Guilt is this traveling mom's drink of choice

Here's a story about moms who have to travel for work.

It's pretty relevant to my life right now because next week I'll be out of town and tonight the twin whisperer kinda screwed us over. Ages ago we'd arranged for her to watch the kids on Wednesday next week when I'm out of town, but she's taken a better gig for next week which leaves Jake in the lurch. He'll have to take a vacation day to watch the kids. And I feel bad for Jake because I know this is going to be exhausting. He'll have to take the kids to school (and getting them fed, dressed, and out the door each morning is a major hassle), he'll have to pick them up every afternoon, he'll have to take a day off to watch them on Wednesday, and he'll have to basically do everything by himself for 4 days which I know is going to be tiring. Poor guy!

When the kids were first born I turned down all travel requests. I traveled the first time when they were 10.5 months old. For the first few years I accepted about half of the travel requests I got. Last year, I tried to accept most of them, as I was gearing up for tenure and trying to be visible and stuff like that. Not that it mattered in the end. (My letter writers didn't care if I'd gone to whatever conference, or given some invited talk or whatnot). I probably accept about 2/3 of my travel opportunities now.

I enjoy traveling for work and would do more if I didn't have a family. There are two big conferences in our field that usually happen about a week apart and I used to always go to both. Now I never go to both. I do miss it, especially when everybody else in the world is posting about how awesome it is.

I feel guilty when I travel. I think the kids are largely fine at this point, but I know it burdens Jake. It is hard to deal with them both alone for several days. Lots of times my parents or his parents will help out when I'm gone. But sometimes, like for next week's trip, Jake is on his own and I know how much work it'll be.

Also, I miss them when I'm gone.

It's kind of an interesting set of choices that I'm reflecting on now that I have these choices to make. I choose to work less than I could or naturally want to. When I am engrossed in something I would prefer to stay at the office and stay engrossed in it. But I stop it and go home. I would love to travel to some of the international conferences to work with some researchers who I've been reading for years. But that's too long to be gone. So basically I'm making a deliberate set of decisions to be less influential in my career and less well known so that I can spend more time with my family.

I mostly feel okay about this. The times when I feel weird are when I observe my colleagues making different choices and it makes me second-guess myself. I have other colleagues with preschool-aged kids who work around the clock and travel all the time. I mean, like, 3 times as much as I do. So then I worry about how I'm deliberately relegating myself to being kind of podunk and small time, because I'm unwilling to put in the hours and the miles to make it big.

I think the key is to just try to be purposely okay with that. I mean, this is a choice. I could be choosing the other way, and I'm not. I like being around my family. I want to keep Jake happy. I want to be a big part of M&N's lives. I didn't go ahead and have kids so I could work around the clock, right? And the bigger issue is that I'm just not that important. I mean, I have a colleague who commutes between here and DC, so she sees her kids only on weekends, but frankly, she's, like, way way more important than I'll ever be. Her decision makes sense for her life because what she's doing really matters. What I'm doing is not in that league.

This is all pretty gendered, of course. Lots of men don't worry much when they travel. They know their wives will take care of things. They don't think of turning down opportunities. I do, and I constantly think about what's fair to Jake and how much he can handle. But, it is pretty encouraging to see signs of change, too. There's a former student of ours who is now a professor and we skype each week to collaborate on a project. Last week I asked him if he was going to the upcoming conference, and he said, "No, I'd like to stay married." They have a new baby. It's cool to see men taking on more responsibility at home like that, and it'll make things more even at work, too.

Once upon a time Milo and Nora would cry and cry every time I left the house. Now, thank God, they give a cheerful wave and chirp, "Goodbye!" and everything is just fine. So I know they'll be okay, but man, I feel for Jake.