Working Parent Challenge: Raising My Child, My Way, in a World Where I Don’t Raise My Child

I work in an office that is a mix of both men and woman, mostly working parents with children who still live at home. Small talk in the hallways and before meetings is often started with a simple question, ‘How is your family? How are the kids?” For dual income and single parent homes, I can’t help but notice these conversations always end up circling the same concern. Although we all come from different backgrounds, we are all struggling with how to ensure our kids are raised the way we want them raised, with our personal values, even though we aren’t 'raising' them.

Before anyone gets offended, yes, we are the main source of love and direction for our kids.  But, it is a simple fact: our children are awake 12-14 hours each day. From that, a working parent is away from their children during that time for 9-12 hours of each day. Therefore, during a 5-day work week, 80-100% of the time our children are being raised by individuals who are not us, their parents. And, although some of us are fortunate enough to have house cleaners or extra cash to spend on grocery deliveries, many of us are spending the weekends running errands or worse (working mom guilt), trying to take care of ourselves.

I am one of the lucky ones who loves their job. I crave a demanding workload, can’t imagine a world without professional development, and energize myself by workings towards and achieving goals. I can’t imagine my life as anything but a working professional and working mom. So, how do I ensure my daughter is being raised with family values while I am on the road 30% of the time and working full time? It is a job in and of itself.

This post doesn’t contain an answer to this challenge, but rather it is meant to bring an awareness to the choices we make for our kids. It is a recognition that it is not the amount of time we spend with them, but what we do in that time that will shape their thoughts, actions and reactions to situations they encounter. For my daughter, I choose family. We are blessed to have family close by to watch her 1-3 days a week. And, although we have 5 day a week care, we drop her with my parents any day we can. We chose a dance studio with a dress code and expectations. She must earn coins for her piggy bank through hard work and listening. She is told that although it is best to be strong and assertive, it is even more important to have a good heart and a kind heart. The hardest to control is not allowing her to say ‘can’t’ but rather, ‘Can you show me how?’ or ‘I need help.’ We share these values with her school, our family and friends. We repeat our values and expectations of her every night before bed, and most importantly, we do everything to be completely present with her in the few moments we have together each week.

We are the first generation of parents where work is always at our fingertips, children can access screen time everywhere, and social media is a consistent platform for messages and false perceptions to our children. If we want our children to be raised with our own values, even when we aren’t there, we need to ensure our children hear those values consistently from us. And we can only hope, as working parents, that our children will look back and see we endured the path of most resistance to make sure they were raised ‘right’.