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Chapter 3

Finding Peace When You Don’t Want to Work

When my husband and I married, he did not have a college degree, and he was working as an independent contractor for an IT staffing firm. I had just started my junior year of college and was working part time. Our plan was for both of us to obtain our degrees before we started a family. Then, we figured, we’d have three or maybe four kids. Once we were done having kids, one of us would get sterilized.

Our carefully laid plans were completely upended by our conversion to Catholicism two years later. For the first time, we learned about the Church’s teaching regarding the gift of children, responsible parenthood, and discernment of family size. We also were introduced to Natural Family Planning. According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, NFP “represents the only authentic approach to family planning available to husbands and wives because these methods can be used to both attempt or avoid pregnancy.”⁹ To our surprise, we felt a call to become parents much sooner than we’d originally planned — after I had earned my degree, but before my husband had earned his.

Because I had a college degree, I had more earning power than my husband. I became a working mother; and as events transpired, I was a reluctant working mother for approximately thirteen years. I wasn’t working because I felt a calling to be in that particular field, or in that particular profession, or at that particular company. I worked only because we needed my income to help pay our bills.

Yes, daycare was a significant cost; in fact, our daycare bill was more than our rent, and then more than our mortgage, once we bought a house. Yet I still made enough money after daycare expenses and taxes to pay bills. I was sometimes the sole provider of health insurance for our family as well.

I’ve had many conversations with other Catholic working mothers who are in the same boat. It is getting harder and harder these days to scrape by on one income alone. Inflation has skyrocketed, along with the cost of living, but salaries haven’t kept pace.

Job security is a thing of the past — it’s increasingly rare to hear of someone who has stayed at the same company more than ten years, let alone someone who started out in an entry-level role and worked up to a senior role.

Another factor is that so many of us have graduated from college with crushing student-loan debt. When I was in high school, the prevailing attitude seemed to be that you needed a college degree to get a decent job, and that student loans were a necessary evil. As such, I went to college and acquired a massive load of student-loan debt — debt that I am still paying off.

It used to be that you could work part time while going to college, or perhaps work full time during the summers, and use the money you earned to pay your tuition as well as your living expenses and textbooks, but that simply isn’t feasible anymore.

College tuition isn’t the only expense that has skyrocketed in the past few decades. Groceries, housing, utilities, and gasoline have all gone up, and wages haven’t kept pace with inflation. When you consider the cost of groceries, utilities, and healthcare — all necessities — it proves difficult to pay even the basic expenses without two incomes.

“I don’t get over [the guilt] altogether, but what helps me is a) taking a look at our budget and knowing that we realistically could not make it work for me to stay home right now and b) recognizing that God reveals his will through circumstances, even if I don’t like them. Since our circumstances are pretty clearly indicating that I need to work right now, I recognize that my feelings of guilt are unwarranted, and use them to pray for trust and detachment — we are stewards of our children, but they ultimately belong to God. Whenever I have rough drop-off days, it helps me to remember to say a prayer to their guardian angels and the Blessed Mother to keep them safe and happy.”

— Lisa W.

Thus, many Catholic mothers need to work, either part time or full time, to help support their families. There are families for whom the mother is the primary breadwinner because she has the higher earning potential; in some cases, the father stays at home with the children or only works part time.

Some Catholic mothers work so that their family can afford Catholic school tuition for their children, as that expense has also skyrocketed in the past few decades. Could a family make it on one income if they put their kids in public school or homeschooled instead of sending their kids to Catholic school? Maybe, but for those parents, a Catholic education is a priority, and not all parents are cut out to homeschool.

Then there are the Catholic mothers who need to work due to difficult family circumstances: They are single, separated, divorced, or widowed, and they are the only means of support for their children.

Whatever your situation, you can find comfort in the fact that you are doing what is necessary to support your family. However, knowing this intellectually doesn’t stop a working mother from being emotionally plagued by guilt.

Guilt: The Working Mother’s Constant Companion

The reasons a family might need a second income are many and varied, but that doesn’t prevent others from thinking they know better than you do when it comes to your family’s circumstances.

While the Church does not teach that mothers cannot work, that doesn’t keep others from sharing their opinions on the subject. It’s difficult to battle the perception by certain fellow Catholics that you don’t need to work; in fact, it’s remarkably similar to battling the perception by non-Catholics that you have too many children (or the perception by some Catholics that you have too few children).

