“…they had to have been married for more than 25 years and have had three or more children, as well as a brilliant career.”

She turned her findings into a book, The Compleat Woman: Marriage, Motherhood, Career – Can She Have It All? Her conclusion was that it was very rare for a woman to be able to successfully juggle a husband, children and successful career.

Now, a British newspaper has marked the twentieth anniversary of the book’s publication by going back and interviewing some of the women whose lives were chronicled in it to see if they think it’s gotten any easier to “have it all.” The very interesting (and lengthy) article is worth reading, but if you’re pressed for time, I’d like to share a couple of key points these women now make, as they look back on their lives from the vantage point of old age.

1) Women try too hard to give their children the perfect childhood.

Author Faye Weldon, 77 and the mother of four sons, says:

“Today, we try to fight that destiny and give our children the perfect childhood in the hopes that it will make them perfect. I think children are the better for a little healthy neglect. Mine certainly were.”

I don’t think she means neglect in a bad way. What she’s saying is that if we give our kids more autonomy and stop trying to micromanage their activities, they’ll do just fine and we’ll be less exhausted. This is a point we homeschooling moms, who are already involved personally in our children’s daily education, need to take to heart.

2) Women should realize they can have a career while raising children, but it won’t be easy, and the children must come first.

Shirley Hughes, 80, the mother of three children and a well-known children’s author, recalls writing at home with children underfoot:

“…despite publishing more than 50 books, Hughes managed without a nanny.

“I would have been too jealous of her relationship with my children,” she explains.

“We did have au pairs to help out domestically, but I would never have left them in sole charge of the children all day…..But fractured concentration due to interruptions from children is the bane of a working mother’s life, especially if you work from home as I did.

“But it was the right thing for me. I was able to be there for my children, and so glad I was self-employed and did not have to disappear off for long days away from the home.”

3) Women expect to have too many material things that don’t matter in the long run.

Sheila Kitzinger, 80, a mother of five grown daughters and honored by the British government for her years of work for the National Childbirth Trust, says:

“Women now think they need so much more. Everyone must have a second car in the family.”

She also seconds Ms. Weldon’s concern about providing a wealth of perfect educational experiences:

“But also, we feel the need to do so much more with our children. There are constant educational trips – must see the Tutankhamun exhibition, must see the Chinese warriors at the British Museum.

“It’s relentless, exhausting and very expensive.”

Ms. Hughes agrees:

“Perhaps women think today they need to have too much. We all say we work because we need the money, but are there sacrifices to be made.

“Perhaps not having a second car; maybe moving to live somewhere cheaper.

“It’s very sad when people think they cannot afford to have more children. What do you regret at the end of your life? Is it the expensive stuff, or not having a child?”

According to the article, these women with such successful careers look back over their lives and see where their time was best invested: in their husbands and children. As Ms. Hughes put it:

“My only regrets are that I got too bogged down with getting the shopping and household chores. I should have let it all go to pot a lot more than I did.

“What I wish I’d done more of is sitting and talking to my children round the kitchen table.

“And conversations with my husband, too, now that I’m widowed. Once your husband dies, that is what you long for above all.

“But when you’re young and busy with work and family, you are always rushing on to the next thing. That’s life.”

We can all learn from those who have come before us. And with that, I’d better go make dinner and spend some time enjoying it with my family

When I was homeschooling, one of my goals was for my kids to find really nice friends. I’d had the experience of dealing with mean kids at school, and didn’t want my kids to have to go through it. And while we did have some great neighbors, I wanted my kids to have good friends in addition to their neighborhood friends.

They did make some really nice friends, which was great. But what I didn’t realize was that these kids would have nice moms, too. What a pleasure it was to hang out with people who understood exactly what my life was like! When we started homeschooling, many people thought it was weird. Some of my mom friends thought I’d lost my marbles because I wanted to have my kids home all day. But the homeschool moms understood completely.

Over the years, I’ve met many more homeschool moms through support group meetings, convention booths and workshops, and the Internet (especially my blogs). I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you all! I think homeschool moms are the smartest, nicest and just plain coolest moms there are 

I want to wish all of you a blessed Mother’s Day and also tell you how much I appreciate your friendship. I do think socialization is one of the best things about homeschooling, for kids and their moms. Don’t you? 

That thread might be about getting teens to follow through on assignments, or how to handle friends and relatives opposed to homeschooling, or (in the most recent bunch) how to juggle homeschooling, homemaking and preschoolers without losing your mind.

Maybe the popularity of this latest topic stems from the fact that it’s February and everyone’s been cooped up indoors for months and they’re getting tired of it. But juggling the kids, the house and homeschooling can be stressful; how well I know that from my own experience.

Looking back on the days when I was running back and forth between the big kids, the little kids and the washing machine, I recall that it seemed that there was no solution to my problem. Some (particularly any negative friends and relatives you might have) think the solution is to send the kids to school. But that wouldn’t work for me because I never considered putting any of my kids in school. It seemed to me that would be punishing them because I couldn’t hack it. I just felt that I wasn’t keeping up because I hadn’t yet figured out how to do this the right way.

Of course, now I know there is no right way. You can usually find a way that will work for a while, but once you get used to things going better, something changes with your schedule, or your kids, or you get pregnant, and it’s all up in the air again.

Ultimately, I found that there were several things I could do to help myself through the rough spots. First off, I prayed for guidance, regularly and often through tears. I mean, if God led us to homeschooling (and I believed and still believe that He did) then He could surely teach me how to do it, right?

