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Career, Kids, School, TV |
| Since we wed 20 years ago, my wife, Marcia, and I have had to choose which path we wanted to travel in balancing work and family. We often found ourselves making decisions-some more consciously than others-that affect the life we share. Though we have faced fairly ordinary choices (e.g., this career or that, relocation or not, children and how many), we have made some decisions most would consider less commonplace. There is no question our most important lifestyle decision was to have four children. While this is not a lot of children by historical standards, I often feel that I may as well tell people we have 10 children, since both numbers seem to be equally outlandish by contemporary standards. And if having four kids was not enough of a complicating factor, my wife and I eventually made another key decision that has had many implications for our family: We chose to home school our children. These decisions required certain changes and adjustments to simplify our lives where possible. As one might imagine, home education, particularly of more than one child at a time, is easier if one parent does not work full-time. In our case, we decided to live on my income alone, freeing my wife to dedicate a major portion of her time to the education and rearing of our children, making us a one-income, offspring- included (OI, OI) family. Life After Baby Our first child was born early in our marriage, while we were both in graduate school. We were living in married student housing at Clemson University, in South Carolina, where we had to juggle classes, research, day care, cooking and sundry other responsibilities. When Lena was just 1 year old, I decided to go to law school to become a patent attorney, while my wife continued her research in. immunotoxicology. At that point, we still believed we would have just one child and raise her together while managing two careers (with, of course, the assistance of the finest day care, preschool and private school money could buy). The first glitch in this plan was preschool. Not the school, per se, but our increasing frustration at missing childhood milestones (the first "potty" in the toilet) and shared moments (providing comfort for a skinned knee). We should have known then that changes were imminent. TV or Not TV: That is the Question About the same time, we made a significant adjustment: We dropped television from our lives. One day, I found myself telling my 2-year-old during the one hour each day when we were both actually at home, awake and not eating that she needed to be quiet while I watched the end of some sitcom, probably an Andy Griffith re-run. This immediately struck me as wrong, and after careful thought, I decided that I loved my daughter more than Barney Fife. I performed a lobotomy on the TV set by removing most of the buttons on the control panel so we could only tune into PBS. A few years later, we sold the television altogether. Otherwise, our life went on as before, only without the intrusive presence of television, which we immediately felt was the right decision. After I had finished law school and we had our second child, my wife planned to write her Ph.D. dissertation at home while Gracie was still too young for Montessori. However, when Gracie was just 1 year old, Calgene offered me a job as in-house counsel, so we moved to California. With the combination of the move, the baby, and the new school for our eldest, my wife's dissertation ended up in a box, which migrated from the office to a closet and eventually to a dusty corner of the garage. We couldn't tell you where it is now if you paid us. Turning Home into Homeroom About a year after our move to California, and after one particularly unsatisfying exchange with a private school on the subject of bullying, we decided to home school our 8-year-old. Then we thought, what the heck, let's bring the 2-year-old home from day care while we're at it. We were delighted to have our children home with us, and we naturally saved a lot on child care and tuition costs, as well as the other expenses necessitated by a two-career lifestyle. We had suspected this would be the case, but the effects were even greater than we had expected. While initially hesitant about some aspects of being responsible for our children's education, we have never regretted it. We were surprised, for instance, to find we actually had more family time. We had not fully realized how much time and energy we had put into supporting a school and our child's life in the school. There had been committees, school events, concerts, fundraisers, parent-teacher meetings, emotional triage, etc. Now all of that energy was redirected toward our family in a positive way. What a blessing it is not to have "homework" though, in a sense it is all homework because my children do their work during the day. This means we can have real family time at the end of the day without having to argue about homework. The home education community in Davis has been an amazing resource, and connecting with them has been a real comfort. These are wonderful people who have faced the same issues and made similar lifestyle decisions. It has become a supportive and collaborative network for rearing and educating our children. One change we noticed almost immediately with home schooling was in socialization. Much of the negative social and peer pressure in the school environment was gone from our children's lives. Our children are friends with each other and don't view children of different backgrounds, ages or grades as being in some way unacceptable. The best advantage of all, though, has been our liberation from the tyranny of state-mandated testing. As I see it, our job as parents is to turn good people and informed citizens out into the world at age 18, not whether our kids at age 4 or 5 know their letters better or worse than some state standard dictates. Misconceptions Many people don't understand home education and believe that it requires tremendous sacrifices of parents. I often hear statements that start with acknowledgement of some benefit of home schooling then end with "but I could never do that." With a class of one or two students, however, learning can be pretty efficient. We have home schooled four children, now aged 18, 12, 8 and 4. The last two, Catherine and Luke, have never been to a traditional preschool or school (home educators like to say the world is their classroom). When people want to know how it's working out for us, I proudly boast that our oldest child is now a Regent's Scholar at the University of California, Davis. When asked what sacrifices we had to make, I struggle to come up with an answer. Perhaps in money (but no back-to-school shopping), though I'm not sure to what extent. My wife gave up a career in science and a salary, which would likely have been offset by the kids' school costs. Surprisingly Satisfying As for career satisfaction, I am content in patent law, and my wife could not be happier than she is rearing and educating our children. As a family, we enjoy the help and encouragement provided by members of the home-schooling community. I am happy we are able to insulate our children from the effects of commercial television. Our children are still children, but most of the time, they like us as much as we enjoy them. Home schooling does not mean isolating the family from community activities. We have worked together on campaigns, volunteer projects, Rotary activities and church events. We try to pick outside activities with care, so that as much as possible the whole family can participate. Weekends are primarily kid time, with music recitals, dance recitals, soccer, water polo and more. To accommodate this schedule, some things naturally have to go. There are still just 24 hours in a day, so extra work is done online, after the kids are in bed; I love sports but have seen few football games in 15 years, choosing instead to watch 6-year-olds playing soccer; I enjoy eating out but prefer that we prepare and eat meals together as a family. I have abandoned solitary hobbies in favor of games and interests I can share with my children. My main activity today is undoubtedly a game called "hop on pop." Since my work is patent law, my professional and personal interests lean toward science, so I tailor many of my outside activities there, too. For years I have served on the board of the Explorit Science Center in Davis, which focuses on teaching science to children, including mine. We belong to the Audubon Society, and I lead a section of the Christmas Bird Count every year, taking a child or two with me when I can. For me, finding a balance between work and family has really meant discarding some of my early, pre-family notions when actually faced with the questions of how I wanted that family to develop and the relationships I wanted with my wife and children. In each case, what may appear to others to be a sacrifice has actually been a natural and rewarding life choice. In the quest for balance, the path we've taken as a family is one we have never regretted. Carl Schwedler is a patent attorney with significant expertise in biotechnology matters at the Sacramento office of McDonough Holland & Allen PC. He can be reached at 916.444.3900 or via email at cschwedler@mhalaw.com. May / June 2005 |