![]() Your decision to work or stay home with the kids will affect many people, but think hard about what will make you most happy, not what you think should make you happy. Here’s what you’ll need to think about to make the right decision for you and your family. Even when you block out external voices, it’s easy to get bogged down with your own thoughts and feelings. But James says the decision should ultimately come down to what you want to do, assuming your financial and child-care situations allow you some choice. Those conflicting ideals can weigh heavily on a mom who’s torn between her career and her kids. “There are expectations that women are to be there 100 percent for their kids, and there are expectations that they will push forward with advancing in their careers,” she says. Julia James, a career and life coach in Victoria, says there’s a lot of pressure on moms today. I wanted to be the one to have the challenges of motherhood, and I wanted to be the one to have the joys.” If other women managed to juggle a career and kids, why couldn’t she? After months of trying to quash her true feelings, she admitted how she really felt: “I wanted to be home. She saw throwing in the towel on her job as a sign of weakness. Quitting her job wasn’t an easy decision: Bechai was raised to pursue a career, and most of her friends were lawyers or other professionals. Eleven months into her leave, she resigned. When she went on mat leave with her twin girls, born two years after Noah, she was up front with her bosses about not coming back before a year. She went back to work when Noah was 11 months old, but longed to be at home with him. Not ready to leave her baby with a nanny as soon as she’d planned, Bechai extended her leave. “I was not the kind of woman who envisioned myself really enjoying children and children’s activities.” But Bechai’s feelings toward motherhood-and her career-changed after her son, Noah, was born. She continued to put in long hours, taking on files that would advance her career, and she planned on jumping right back into work after five or six months of maternity leave. Nadia Bechai was in her early 30s and working toward making partner at a boutique downtown-Toronto law firm when she got pregnant with her first child-but it didn’t slow her down.
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