Next, I asked my husband for ideas. The truth is that I wasn’t always as receptive to his ideas as I should have been, but he did come up with some good ones. For example, he’s the one who figured out what I could do when our 18-month old started taking apart the house while I sat nursing our newborn, who had a voracious appetite and went ballistic if I put him down so I could pull Miss Toddler off the curtains. My dh suggested buying some quiet activity-type toys that she could only use while sitting at the high chair during baby’s nursing time. This worked very well and helped get us all through that particularly frustrating period of time.

I also found that I needed to think about our schedule, and what I could change to make our days run more smoothly. I also had to ask myself some tough questions, including:

Are we spending too much time on homeschooling, considering my kids’ ages?

Do we need to switch from a formal curriculum to something less structured? (Or, once in a while, do we need to add more structure to our day?)

Are my preschoolers getting enough rest time? (Rest time, by the way, was the main reason I didn’t lose my marbles in the days when I had four kids under 10. Rest time was the successor to nap time, when everyone had to take a nap after lunch, thus giving us all a break from each other, giving me some much needed peace and quiet, and giving the kids some rest so they weren’t so keyed up later in the day, when Dad came home from work.)

Do any of the kids need help with behavior issues, and am I being consistent with discipline? (This is another area where my dh was a huge help. We learned early on to present a united front to the kids, which really helped, especially once we had teens who liked to argue.)

Eventually, I realized that our life went through stages of working and not working. When things stopped working, I learned not to become depressed or freak out, but to instead look at what was happening and figure out what kind of changes I needed to make.

This process continued the entire time we had kids at home, and it still continues. These days, with only two left at home and only one of them still being homeschooled, the problems have more to do with scheduling than behavior, although being menopausal, behavior is sometimes a problem with me. 

So, if you’re getting ready to write me an email or call me to ask how you’re supposed to homeschool and make supper and keep the toddlers off the window treatments, reread this post and think about the changes you need to make at home so that things run more smoothly. Pray about it. Brainstorm with your husband. Come up with some new things to try, and be patient while you watch for results. And never forget that this too shall pass. Sooner than you can imagine, those kids that are driving you nuts will be grown and on their own, and you’ll be grappling with other questions, like, where did all this gray in my hair come from, and why does it feel like tweezing stray facial hairs has become my new part-time job?

That was nearly 17 years ago, but I remember how hard it was to sit and stare at him through the plastic Isolette incubator as clearly as if it happened last month. Watching the numbers on the monitors go up and down, hearing alarms going off, freaking out when they were his alarms……it was a very difficult time for our family.

The best times were when we could hold him: gingerly of course, because we didn’t want to disconnect any of the lead wires attached to him. We could never do it for long because he’d get too cold and his heart rate would go down. It was so hard to let the nurse put him back in his little plastic box, which was decorated with photos of the siblings he hadn’t met yet.

How I wish there would have been something like Kangaroo Care back then*. I just read an article about this concept, written by a reporter whose baby was born prematurely. She got to “wear” her baby when she visited him in the NICU, and it made a traumatic experience a little easier on her and a lot healthier for him.

If you or someone you know ends up with a baby in the NICU, knowing that Kangaroo Care exists will be a real blessing to the baby and his parents.

*I also wish I could have known that, 17 years later, he’d be the healthy, feisty guy he is today

After all, I’ve got only one child (age 16) still at home during the day now, and a husband who’s also at home. If my husband homeschooled our son, I could get a job.

However, according to this article, “Studies have found that for every two years a woman is out of the labor force, her earnings fall by 10 percent, a penalty that lasts throughout her career.”

Hmmm. I’ve been home with my kids for 26 years. 10% X 13 equals 130%. That’s quite a drop! That statistic is not referenced, however, so I can’t check to see if it’s legitimate. Just as well. If it were true, my paycheck amount would be a negative number!

That’s assuming I could even find a job. Somehow I don’t think potential employers would be impressed that I’ve spent the past 25 years raising children and homeschooling them. I doubt that homeschooling is one of the keywords they look for when they scan resumes. 

Looks like it may not be worth all the upheaval to be a “relauncher,” as women returning to the workforce are now called. Maybe I’ll stick to being a modestly paid but happy work-from-home writer for as long as I can.

It’s easy to stay in that groove during the summer. There may not be as many activities available as during the school year, but there’s certainly no shortage. Signing the kids up for summer activities can become something we do automatically. But that could be a mistake.

I’m old enough to remember a time when there were very few summer activities available to kids beyond swimming lessons at the community pool. What did kids do back then? We entertained ourselves!

We played games, we had races, we played Barbies, we played baseball.

We ran through the sprinkler, we drew on the sidewalk with chalk, we played hopscotch, we ran lemonade stands.

We rode our bikes, we read library books, we planted and weeded gardens, we played hide-and-seek.

We went to the park, we played on the front porch, we had Kool-Aid and cookies on the patio, and when it got dark, we played Ghost in the Graveyard on the corner under the streetlight.

And all the time we were doing those things, where were our moms? Not entertaining us, that’s where. They were used to having the day to themselves while we were in school, and they weren’t going to give that up. We were expected to be off playing while our moms were busy cooking, cleaning or watching soap operas. We weren’t very concerned about what our moms were doing, because we were having too much fun outside.

Kind of gets you thinking, doesn’t it?

I’m thinking this guy gave his mom a full head of gray hair just raising him. What do you think?