Working Mother

When I first learned earlier this week that McGraw-Hill was “exploring strategic options” for BusinessWeek, I felt fear. Then I thought: “What will I tell my daughter?” And the fear turned to panic. After all, the news meant that the job of the parent she lives with could very well be in jeopardy.

But somehow, that question morphed into “What can I teach my child?” And the panic subsided somewhat. Once again, as has often happened during tough times, remembering my other job—that of a parent who sets examples (a recent Working Parent blog touched on this)—steadied me. If we are to go through this upheaval, how do we make use of it?

So in the last three days, as the news sank in, I’ve come up with some potential lessons for my 15-year-old, which will help in the talk I will have with her when she comes back from camp three weeks from now.

How to go outside your comfort zone: I haven’t had to look for a job in a while. And getting my current one was an easy step from being a reporter with The Wall Street Journal. I barely missed a beat making the transition to a job that allowed me to stay in the thick of journalism and at a place where quality journalism was valued yet be able to give my kid a home with the structure of a regular schedule. But should I have to look for a job now, my search could very well go beyond journalism. How I manage that change would provide my daughter with a template of how she could reinvent herself, as would probably be required of her many times in the course of her work life.

How to prioritize: We already closely watch what we spend, forgoing many luxuries. Now we might have to choose among what we’ve taken for granted as being part of our lives, if not necessities: Cable? Cleaning lady? Summer camp? How I tackle those choices could teach my kid much about not avoiding hard decisions.

How to keep growing: Not that I haven’t kept growing as my job morphed, expanding from print media to digital, encompassing copyediting and blogging. I’ve also changed personally—being a parent keeps you growing as the object of your attention changes and throws up trickier challenges—and I’ve used those interpersonal skills honed in the domestic front to be a better professional (Not an unusual occurrence, as this book and this book can attest). Now I could be getting new skills—or sharpening old ones—by being in a fresh arena.

As you could tell, this is a pep talk to myself as well as an itemization of lessons for my daughter. For parents who’ve feared for your jobs or undergone the crisis of losing them, how have you turned the experience into one that your kid could use?

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