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Do you feel that your experiences (work and otherwise) and/ or education has prepared you sufficiently for motherhood or should their be some kind of additional/alternative training for those women who choose to be mothers? What aspects of your previous experiences, jobs, or education come in handy in your day to day mothering? Do you think that women desiring solely to be stay-at-home moms should forego education and/or careers and focus on preparation for motherhood?
This is my first post to the Ma Ma Sisterhood Group. I feel that, of all my life experiences, it was my upbringing that prepared me the most for motherhood. School, especially high school and university, prepared me to be anything but a mother. If anything, becoming a mother would be a diversion for The Plan, which was all career, all the time. I was told I could be a successful engineer, scientist, teacher, or politician, but never a great mom. I chose a career that was very hard to square with having kids, since it required traveling around the world, which I loved, and hardly being beholden to my marriage, let alone kids, for when or for how long I would be gone. The only part of my work that prepared me for motherhood, really, was getting to work on an early childhood education program in East Africa, where I learned about the benefits of ECE, and influenced my decision to put my son in a montessori school. Nope, it was the example set by my mother that most greatly influenced the type of mother I am, so I think I can say that, without my education and career, I'd pretty much be the same mom I am today. I honestly didn't value the skills and knowledge I had learned from my mom until I was a mom myself. Where I saw value was in my advanced education, my career progression, and my knowledge in my field. But it has done very little for me as a mom; conversely, not having felt a great value for motherhood before, and having been so career driven, has made the adjustment to motherhood much more difficult than it would have been, had I valued both motherhood and career equally.