I once had someone message me on Facebook and say that she could tell from my blog that I didn’t need to work full time, since I’d hired a professional photographer to take pictures of my kids — obviously, if I could afford to do that, I could afford to stay at home if I just gave up such luxuries.

The reality was that the photo shoot was a mini session that cost $50, one that I paid for with birthday money I’d received earlier in the month. The shoot also paid for itself because I turned those pictures into inexpensive Christmas gifts for grandparents by creating photo books online using discount coupons.

Despite the fact that I knew this person’s criticisms were unreasonable and unwarranted, I still felt a twinge of guilt.

Guilt, unfortunately, is often the reluctant working mother’s constant companion. Guilt when you drop off the kids at daycare and they don’t want to go. Guilt if they happen to hit a milestone while at daycare and you don’t see it. Guilt when evenings are filled with errands or extracurriculars or even just dinner preparations and cleanup instead of quality time with your kids. Guilt when you’re eager for the kids’ bedtime because all you want to do is turn your brain off and watch a show on Netflix with your husband.

Guilt when a child wants you to chaperone a field trip, or has an in-class party or awards ceremony, but you’re completely out of paid time off. Or worse, guilt when your children are sick, and even though it’s breaking your heart to leave them with their father or a sympathetic relative or neighbor, you can’t afford to take an unpaid day or there’s a meeting you can’t miss, short of a dire emergency.

I can also attest to the fact that stay-at-home mothers aren’t immune to mom guilt. After being laid off twice in the span of one year, I decided to take a break from the workforce for a while (primarily so I could concentrate on writing this book). I was still wracked with guilt — guilt that I wasn’t getting enough housework done, guilt that I was spending more time doing housework and writing than with my kids, guilt that I wasn’t contributing financially to the household like I had before. It never ends.

As actress Anna Faris puts it, “Motherhood is like a big sleeping bag of guilt.”¹⁰

It may not be possible to get rid of the guilt entirely, but you can turn it into a tool for good. Use that guilt as encouragement to prioritize your tasks and stay focused on your children so that you can be completely present for them during the times when you are home. Focus on providing your children with quality time in lieu of a quantity of time.

Remember that guilt is often Satan’s way of trying to infuse us with depression and self-doubt. He loves to hit us where it hurts and whisper in our ear, “If you were a better mother, you wouldn’t be working right now; you’d be with your child.”

Sometimes, we have to be firm and say, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” whenever those niggling feelings of guilt start creeping into our heads. God gives us conviction and the strength to make the changes we need to make — he does not give us condemnation.

Also remember this: If it was God’s plan for you to be home, you would be. Like the Blessed Virgin Mary, you are being faithful by saying “yes” to God’s will, even if his plan was not one you had envisioned for your life.

God may have you in your current situation for a reason. Maybe in the capacity of your employment, you will affect the lives of a client or a coworker or a customer for the better, bringing them closer to God. Or maybe God is protecting you from a financial pitfall that would otherwise transpire. But whatever the reason, as long as you have carefully and intentionally discerned the will of God for your life, you can be confident in knowing that you are where he needs you to be, even if you can’t immediately see your place in his larger plan.

For example, I often prayed for our circumstances to change so that I could be a stay-at-home-mom, but it took thirteen years for that prayer to be answered. In hindsight, I can see that God’s plan for me was to form the Catholic Working Mothers Facebook support group, which has now touched the lives of thousands of women. If God had answered that prayer on my timeline instead of his, the group might never have been created, and those women would not have gotten the support that they needed at that time in their lives.

Another tactic that helps with the guilt is to reframe the aspect of the situation that is making you feel guilty and look at it from a different perspective. For example, a CWM in my group was lamenting about how hurt she felt that her toddler, when asked where his mommy was by a friend, said, “At a meeting, working, working, working.”

I asked her, “If he had that same reply when asked where his father was, would that be equally as hurtful?”

She said, “That’s a really good question … and helpful to consider. I don’t think AS hurtful, very true.”

It’s a fact that kids with working parents are missing out on time with them — but that is true whether the parent is the mother or the father. I’m pretty sure that same child would also miss things like healthcare, good food, reliable shelter, and other necessities that his mother’s income helps to provide if she did not work.

