of woman who is used to doing many things well, who EXPECTS to do many things well, and whose identity is inexorably entangled with her diversity of (over)achievement. Part of me wanted very, very badly to take this job and to knock its socks off. Part of me is very, very hurt that I didn't.

But there's another part of me. The part that cringes every day I have to go to grad school instead of staying with Elsie. I love her daycare, and I value getting a degree, but I miss my time with my daughter, and I feel more and more deeply with the passing months that I am letting her childhood pass me by and letting other people (wonderful people I love and trust, but others, nonetheless) raise my child.

There's the part of me that is planning a family. The part that wishes a baby was still due in July so that Elsie would be even closer in age to her brother or sister than she ever will be now. The part that feels another year between children as eons and eons of time and a vast chasm of space.

I know I could not do this job pregnant. I know I could not be a better mother or a better wife if I took this job. I have to choose, and I choose family.

But it was not an easy choice.

I need to end this on an uplifting note lest I lose half my audience of strong, go-get-'em readers and depress myself for the rest of the day.

It is not a failure of women, this inability to be everything to everybody all of the time. It is simply the boundaries of our humanity. There is a beauty in these limits; if no one person can operate completely and independently, we must rely on each other and work together to raise all the children and to do all the jobs well. I thank feminism for opening doors to me and giving me these hard choices, and I hope to surround myself with the kind of community that, together, can do it all.

There is a lot of joy in my choice. I got to choose between two really wonderful things, and it turns out I have a family life that is so important to me and so fulfilling to me that it wins over even the best job I could hope for. There is faith in this decision, too: faith that, though this was an unusual opportunity, it will not be the ONLY opportunity. Faith that I am capable and there are other jobs that will be there for me when I am ready to take them. Faith that my own calling right now is to be a mother, and that I can do that job beautifully and completely. And there is knowledge and wisdom in my choice, an understanding that I can contribute in this way, and it is important.

In any case, the choice is made.