Sick Mom's Job-hunting Manifesta

While the challenges of being a stay-at-home parent are a whole subject on their own, this post is about being a sick parent looking for a job and paying for daycare at the same time.  It is also about the emotional challenges I face with this particular struggle and coming to terms with what I feel are my real job qualifications (at the bottom, for those of you who can't wait).  

We are paying for child care because I want to work, and I am treating the job search like a full time job.  I don't want to give up his spot because it took ten months to get him into daycare, and when I get a position, I bet they won't want to wait ten months for me to start until he can get back in again.  In the hopeful event that I procure a full time position in under ten months, I'll feel justified.  When I get home from dropping him off, I network and send applications and go on interviews and follow up, and I look for more jobs to do it all over again.  I also do a small data collection project on the side that doesn't take up too much of my time because the whole point is to get a job, and this one certainly won't lead to a full time position.  By all appearances, my job search is going well.  I've had a few second and third interviews and several other promising prospects, all of which bodes well.  It's just taking a while.  

The usual advice for job seekers is to volunteer and accept unpaid positions, and those should theoretically lead to full time positions in the long run.  The problem is one of finances and time.  Right now, I don't have time to prepare high quality job applications and go on interviews if I am committed to too much free work.  When daycare closes, I have another job to do.  In grad school, I didn't have time to take on the extra internships or research assistant positions that look so great on a resume.  The fact is that I probably don't have as strong a public health resume as others since I just didn't have time to do that extra stuff.  And because I am a mother, I feel like a second class citizen as a job hunter, worrying whether a potential employer will not want to hire me if they find out I have a child.  In addition, there is the troubling factor that the unpaid positions that would look good on a resume in public health are often contracted for certain periods of time, and I can't commit to something unpaid for any amount of time right now -- if something offers me money, I'm likely to take it.  

I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the Economic Policy Institute nicely explains why.  According to them, unpaid internships suppress social and economic mobility. People who can afford to work for free are the people whose families can afford to support them, and they go on to have high-opportunity positions; while people who can't afford to work for free end up taking something of lower pay to meet the bills and don't end up having the same high-level opportunities as the people who could afford to work for free for a rather long time, sometimes more than a year.  I am trying really hard to exist outside of that cycle.  It's increasingly frustrating for those of us who originally came from poor rural areas and can't actually afford to take on a lot of free work for the purposes of bolstering our resumes.  

The fact is that I am middle class now, but I my upbringing was not.  In Maine, we weren't considered socially poor since we had electricity and running water, wore new clothing, and weren't on government assistance, but we certainly qualified for it.  The fact is that Maine is a very poor state.  Where I come from, you're doing pretty well if you have a steady job and can afford to pay your bills on time and go out for Chinese food every few months.  No one works for free.  That's how I grew up.  That's my background.  

Make no mistake.  I like working. I want to work, and I want my next position to relate to my hard-earned masters degrees.  If  pressed, I'd prefer to be a research analyst or something similar because I find the analytical process energizing, and I've always enjoyed writing and analyzing data and considering its causes and implications.  Further, I don't want to be a stay-at-home mom.  That has never been my idea of a good time.  And just in case anyone was under the impression that my husband makes enough to pay the household monthly bills even minus childcare, allow me to correct your error.  I like working, and I also need to work.  

So I've dedicated my full time Mondays through Fridays to finding an exciting position.  But the fact is that I'm struggling with the finance equation right now.  The longer I keep my little guy in daycare to look for a job, the faster I'll run out of money, but the less time I'll have to look for a job, and then we'd lose his spot in daycare, which we will need when I find a job.  

And of course, there are the student loans coming on soon, which doesn't make me feel any better about leaving my previous job to pursue a couple of masters degrees.  That's something most people where I come from certainly do not do.  Getting my masters degrees wasn't a given, since I had a decent paying job.  I did it since I was assured that there are, in fact, jobs in public health, and I truly wanted to pursue my passion for this field.  

My feelings about this all tend to come to a head when I am sick.  Like any type A person, when I get sick, I have a hard time letting go and leaning back.  I have a hard time not trying to be productive.  I have a hard time resting and letting myself get better.  This is especially challenging when I have to get out of the house in order to take the kiddo to childcare.  If I could manage that when feeling sick, obviously, I can handle sitting in front of a computer and writing countless emails and carefully crafting cover letters for each position to which I apply.  The fact that I am not even getting paid for this causes me to feel the urgency of finding something that will pay me soon.  Surely, I can work through this sickness with the hopes of finding a job faster.  I don't easily forgive myself for days off.  

Prompted by this sense of urgency, I present to you my Sick Mom's Job-hunting Manifesta, my real resume.  Here are the things that make me special and that qualify me to work for you: 

QUALIFICATIONS

• My hard work is high quality.  I completed two masters degrees at Tufts University and got a 3.86 GPA while I had a baby during my second semester and didn't take time off. AND I breastfed. I wouldn't want to do it that way again, but now you know what I am capable of.  
• I have an incredibly supportive family, and that support propels me to pursue something resembling my dreams when, in general, people from my background don't really get to do that. 
• I can have a comfortable conversation with just about anyone from any background.  This comes in part from existing in and between enough social classes that I know my perspective and keep myself in check.  This self-awareness is crucial for research, especially in public health where the people who are the most at need are also generally the people from my original economic class.  
• Once again, I work hard. Hard work is a real value in Maine.  All the evidence shows that our country's economic system isn't exactly designed for socio-economic upward mobility, but I did it.  I have worked hard enough to go from living under the poverty line for most of my life to comfortably middle class for a while there.  I'd like to stay there and have an interesting public health career, and I will work hard to do it.

So there it is.  Maybe I should forgive myself if I take a nap to fend off my fever before I make dinner, put the laundry away, wash some dishes, and pick my wonderful child up from child care.  I sure hope someone reads this and hires me before I am financially obligated to take a retail job.