Having never had children, I have always respected young teachers who have to juggle the needs of their own children while they also struggle to help their students. How does a teacher with toddlers and babies find the energy and time to work all day at school and then go home and feed, engage, bathe, teach, and put their own children to bed? I suspect the answer is something along the lines of parents always find the way when you have no choice.
I’m not sure I could have done it twenty years ago, and I know for a fact I couldn’t do it today.
I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of weeks as I met with a realtor and put my house up for sale. First I had to complete all the deep cleaning; then I had to get a plumber to install a new hot water heater. Next came the closets I had to organize and the trips to Goodwill to donate items I’ve coveted way too long. Then I had to call the plumber back to deal with a faulty new hot water heater. Meeting with the realtor and listing the house took several hours out of my Saturday morning. By Monday the house had been advertised and a bright yellow and green for sale sign beckoned visitors.
A day after I breathed a sigh of relief, the rains came and came again, and returned for a third day. I haven’t seen this much rain in Georgia since the early 1990s. My very dry basement that experienced its first leak in the fall with the heavy rains had been sealed back in October and remained dry throughout the winter.
Until last week.
The water seeped into the basement once again, and two days and $450 later I have a new catch basin outside and the guarantee that the basement won’t leak.
Then a wayward bird flew into my nice clean house . . . until my cat caught him, and I spent another hour of cleaning.
Finally, today I’m caught up! I came home with no papers to grade and planned to spend a night of leisure until the realtor called to tell me a caravan of local realtors will be visiting my house TOMORROW.
Back to the store to buy doughnuts and juice for the visitors.
Back to cleaning.
Back to stress and lack of sleep.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to deal with a child. I have my hands full with a house that doesn’t complain, doesn’t whine, doesn’t cry, doesn’t demand, doesn’t eat, and doesn’t need me to rock it to sleep, but I’m still exhausted.
Now, if you are interested in buying a house amid hundreds of trees in the mountains of North Georgia, I know where you can get a really good deal!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott
2 comments on this topic
16. March - 10:17 pm
Good luck with your move. I’m sorry about the roof. 1/3 of our roof tore off and the new rain has caused some leaks to the third-floor condo. The amount of rain the last two weeks has been more than I ever remember.
I got my certification when my son was two-years-old and chose to wait to teach full-time until my children were older. I don’t know how full-time teachers balance work with having small children at home. But now that I’m trying to get my foot in the door after a long delay, it’s more difficult. And once I do have a job, I’ll still be balancing home and family.
16. March - 10:35 pm
Hi Edie,
I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now and I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy it. I’m in training to become certified to teach high school history and social studies, and I found your blog when I was in the process of making my decision to go this route, which is a pretty drastic career change for me. I love my classes and the time I get to spend in classrooms and with students 1:1 so far, so I think I did the right thing.
But, I digress. This post really caught me because I don’t want children (and am old enough to be very sure) and I’m always curious how teachers without their own children are regarded in the field, by peers for example, and how the career in general is different for those teachers. You illuminated a lot about that in this post, but do you have any other thoughts on the matter? And, if you don’t mind discussing it, how did you reconcile not having your own children with wanting to teach? I have spent a good bit of time working this out for myself, and I feel comfortable with these decisions in concert in my own life, but I’m always curious how it goes for other women.
Thank you! Please keep writing!
17. March - 6:10 pm
Thanks for reading, Stephanie! I don’t know if I ever reconciled being a teacher without children because I’ve just never thought about it much. Most teachers do indeed have children, but there are plenty of us who never had children. I hear teachers frequently say that they became better teachers as soon as they had children of their own because they understand kids so much better. I have to believe that is indeed true. I think, however, that being a parent gives teachers a different perspective on students, but I don’t think it necessarily makes everyone a better teacher. The teachers who appear to profit the most in teaching after having their own children are the teachers who are extremely rigid and who blame all the ills of the world on students and parents. Most of them change their attitudes after they have children of their own.
Some of the best teachers I have known do not have children. Some of them feel as I do in that we view our students as our children. I am in no way suggesting that the relationship that teachers have with students is comparable to a parent’s relationship, but we truly love those kids and support them as if they were family members. I have a number of former students I cherish, and each year I add more students to my “family.” Additionally, those of us without our own children probably have more time and energy to work with teenagers because we do not have to devote time to our own children.
So, good teachers need lots of skills and qualities, but they don’t necessarily have to have children of their own. Excellent teachers with children would be excellent teachers even if they were not parents. Bad teachers would probably still be bad teachers regardless of how many children they have. Indicative of how much of an influence teachers can have even if they do not have children, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about Ed Deavers, a teacher friend of mine who died recently. Ed never had his own children, but the sanctuary was way too small to seat the hundreds of people who showed up for his funeral, most of whom were his former students, many of whom he considered as his children. In fact, almost everyone who spoke and sang at his funeral were former students.
In short, if you don’t want to have children, you can still be a wonderful teacher!
As far as I know, my peers do not have negative opinions of any teachers who are childless. Or, if they do, they hide those views well!
17. March - 6:11 pm
I’m sorry about your roof, Theresa. It’s been one weird winter. I sure hope you get a teaching job soon; you deserve it!
21. March - 1:07 pm
Edie, I did not know you had decided to sell. Good luck!
I agree with you, that as a childless teacher, I always thought of my students as my “kids”. I know that I could never have done all that I did for my students if I had had my own children. My own parents were both highly devoted educators. They made time for me every night, always reading to me and spending quality time with me. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing lights on in the dining room. My Mom (English teacher) would be sitting there grading papers. I don’t know how much she slept but it wasn’t more than a few hours a night. My Dad, on the other hand, went to school at 5:00 AM every day of his life (he went there to grade – Math teacher). They both gave so much. It must have been very hard for them but I never recall them complaining about it – it was just the way things were!
I got the GHP job, by the way!
27. March - 6:46 pm
Word. Edie. Word.
Great post.
I know as a childless teacher that I would have been a different kind of teacher if I had had children of my own.
I too believe that I had more energy for the classroom because of it.
I’ve raised kids for thirty three years. LOL
*waves to MW*