Moms + Work 03: Should I Take That Job? Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Emily Jensen: Hey there, friends, Emily here. I am so grateful to be back in your earbuds, talking about moms and work. My co-host and sister-in-law Laura will be joining me for this conversation very soon. Before we get started, we want to let you know about a special free download that we have available that we think is really going to help in this broader topic that we've been discussing.
It is a workbook to help you think through all the different factors and decisions and pieces of the puzzle that you might need to consider when it comes to taking on income-producing work. We specifically were thinking about moms who have a variety of choices—who aren't sure whether to turn their hours up or down or whether to maybe even get an extra certification so that they can take on a different type of work.
We know that there are a variety of situations and circumstances out there and that these can be really hard topics, fraught with a lot of confusion and barriers. We wanted to provide a workbook—questionnaire style—that we've had for many, many other topics, and we hope to provide you with a resource that you can go through with your husband or maybe a good friend or a mentor or someone from your church to just talk through these things in your own life and see how the Lord might be leading you.
You can go to risenmotherhood.com/work. That's actually what we're going to be talking about on today's show. We're going to be going through that workbook, piecing it apart, because on this show today, when we use the word "work," we're talking about specifically income-producing work. We know that's a little bit different than some of the other shows in our series, so we just wanted to make that note up front. We're hopefully not confusing anybody.
Then we also just want to note that it is a huge privilege to even have choices and options and knobs to turn when it comes to income-producing work. We know that there are many, many moms in situations where these types of choices and evaluation are just not possible right now, or they're not options. We just want to acknowledge that up front, and we hope that no matter what situation you're in or where you're coming from that you just still feel the Lord's guidance and comfort in the midst of this topic.
Alright, let’s get to the show!
I know sometimes, in motherhood, I just want people to give me a formula for things. Just tell me what the right answer is. Specifically, how many hours could I work or be away from my kids before I've crossed the line?
Laura Wifler: Oh, totally. I want someone to say like, "You can work 20 hours a week and then you'll still remain a good mom."
Emily: Not 20.25. [Laughter]
Laura: No, because then you're definitely a bad mom. That's how it feels like. I will get in these conversations with friends of mine, and it feels like we really need this exact number to know when it is we are going to remain and keep our good mom standing.
Emily: In fact, we see a lot of different pictures of moms doing a variety of types of work. Even Proverbs 31—look, here's a wise woman who does all kinds of work for her household and her husband and her children and her community, and then she's selling fields and she's in real estate and all these different things that she puts her hands to. It doesn't seem like it's an either/or; it's this integrated thing. Many, many, many things in Scripture come down to our circumstances, our personal conscience, the way that the Lord is leading us in that, and there isn't a one-size-fits-all clear boundary line formula for all moms.
Laura: Totally. I know that you and I think about this a lot—the way that we think about school choice, where there are pros and cons to every decision that a mom can make. But we also have a lot of options about what it should look like, where it should be done, all those kinds of things. Like you said, there's no one-size-fits-all approach, and so that's where we're coming at this show at today. We want to talk to all of you guys in the Risen Motherhood community about, "Hey, how do we figure out 'the number?'"
Spoiler alert. We are not going to be giving you a number on this show. We really do believe, like we said, that this is something that every mom really has to seek the Lord, talk with her husband, chat with friends, evaluate her current circumstances—all those good things—to really come to a decision. Even then, you're probably going to look over your shoulder a little bit, but we want to try to help you see how having some gospel and scriptural undergirding can give you freedom in this area as we move forward.
Emily: We know it's a huge privilege to even be able to have options, to have choices. We know that a lot of you guys are in situations where you feel like, "I've just got to find the joy of the Lord in whatever work he's given me to do. I'm not at a point where I can reevaluate," but at the same time, we know that there's a lot of you in our community that are maybe trying to decide whether you're going to go back to work for the first time after having a baby. Or maybe you've had subsequent children and your maternity leave is coming up, and you're just not sure. Are you going to reenter at the same capacity that you did before? Are you going to take on a little bit less hours? Are you going to change the way it's structured? Are you not going to go back at all?