The Daycare Dilemma

By and large, the biggest source of guilt for reluctant working mothers is putting our children in the care of others while we work. It seems to be somewhat more acceptable if we have husbands who are SAHDs, or if we have relatives who care for our children; but if we put our children in daycare, we are “paying someone else to raise our kids” or “letting our kids be raised by strangers.”

Unless you take your kid to a new daycare every day, or you take your child to a center where turnover is unusually high (as in, new employees are hired and fired on a daily or weekly basis), strangers aren’t raising your child. Instead, your child is forming close bonds with an adult who cares about him or her.

Furthermore, even stay-at-home parents aren’t engaging their children one hundred percent of the time. A stay-at-home-parent does housework, reads, visits with friends, shops for groceries, brings the kids to playdates where they play with other kids, perhaps does volunteer work, blogs, spends time on social media, etc. What’s the metric for gauging how much one-on-one time constitutes raising versus not raising? Is there a mathematical formula?

“Honestly, I put staying home out of my head. For me it was an impossible pipe dream that would have required winning the lottery because my husband is disabled; but still it was something I had always wanted, and I was disappointed. Happiness is more about perception than reality. If your heart is somewhere other than your reality, you’re going to be unhappy. If you can’t change your reality, change your heart.”

— Carrie K.

If we want to foster a culture of life in this country, we must stop denigrating daycare. Most single moms need to work to support their kids, and a lot of mothers who choose life and keep their children instead of giving them up for adoption must, by necessity, place their child in daycare.

If it is the quantity of time that parents spend with their children that equates to “raising” them, then logically only mothers raise their children. Fathers do not, since (presumably) the father is working forty or more hours per week and only sees his children evenings, weekends, and holidays. Yet Catholics speak about both parents raising their children, as does the Church. How can this be, if the mother is the only one doing the raising?

What those with this mindset do not realize is that a good daycare complements our parenting; it does not replace it, much as schools do not replace parents as the primary educators of their children, but instead serve as a supplement to a child’s education. Those who criticize daycare seem to be under the impression that all daycares are designed to expose young children to secular modernism and hedonism.

While centers like the ones they envision may exist, they certainly aren’t like any of the ones I’ve had experience with, or have sent my children to in the past. They’ve obviously never seen my kids’ former daycare, which was a home daycare run by a Mormon husband-and-wife team with four kids of their own. I know from experience that they shared many of the same moral values that I do as a Catholic, and they were also very respectful of our Catholic Faith (just as I was respectful of their Mormon faith).

Their house was clean and neat (much cleaner than my house, for sure!). They had a huge playroom with lots of toys, and a big backyard with artificial turf and play equipment, plus a misting system for hot months. They took field trips, played games, and read stories with the kids. They provided two nutritious meals a day plus a snack in the afternoon. My kids were in their care from 2011 to 2017, and they’ve cared for all six of my children — three of them since they were eight weeks old, and one since she was a year old. They became good friends, and I felt blessed and reassured that my children were in excellent hands while I worked to help support our family.

Similarly, the daycare we used from 2017 to 2018 was an inhome daycare run by a wonderful Christian woman who loved our kids as if they were her own. My kids loved her in return, and we remain friends to this day.

The stories from other Catholic working mothers are similar. We aren’t tossing our kids into gulags while we traipse off to work every day. We put a lot of time and effort into finding a daycare situation that is a good fit for our family and complements our parenting. Some CWMs choose to employ nannies or au pairs. Some have relatives watch over their children. Some CWMs don’t use daycare at all, and work opposite shifts or have their spouse stay at home with the children, or even work as daycare providers.

Whatever situation we choose, we make sure that our children are happy and well-cared for — and if we have concerns, we resolve them or find alternate arrangements. We can plainly see that our kids are happy, healthy, and thriving in the care of people we know and trust.

Resentment Is the Greatest Enemy of Contentment

Guilt isn’t always bad, though. Our culture likes to joke about “Catholic guilt,” but guilt can be a positive thing when it is the result of a certain situation or action clashing with our well-formed conscience. It’s a good idea to analyze any situation or incident that is making you feel guilty and explore what changes you could have made or can make in the future. Sometimes there are no changes you can make, and you’re doing exactly what you need to do. But there might be a step you can take or an action you can perform that will bring you closer to what your ideal is, and alleviate some of that guilt.

