dandelionteeth ([info]dandelionteeth) wrote,
@ 2006-03-12 09:48:00
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Current mood: curious

I'm curious...
I was reading a magazine article about working moms and stay-at-home moms, and it's got me wondering:

Gentle readers, did/does your mom have a job in addition to taking care of you? For how long?

For myself, my mom worked up until just before I was born. She took five years off to take care of my younger sister and me (during which she also finished her PhD!), and then she went back to work again. Twenty-five years later, she is still enjoying her profession and has no immediate plans to quit.

What about your moms?


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[info]cheesegirl33
2006-03-12 06:28 pm UTC (link)
Well, you already know a bit about my mom, but- She worked at a library. When we were born, she took a less stressful job and worked part time. Eventually she felt bored and under appreciated at this job so she switched to teaching. She's never bored now.

*hugs*

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[info]mdlbear
2006-03-12 06:41 pm UTC (link)
When my brother and I were growing up, Mom got jobs in the local school district so that her hours would approximately match ours. When we were older, she got a Masters in library science and found a job in a neighboring district, which gave us access to two cities' libraries -- very useful for term papers in the days before the Web.

At some point, I think about the time I went off to college, she got a full-time job as assistant librarian in the company where my Dad worked; apparently her salary was just about enough to cover our tuition.

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[info]vixyish
2006-03-12 07:05 pm UTC (link)
My parents got divorced when I was 6, so my mom didn't have much choice. :)

She taught voice & piano at the local community college by day, and was also the sometime director of their vocal jazz choir and concert choir. Since that was not quite a full time job, she supplemented that with singing gigs in the evening, mostly in bars & nightclubs, and also weekend singing gigs like weddings and funerals. (I experienced some serious culture shock the first time I attended a funeral that had taped music.)

My sister is eight years older than me, so she had to babysit me a lot. My bedroom shared a wall with the garage, so I could always hear when she came home late at night. And mom would cook a lot of the kinds of things that would make leftovers enough for two daughters to microwave for themselves for dinner-- lasagna, casseroles, stuff like that-- and I started learning to cook easy things like mac n cheese around age 12.

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[info]gryphonrhi
2006-03-12 07:37 pm UTC (link)
Mom left, 3 years into a psych degree, to marry Dad, and then spent the next 30 years trying to have, and then raise, four kids. When he left, she filed for divorce and went back to college for a year to learn economics and finance so she could manage the money she got out of him at the divorce. She's a damn sight more competent at it than he is.

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[info]the_nightsky
2006-03-12 09:03 pm UTC (link)
I'm showing my age here, I suspect, but my Mom didn't work, nor did any of the other mothers on the block where I grew up. After school, in the summer -- somebody's mom might be out at the grocery store, or over at a neighbor's having a cup of coffee, but otherwise they were home. Only the Dad's worked. Mind you, this was back in the 60's.

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[info]tibicina
2006-03-13 01:40 am UTC (link)
I'm not sure about my first year, since my mother had just graduated, though I think she was getting her masters and working in one of the labs at Yale, but I'm not honestly sure of the early chronology of my mother and jobs. When I was three, she started law school. Once she graduated from law school, she's worked ever since.

She took... I think, three days off when my little brother was born.

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[info]mackiedockie
2006-03-13 09:29 am UTC (link)
Mom was a teacher before I was born, starting just after 1945, and then took about 5-6 years off to raise my brother and I (this was '57-63.) Went back to teaching (elementary school) to support the family, retiring around 1990.

Teaching Hard!!!

I sense a recurring educational theme.

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[info]jrtom
2006-03-13 04:54 pm UTC (link)
Mom worked for one year as a primary school teacher after at least one of my older sisters was born. Fast forward about fifteen years; she worked as an ESL teacher while I was in high school, and possibly for a year or so after that. I still have younger siblings at home; I don't know if Mom will go back to teaching once they've left, but I doubt it. (At that point she'll be in her late 60s.)

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[info]cflute
2006-03-14 07:26 pm UTC (link)
My mom didn't work outside the home until I was in my early teens, and then it was a part time job as a bank teller. Then she got rheumatoid arthritis and stopped working. When dad died untimely, it took her a while to get through the bureaucratic red tape, but she was able to go on disability from social security, so she hasn't had to work in a couple of decades at least.

I admire the women who had the drive and desire to have professional careers and make them part of their lifestyle. As my own sole support, I don't have a choice about whether or not to work. I have enough "extracurricular" interests that I could keep plenty busy without a "day job", but that's not a viable option for me.

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[info]technoshaman
2006-05-24 02:17 pm UTC (link)
Mom was a nurse by training, but quit work when we were born to take care of us... when we moved to Tennessee when I was three, Mom ended up having to do Dad's books for him, and has ever since. We had an.. interesting childhood, with a small airport for a playground and not much in the way of kids for friends until I was ten... but I don't feel the worse for wear, much, and I value what I did learn along the way.

(BTW, [info]dandelionteeth, I was the gentleman in the Green Man shirt and Utilikilt...)

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[info]moosaic4
2006-03-18 07:43 am UTC (link)
My mom was a stay at home mom until my parents divorced when I was 15. At that point she owned and ran in a restaurant for a year. Then we moved in with my grandmother while my mom went back to college.

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[info]butterbeergirl
2006-12-09 06:50 pm UTC (link)
My mom's always worked. She was at a big D.C. law firm when I was born October '90, took a couple weeks off (I was a C-section), and went straight back. A few months later she quit that job and went to work for Green Thumb (now Experience Works, Inc.) as a lawyer, which she did until I was maybe 8? 9? My sister was born during this period. And then she started became my Dad's joint partner at his law firm (he had been a solo-practicing attorney until that point), and she is still doing that. Her third kid, my brother, was born during this period, six years ago.

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