We know that there are some maybe former stay-at-home moms who are trying to transition to another season with schooling, and you're wondering if you should start a career or take on shifts somewhere. There are so many questions that a lot of moms are facing, and, specifically in 2022, Laura and I are just observing how many new choices there are available to moms, even in terms of flexibility and amount of hours worked and whether or not you can work from home. We want to meet you in those choices, like Laura was saying, not with answers, but with questions that we can ask to try to drive at what that solution might be for each family.
Laura: Yes. Just as a reminder—I know we said this probably in the intro to the show—but there is a workbook that you can download that is going to have some of the questions that we talk about today and that we're highlighting, but it's going to have a whole lot more. It's got a lot of great things for you to work through with friends or talk about with your husband or just work through solo and consider "What questions do I need to be thinking about as I make these decisions?"—like Emily was saying—if you're at a crossroads or something like that. You can find that workbook at risenmotherhood.com/work if you'd like to download it. Em, do you want to just kick us off with the first one we're going to talk about?
Emily: Sure. I think, like we do on most topics, it's important to start with a theology, which just means, "What do I believe about this? What does the Bible say about this?" I think we need to have an understanding about what God's Word says about motherhood and what it says about work.
One thing to note here—at least that I've learned a lot in my life—is that it's important to step back and think about what microculture I'm in—perhaps how I was raised—and see how that might be playing into my default idea about what God says or what the right way is and to set that aside and be willing to come to Scripture on God's terms as much as possible, praying that he would help me understand what he has to say and know how that would apply in my life.
Laura: Yes. I think that is just a really important foundation—that we are going back to God's Word, and we are really thinking through not just what our friends think or what we were raised with, but really truly saying, "What does God's Word say?" Love that.
Another one is: what's your family make-up and vision? We actually have a whole episode on this, which we can link to in the show notes, but, essentially, it's that idea of how you spend your days is how you spend your life. We want to have you step back and say, "How do I want to spend my life? What should my family vision be? What does my husband and I—what do we really want for the type of culture that we want to create and foster, and then how does work help or hinder that?"
For example, for us as Wiflers, we often talk—just my husband and I—that we really want me to be the primary caretaker of our kids. This isn't necessarily measured in amount of time because my kids are at public school, so they actually spend a lot of time away, but we would say, "Hey, we really, if at all possible, want mom to be available after school. We want mom to be somebody that can pick them up at school. We also, where possible, want dad to do those things."
That's something that is of high priority for us—that we feel like we were present with our kids when they were home with us. When we think about work for me, we often make decisions based on "Will that make you too busy or will that make you too exhausted in order to be available for our kids?" whenever we've said, "Hey, this is a high priority." Or "What do summers look like?" There are just different things at play.
Emily: Similar to that, I think it's important that we talk through our dreams and our desires and our aspirations in different seasons of life. I know that, for us, my husband and I, it's good to have this conversation when there aren't any big decisions on the table—to enter the "we're dreaming" zone—
Laura: The dream state. Yes. I love it.
Emily: We're just talking freely. I have had times where I've been like, "I thought about going to seminary," and he'll bring up, "What if we move to England for a year or two for you to go to seminary over there?
Laura: Can I come?
Emily: I know.
Laura: I’m coming!
Emily: It's just a fun way to get some ideas out there and plant the seed, not to say, "Hey, that's definitely going to happen or not happen." Or we'll talk about, "Hey, I might like to write some more books someday," and my husband will share that he wants to become a pilot. As we talk through those things, I think it helps us really build a unified vision for the future as we think about the next stages of our family.
Laura: I know that my husband is not a natural dreamer, and so it's been helpful for me to pop in little snippets of things that I'm wanting to do, because then when it comes to the day where I'm like, "Ooh, this opportunity is here. I'd like to pursue this," he's like, "Oh yes, I've known that you really want to do this." This isn't some big shock, like Emily moving to England or anything. [Laughter]
Emily: That will be a shock if that happens, but, yes, I think it's nice to have your spouse not have heard that for the very first time.
