Thursday, October 08, 2009

Dilemma

Note: Reposted from my friendster blog; originally posted June, 2005.

Career or family? Which would you choose? This spells dilemma when you’ve just started a family at about the same time that your career is perking up with more attractive opportunities. If you’re a woman, weighing the pros and cons tends to tip the scale in favor of family matters. Unfair it may seem, but I think that it just simply is the natural order of things—the woman takes care of the house while the man earns a living.

So, where does that leave me? Am I breaking any biblical tenet here, wanting to have a career aside from that of being a wife and a mother? Am I making a mistake of trying to balance the scale somehow?

Now, why am I pondering these things? Why am I throwing these questions at you? Why am I boring you with my problems? Nothing, really. I merely want to think and write my thoughts while I’m at it. It’s because I’m now almost 30, and I feel that my professional growth has been stunted somehow in my present occupation. I’ve this nagging desire to explore my options while there’s time.

The wisdom I always call upon in sorting things in my mind is that your children would inevitably be independent, capable of doing things for themselves on their own. Your role as a mother would ultimately just be limited to providing guidance. A child will eventually outgrow his constant need for your presence. And when that time comes, what would keep you busy? Could you spend so many hours day in and day out doing routine chores in the house? That scenario is exactly my greatest fear.

That’s why I chose to maintain a job after giving birth. But, now that my firstborn is almost three years old, rather than having another baby, I feel like focusing on finding that career which is a snug fit to my skills, a career I could grow old having…

I want to raise a family but I also want to build a career… A dilemma. But choosing both might be the wise decision. What do you think?

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