In a little over a week, I will be giving a talk about balancing career and home life at the Boonslick Women’s Business Network (BWBN). When I was asked to do this talk, my first thought was that I was grossly under qualified to discuss this topic. I felt and still feel this way for a lot of reasons. For one thing, in the recent past I have put sugar in my Keurig, instead of coffee grounds, and cumin instead of cinnamon in my husband’s oatmeal (at least it was his oatmeal, not mine). Today, I literally got locked out of my vet truck by a goat (you can’t make this stuff up). Also, coming out of calving season and into the busy spring season of my business, I feel less balanced than ever. I also have to acknowledge that I am a bit spoiled and have a huge support system (see “It Takes a Village” below). But now that I’ve acknowledged my privilege, I will say that I have managed to run a very busy, growing practice, undergo cancer treatment, and keep my baby happy and healthy. So yes, I still feel underqualified to cover this topic, but I will give myself a little pat on the back (as all mothers should). Also, thanks for reading this blog post as it is helping me prepare for said presentation. I’ve heard work-life balance referred to as the likening of walking/balancing on a train track. It’s never easy, and you are constantly at risk of falling to one side or the other. You stay late at work to treat that dog that’s been hit by a car and miss your kid’s little league baseball game, falling heavily to the work side. One day, you stay home with your sick child on a day that you know will be super busy at work, falling to the home side. While there is some truth to this interpretation, the thing I don’t like about it is you never truly feel balanced, and you are constantly letting someone down and feeling guilty. I’m an optimist, so I like to think that it is truly possible to feel satisfied at work and satisfied at home. While I may not feel balanced at the moment, I feel like I am learning to find that balance. Below, I will give my biggest challenges or barriers to finding that balance and how I address them. Enjoy! Long Hours/On Call: It Takes A Village This is a challenge for many women in my profession, but other professions as well. I love my career and can’t imagine doing anything else. But when you’re a mixed animal veterinarian in a rural area, you can’t shut out the lights and forward your emergencies to the emergency clinic like they do in big cities. When you work a lot with cattle, you can bet that you are going to have an incredibly high call volume January through March (the peak of calving season). Because there are two veterinarians in my clinic, we split calls evenly. That means that 50% of my life, I have to be accessible to clients 24/7 for emergencies. It has always been hard, but after having my son, it became a huge undertaking. My first calving season after having him was not bad. For one thing, we had a mild winter, which means I didn’t have to deliver as many calves. I also found that a three month old baby that wasn’t very mobile and slept most of the time was quite easy to take on emergency calls. I felt like I had this whole mom thing figured out. Once my son started walking (which happened pretty early, at 10 months) and became more and more active, taking him on calls became next to impossible. My husband, whom I used to rely on to help with emergencies, I would now rely on to watch the baby while I went on a call. It was tough learning to fly solo on emergencies. When you work all week and have no down time on the weekends to just be with your family, you’re flooded with heartbreak, regret, and guilt. Yes, this is the profession that I chose to do, and I knew what I was getting into, but it doesn’t make it less difficult. The most important thing to come to terms with when you work over 60 hours some weeks is that IT TAKES A VILLAGE! I have the privilege of having both grandmothers living nearby, and both of them are retired. Not only do they take turns watching my son during the week, but sometimes they watch him if I get an emergency that I know I’ll need an extra hand with (my husband). When you work a lot, you need help, and it’s okay to ask for it. Another way I’ve tackled this challenge is to try to be as efficient as possible and manage my time better. I’m not perfect yet, but I’m getting there. This involves delegating more at work so my team can feel empowered to help and I can get home earlier. This means typing up medical records while simultaneously calling clients for checkups or placing that drug order for the day. A couple of weeks ago when I had a hit-by-car dog that needed extensive surgery and then two hospitalized patients to take care of afterward, I was literally running from one place to the next in the clinic to get done faster. That’s how much I wanted to get home to see my boy, and I got a little exercise in since I didn’t have time for it that day. When you have a busy work schedule, try to keep things simple. If you can squeeze it in to your budget, hire someone to clean your house twice a week. Let your husband do some cooking (See Cultural Expectations for Women below). Delegate at work, but delegate in the home too. You can’t do it all. Mom Guilt This is a tough one. Honestly, I’m not quite sure I’ve figured out how to manage my guilt. I feel like if I had, I could write a book about it and become a very rich woman. However, I will list a few things that seem to help me. Participation in a faith community has been very helpful. I fell away from going to church in my college and veterinary school years. I was too busy, and I had been turned off by too many preachers combining religion and politics. Shortly before my son was born, we started attending a church in my local town. They had Sunday evening services, which were nice because I liked to have at least one morning during the week that I didn’t have to be somewhere, so Sunday mornings were sometimes hard for me to swing. We also started participating in a young adults Bible study. While many times I have to skip sessions or services because I have to go on an emergency, becoming involved in a faith community has given me the “peace that passes understanding.” Some days, it’s all I have. Also, having a church family gives you an immediate support group. If you’re not religious, try joining a book club or some community organizations that you’re interested in. Another thing that can help with the mom guilt phenomenon is simply interacting and socializing with other moms. Realizing that you have the same challenges, and supporting each other. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time to do this as I would like. This is mostly limited to the occasional wine night with my sister-in-law and brunch with my veterinary school friends. This allows me to fill my bucket and feel rejuvenated about life. Yes, I still feel guilty. A lot. But little by little, I’m learning to manage it. Cultural Expectations for Women If you are a woman or any person that doesn’t completely have their head in the sand, you know that there are cultural expectations that make it challenging for working mothers. Yes, we have come a long way, but we have a long way to go. The broken gender dynamics in the workplace have a (somewhat) simple solution: Give women more power and responsibility. Fixing the broken gender dynamics in our homes is a different story. On average, women who work full time do 60% of the house chores and 80% of the child care. Juggling all of those responsibilities is challenging to say the least. Also, part of the reason the phenomenon mom guilt exists is that we are expected to feel guilty. Our society is coming a long way, but there is still an underlying attitude that as a mother, if you have not sacrificed your physical and mental health along with your professional aspirations for your children, then you are being a bad mother. Working late because a parvo puppy came in? Bad mother. Taking an hour or so to yourself to exercise, read a book, or watch Netflix with a glass of wine? Bad mother. Men do not seem to feel the level of guilt we do. When a man works long and hard hours, he is commended for his hours of hard work and supporting his family. Don’t get me wrong, I realize men have challenges with work-life balance too. But this is my blog, so I’m writing it from my perspective. Ha! I’m not sure I know why men don’t feel the level of guilt we do, but I have to feel that a lot of it is our culture and what is expected of us. I can’t tell you the number of times my husband has had older ladies fawning over him for cooking or taking our son to the grocery store by himself. They come up to me and tell me what a wonderful husband and father he is. It’s true. He is a wonderful husband and father, but never once have I been commended for taking my kid to the grocery store or on a cow dystocia. Just sayin’! Unfortunately, I don’t have all the answers to this problem. I wish I did. All I can say is that it’s okay to delegate tasks to your partner (if you don’t happen to be a single mom). My husband does 95% of the cooking in our house. He is a wonderful cook. I actually have a hard time cooking when he is home because he hovers over me and asks why I’m using so many dishes or chopping the onion that way. He’s not much of a cleaner, but he has learned to help with dishes or things around the house out of necessity. A lot of what can hold women back from receiving help in the home is a phenomenon called maternal gatekeeping. Outside of the home, our society still largely has a men-on-top-women-on-bottom structure, inside the homes, women have a lot of sway. We organize schedules, doctors appointments, file the taxes, pay the bills, do the laundry, and wash the dishes. These extra responsibilities hurt women professionally. Yes, sometimes men can be lazy or clueless when it comes to housework, or even simply pretend they don’t know how to do things, but men are not the only ones to blame. A study on this subject done by Schoppe-Sullivan found that women are more likely to gatekeep if they perceive their relationship to be less stable, when they feel anxious or depressed or hold excessively high standards, or when their husbands lack confidence. My advice is to not be a gatekeeper, but a collaborator. Yes, sometimes you might think in your head, “For the love of God, why can’t he learn to fold a towel correctly?” Or, “You’re holding the bottle wrong, let me do it.” Don’t discourage your husband or partner from helping. Odds are, they haven’t done this stuff as much as you have. They’ll learn a more efficient way with time and experience. Sometimes it’s best just to keep your mouth shut and graciously accept help. I’m not saying that you can’t ever correct or advise your husband on household tasks, but do so nicely, and less often than you would like. That’s about half of what I want to say on this topic (actually 1/10th but I can’t go into every little detail about how to load the dishwasher). Next week I will discuss health, money, and personal choices that can help give us all a better work-life balance, and then I’ll promote my new book, Work-Life Balance in 5 Easy Steps. I’m just kidding - it’s not that easy. Have you been listening? It’s a continuous process. Please send me any tips about how you achieve work-life balance so I can share them with the group and convince the women of BWBN that I know what I’m talking about. We all need a pep talk sometimes and hopefully I can give them the encouragement that all women need on such an important topic.
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Jessica Stroupe, DVM
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August 2017
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