Laura: Yes, exactly.
Emily: I think it helps a more fair, realistic evaluation process when both people have been brought along with those dreams and desires along the way.
Laura: Yes, doing it in a low-pressure situation is always good. Okay. Another big question is: what are the individual needs of your children and/or your extended family? This is one of those things that over the years—Emily and I both have children with special needs. Emily has a brother with special needs. We have different needs in our family, even outside of that, that each of our kids have, and it has been a continual conversation, I know for both of our families, as we talk about "Okay, how does our work and the ways that we spend our days—how does that support a child that does have significant extra needs?"
I know, for me, a lot of times I feel like it has been a "my life or yours" for my child—to be able to say, "Okay, I'm going to lay down my dreams for a season." I think that we have to take those things into account and recognize that the family that God gave us is our responsibility, and we have got to be there for them, and we've got to be available. That doesn't, again, necessarily mean you cannot work, but it is something where, as we are thinking about these things—"How are you going to get them to therapy?" Or "How are you going to be able to take them to their medical appointments?"
Maybe you have a child that has more emotional needs. I know, for a season, one of my children went through separation anxiety. What did that look like? Sometimes you can't turn the knob on work that easily for a moment, but if you can—or maybe you can find a job that does allow things like that. I think taking an account of how our kids are feeling, even though they don't get to decide for us what we get to do—taking that into account and really weighing that carefully because our job as a mom is hugely, hugely important.
Emily: To build on that, even for our typically developing children, it's important for us to keep a pulse on how they're feeling and acting. I know that in different seasons where I've traveled a little bit more—I know that book release year was really heavy. I saw some of that when I would get back and I would be tired, and, like Laura said, it wasn't like I immediately turned the knob on that, but I was pocketing some of those behaviors I was seeing in my kids and some of the strain that was putting on them so that in the future, as I made commitments, I was adding that into the cost of what I was saying yes to. I think all of this is about counting the cost and knowing how things might be affecting other people that you love in your life that you're responsible for.
Laura: This next one is actually a hard one and you have to be brutally honest with it. The question is: what are your motives and personal capacities? This question really is: one, do you need to work? For a lot of us, we have a financial situation where it is required. Even if you work a part-time job—I know a lot of moms who would say, "Hey, that part-time income is really the difference between us being able to put food on the table or for us to pay off our house."
What kind of debt do you have? What kind of insurance do you need? Do you need to work in order to have something like that? Another question would just be on the flip side of saying like, "Is this really necessary—this income?" What happens sometimes, I think, for people, is that they end up striving for a lifestyle that is actually difficult to maintain. We get in these pockets and in these spaces, and we feel like, "Well, how everyone's living around me, that's how I should live," or "This is what my friends spend their money on, so I should spend my money on that."
That social pressure is very, very real, but I think it's important for us to be really honest to say, like, "Hey, is this something where we really need to maintain this lifestyle? Is that that important to us that mom ends up having to be gone all day?" Or maybe your husband is working two shifts or something like that in order for you to maintain a lifestyle—really asking if that is something that's sustainable or even required in order to live a life sold out for Christ?
Emily: Another component of this is just thinking about how work is affecting your attitude—maybe your ability to engage with your kids and your family outside of your work hours. Some types of work can make people feel more frazzled, stressed, angry, annoyed. Perhaps that's the quantity of time that is being worked, or perhaps it's just like the stresses of the job and having to think through, "Hey, how do I mitigate those stresses?"
Perhaps you find yourself unable to take breaks or rest or pay attention. I know I've even had that with stuff that we have with Risen Motherhood. Sometimes if we are trying to work through an issue or a problem with the team, and the kids have a snow day and they’re home, I have a really hard time juggling those two things. I think it's important to think through as much as possible, like, "Okay, how can I set up my work so that when I'm working, I can focus on that, and when I'm with my kids, hopefully, it's not really affecting my mood and my attitude and my ability to engage? And if it is, trying to think through "Okay, what could we do differently?"