If you are desperately longing to be a SAHM, to the point where it’s causing anger and resentment in your life, talk to your husband. Go over your finances together — your income, your expenses, your debt-to-income ratio, your short- and long-term financial goals. Discuss what needs to be done to make your dream a reality. Sometimes just having a plan and a goal to work toward can help ease the guilt. Even having a clearer picture of what circumstances would need to change in order for you to stop working can make you feel more confident in knowing that you’re doing the right thing in your current situation.

Sometimes, however, the above approach isn’t feasible (for example, if you’re a single mother). I saw a quote on Twitter last year that said, “Resentment is the greatest enemy of contentment.” If you are actively resenting your job, your boss, your coworkers, your general situation, or other aspects of your life, you’re going to be much more susceptible to guilt, and it’s going to be a lot harder to enjoy what you have if you’re constantly obsessing about what you don’t have or want to have.

I remember one day that was really rough for me. I was tired of commuting three hours round trip every day, tired of working, tired of constantly feeling like I couldn’t keep up with the laundry, the dishes, the cooking. I found some satisfaction in my work, and I knew that my salary was necessary for my family’s financial survival, but trying to balance a full-time job with full-time motherhood of (at that time) four young children seemed more difficult by the day.

“The concept of ONE or TWO people (the mother and father usually) being the sole nurturer, provider, caretaker, driver, supporter, etc. of their child is a completely new concept. For years we had generational caretakers. Multiple generations in the home would take care of the whole family. It was a group effort. In places like India and Japan, this is still a very common practice. In America, we have the means and the social expectation to live in our own separate homes, and that means separating our lives as well. Do not feel guilty that it takes a village. For years we had villages. People just very quickly forget that.”

— Hannah D.

I spent an hour of my commute sobbing as I cried out to God, telling him that I felt like I was Sisyphus — forever pushing my boulder up the hill, alone, unsupported, with no relief in sight. I arrived at work emotionally exhausted but feeling slightly better for having poured out my troubles.

Throughout the day, I received encouraging e-mail messages from friends — even though I hadn’t shared my struggle with any of them. Another friend wrote a blog post about Saint Francis de Sales that included this quote, which was immensely comforting:

Do not look forward in fear to the changes in life; rather, look to them with full hope that as they arise, God, whose very own you are, will lead you safely through all things; and when you cannot stand it, God will carry you in his arms. Do not fear what may happen tomorrow; the same understanding Father who cares for you today will take care of you then and every day. He will either shield you from suffering or will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.

I found that quote so helpful that I printed it out and hung it in my cubicle. It helped me realize that I wasn’t Sisyphus, pushing my immense burden uphill all by myself, unless I chose to be Sisyphus. I had a burden, that’s true, but that didn’t make me any different from any other human being on this earth. Instead of struggling alone with a burden that was insurmountable, I could choose to be like Jesus, carrying my cross of reluctantly working with patience and offering up my sufferings for others.

As long as I viewed my trials and sufferings as burdens I had to deal with by myself, I would be a victim; but instead, I could learn to view my suffering as a work of love for others and be more like Jesus.

“Offering it up” is a concept that is foreign to many, even those raised in the Catholic Church. The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense. It was not God’s will for the world to contain suffering, but it was one of the consequences of the free will of our first parents. Adam and Eve chose to sin, and God respected their choice — even though it meant his beloved sons and daughters would have to suffer.

God, however, has given us the ability to take our suffering and use it for the good of others. As he so often does, he will bring good out of a bad situation. Our suffering does not have to be in vain, whether it is suffering caused from physical pain, emotional damage, or just the common trials of everyday life — including working when we would much rather be at home with our children.

While investigating this subject, I found many suggested prayers to use when consciously trying to offer up our suffering. My favorite was this one:¹¹

Dear Lord,

Help me to remember in these troubled times

The cross you carried for my sake,

So that I may better carry mine

And to help others do the same,

As I offer up (whatever your concern or problem here) to you

For the conversion of sinners

For the forgiveness of sins

In reparation for sins

And for the salvation of souls.

Amen.