TAPP Blog

We asked working mother, Ariane to tell us about the arrangement she has made with her company to work part-time and how it has impacted her life.

One only needs to walk in my front door or glance into my car to know that I am not an organized person.  I love everything to be clean and in its place and though it’s how my mother raised us to be, I am just not capable of it.  My sister inherited the neat gene leaving me surrounded by dust and clutter.  I take offense at well meaning people and magazine articles that tell me I should just do this or that and everything would be so simple and so much better.  Just take 5 minutes a day to run a cloth over the furniture or convert empty shoeboxes into the most adorable toy holders.  If I had 5 extra minutes a day I would put it to better use – like showering, or cutting my children’s nails instead of letting them grind down naturally like rodents.  So, I’d like to take five minutes to tell you what I do to get by and stay sane with 3 small children and two jobs.  And it has nothing to do with shoeboxes.

You recently published your first children’s book. That’s exciting! What is the story about and what was your inspiration?

A while back, I was at a play date with several other local moms. Between gulps of coffee, breaking up squabbles and trips to the potty, one mom casually remarked something or other about her engineering degree from Columbia University. I looked at her in surprise. I only knew her as my mom friend who made awesome baked goods and was a fellow 'foodie'. I'd never had the occasion to ask her what her major was. This led to a discussion with the other moms about what they went to school for. I said we should write down our past jobs and education on slips of paper and guess who belonged to each one. Suddenly we saw a whole new dimension in each other as the professionals we used to be.

This led me to ponder how we, as mothers and women, have had to reinvent our identities, sometimes several times since having children. Certainly there are lots of men who are the primary caregivers after their children are born, but from what I see, the vast majority are still women. My friend with the engineering degree was, at that time, doing home parties for a line of cosmetics and personal care products. Another friend with a sociology degree was cleaning houses. A lot of moms I know stopped working completely and a couple started taking classes to change their career path altogether.