Laura: I think attitude is a huge indicator of how things are going and should definitely be something taken into account. Going back a little bit to motivations— even a little bit more—I feel like there's another angle that I wanted to cover, Em, which was: do you want to work just so you can escape your motherhood? I only bring this up because I know that I have been somebody who has felt that way at times, and so I know there's probably some other listeners out there who might relate.
I think this is really hard because it can feel hard to admit this because you feel like a monster. It's one of those things where we can love our motherhood and we can love work, but sometimes work can become an escape. Or maybe you feel bored at home, or you feel lonely, or you don't feel valued or like you're getting any affirmation—and work is a quick fix for a lot of people.
That's something where—I was just talking to a friend about this the other day—that, ultimately, work will never fulfill that for us. If we don't first deal with that in Christ and have him fill that void for us and have him give us our value—have him be our greatest friend and give our affirmation—then we're just going to be stuck on a cycle of continually seeking the next thing that's going to fill us up.
Emily: Which I think, like you and I have talked about before—if we experience this, we know other moms experience it. Hopefully, you already heard on the idols and pitfalls show that we all struggle, and we all have a tendency to value wrong things at different times. I think part of it, like you're saying, is just acknowledging where you're coming from. And maybe that doesn't mean that you quit your job.
Laura: No, I still work. [Laughter]
Emily: Maybe it's learning how to repent in that and continually ask the Lord how he's going to help you do the work that he's given you with a heart that's there to serve him and not to escape something that is difficult.
Laura: Yes, exactly. I think it's a hard truth, but it's a really good one. I think it's more common than we're willing to admit. A last question—we just want to wrap up here. Again, there are tons more in the workbook. This is just barely scratching the surface of all the things we want to help you guys work through. The question would just be—I think that for a lot of us as moms, we think to ourselves, like we opened the show, “Hey, how much can I work until I hurt my kids? Until they're sacrificed on that altar of motherhood and work?"
Really, we want to flip that question and just say, "Hey, how can I be faithful with what the Lord has put before me today?" Instead of thinking about it kind of the way that we think about junk food, where we're like—I think sometimes you can get into a mentality of "Okay, how much junk food can I eat until I go overboard, or I gain weight, or I don't look the way I want to look, or I feel really bad?" So, you just measure, like, "I'm going to eat as much as I can until I cross that line." Instead, we want to say, like, "No, how much healthy food can we eat?"
How do we redirect our focus to say, "How do we stay healthy? How do we bring in the good stuff, the nutritious stuff?" We want to think about work like that as well—of saying, "Okay, how can I be most faithful in the life the Lord has handed me?" Not just push ourselves to the edge or push our kids to the edge, but look at our lives holistically and say, "What is best for my whole family, and how do we really lay down our lives for our husbands and our children, just as Christ did for us?"
Emily: I think one final note is that this isn't a one-time answer, most likely. In different seasons—maybe it's a couple of times a year, maybe it's every few years— this will be something that most moms have to keep re-evaluating. Even if you come to a decision, you may go to work on Monday and still not feel totally settled deep, deep, deep in your soul about it. There still might be some questions. Your child might still cry when you drop them off.
One thing I think that's helpful to me is to really go back to those moments where, with my husband in unity, we said, "We're saying yes to this. We're committing to this amount of hours or this opportunity for this period of time. We'll reevaluate again in the future, but we're going to walk through this together." Then when those hard things come, we pray, and we lean on the Lord. I am always amazed at how he provides—the sanctifying work that he does in my heart in the midst of that. The kind of humility that that brings as I feel like, "Oops, I didn't have a perfect plan. I didn't have it all together."
I just think we're never going to strike that absolute perfect balance. If we did, why would we need to keep depending on the Lord? Instead, it's a moment-by-moment journey with him to just do the best that we can, to obey his will and trust that he's going to redirect us as needed.
Laura: That was good, Em. Yes, I think with that, we just want to encourage you guys: if you are resonating with this show or in a place where you are reevaluating your work—maybe you're thinking about more, maybe you're thinking about less hours—head over to risenmotherhood.com/work. You can get the download there, print it, bind it, do whatever you want with it, but we hope that it will be of service to you.
