Rebecca's blog: The Wobble

As a full-time lawyer at a city firm, I had a little ‘wobble’ recently over whether my working in a career as demanding as mine is what’s best for my secondary school-aged children.  It feels like a busy time at the moment, what with two of them studying for GCSEs, the eldest applying for sixth form, the youngest having just hit puberty and my kitchen beginning to look like it should have its own reality TV show.  All of this, topped off with an email from the school informing me that my eldest hadn’t met a GCSE coursework deadline (her response being, “well, you weren’t here to help me because you’re always working”), made me take a long, hard look at whether I was doing the right thing in maintaining a city career as a parent.

Admittedly, I had been working some long hours, albeit some evenings from home.  When I do focus solely on the kids’ homework in the evenings, teaching them everything from chemistry to poetry to French (often having to mug up on these subjects myself before explaining it to them),  they take themselves up to bed feeling organised and ready for the following day at school.  I’m also pleased that they’re prepared and that they have a much better understanding of whatever topic they’ve been studying.  Any sense of achievement I feel in being able to juggle a day at work and an evening of homework, however, is usually dulled by the knowledge that a night of work work now lies ahead of me, meaning I’m absolutely exhausted after a few days of this virtuous ‘perfect-working-parent’ routine.

It was clear to me that this way of life was not sustainable and it was very easy to point the finger at my job and to conclude that a less-demanding role might free up my evenings, as my daughter often suggests when the subject of her homework comes up.  However, once I had written my usual ‘for and against’ list, I started to look more closely at how our lives might look if I were available more in the early evenings for the children. 

They have after-school clubs most days, so I wouldn’t expect them home before 6pm anyway.  On top of that, they have Scouts and various activities or lessons most evenings, so it’s more likely that I’d be at home learning verb conjugations whilst they’re out doing other things anyway (of course, I could, very happily use that quality alone time to read for pleasure, or write a novel, but I wouldn’t give up the job I love for that since the whole point of even considering changing roles was to spend more time supporting my children).  The eldest has just started spending more time out with her friends too, so the chances of my Shakespeare flashcards being able to beat the allure of ‘hanging out in Costa’ are minimal in any case.

It also occurred to me that my supervising these teenagers while they do their homework is probably not the best way to foster independent learning and self-discipline.  They have plenty of educational resources available to them and are perfectly capable of working things out for themselves and of reading the materials I’m using to support them.  So perhaps what’s needed is not a career change, but for me to place more of the onus on them to achieve their academic goals.  And possibly to acknowledge that in the time it took me to write my ‘for and against’ list, my courseworkless 15 year old has slipped out to Starbucks.

Rebecca is a city lawyer and parent of three ‘spirited’ young people aged 12, 13 and 15.