Parenting and Working - The Pause that Refreshes?

Life satisfaction in work and parenting can be an experience where one aspect nourishes the other to make a fantastic whole.

Sometimes two opposing worlds that intersect, for example work and family, can be an amazing opportunity for those two aspects to nourish and support the other.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg during her studies at Harvard in the 1950’s, experienced a sudden life change that she was not expecting. Her husband, also on the same law program of mainly male students, began suffering a terminal form of aggressive cancer. Suddenly Ruth was juggling supervising her husband Marty’s coursework whilst he remained enrolled, caring for her husband’s illness journey, raising a young daughter, and maintaining her own studies.

Ruth went on to become in that year of mainly males at Harvard, one of the top 10 performing students and a contributor to the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review.

It’s an astounding feat, and not all of us would want to or have the privilege to be able to overlap all those worlds at once. But it is a curious thing – how does one navigate all those activities at once and keep some form of sanity let alone excel.

It is said that Ruth slept very little and kept that habit up for most of her life, and that she had the privilege of support from an extended family, and some financial privilege. She also had an egalitarian marriage that was of course unusual for those times where Marty and she had equal roles in the home. Not all of us have that sort of support and life and for many life becomes so overwhelming with all these demands that we “crumple”.

What has been reported is that Ruth did say that she attributed her success during this time to her enjoying raising her child with 100 percent of her passion. She worked hard on her thesis through the night and when her daughter was cared for by another person, and then she switched to completely being a parent. “I attribute to my daughter the responsibility for why I was such a good law student. I went home, played with Jane, had dinner and then I was ready to go back to the books. It was the pause that refreshes.”

When Ruth finished her studies in the morning, she would throw herself into caring for her daughter with 100 percent of herself, bathing, playing, and singing along and generally enjoying being a parent. She even reported in an article that she attributed being a parent to her professional success. “Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.” This is an example of positive compartmentalising that has been helpful skill I teach in my hypnotherapy sessions.

So maybe it’s an idea that work and parenting can enrich each other, whatever the circumstances.

Stephanie Francis Ward. “Family Ties,” ABA Journal, Oct 12, 2010

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, “Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s Advice for Living” New York Times, October 1, 2016.

With thanks to Yael Schobnbrun, Phd – Work Parent Thrive.

https://www.amazon.com/Work-Parent-Thrive-Science-Backed-Strategies/dp/1611809657