Every parent needs to find the backbone to adapt, tweak, or discard what works for others

It was a simple string of words, but it stuck with me for years.

I was catching up with a high school friend, hearing about her children, her house, her new community, her job. “I have the best job,” she told me, “because my kids don’t feel that I’m working. I’m always done before they come home. My work doesn’t spill into the evenings or vacation time. When I’m with my family, they’re the only thing on my mind.”

There was so much truth and so much sensibility to her definition of a “good job” — a job that your children don’t feel — that I carried it everywhere I went.

I didn’t want my family to feel the weight of my deadlines or the pressure of grids that caved in due to unforeseen holes. When my computer was off, I wanted to be fully absorbed in Labels for Laibel or Curious George or the intellectual delights of Spot It. As I cut up chicken or poured drinks, as I waited outside the dressing room or dentist’s office, I wanted to focus on my children’s triumphs and dilemmas — not the budget negotiations that had occupied my morning. I never wanted the conversation at our Shabbos table to bring me (or our guests) back into the magazine world.

I wanted to be that mother who was fully focused, fully present, whose consuming job submitted obediently to the boundaries of family time. And I still do.

But I realized, with time, that my friend’s definition wasn’t always realistic, and it wasn’t always beneficial either.

There are times when you need that firm, impenetrable boundary that bars entry to work obligations. All too often, bad news hits just before Shabbos. In the magazine business, bad news doesn’t just mean a racing heart and whispered Tehillim. It’s the opening shot in a macabre marathon to plan and assign material, adjust grids, gather photos, and reevaluate deadlines.

But not on Shabbos. When Shabbos arrives, I sometimes imagine those metal grates that descend over the Brooklyn storefronts when it’s time to lock up, and I mentally pull them down over the grids that flash and blink and vie for attention in my cluttered mind.

As a working parent, you need those boundaries often: during a siddur party, when you’re in the pediatric ER waiting for stitches, when a child needs to talk out a complicated social situation, during the family Chanukah party. You have to have that ability to close the door and shut work out.

But I’ve learned that there are times when my family can be enriched and our discussions enlivened by bringing some of my work back home. The first time I met South Africa’s Rabbi Warren Goldstein and heard him describe his dreams for bringing the Shabbos Project to secular Israel, I knew I had to tell my children about this man who refused to be cowed by cynicism, who shared his sunny dreams of celebrity-endorsed Shabbos campaigns with total confidence and aplomb. I brought home the brochures he’d handed out, with their colorful halachic guidelines and the African-accented cholent recipe, and paged through them with the kids the same way I’d page through Curious George.

After I disappeared for too many days working on a Yom Tov project documenting the personal studies of our gedolim, I clicked open the PDFs on my home computer and asked my little ones to find the upsheren scissors on Rav Chaim Kanievsky’s table. When I processed the material for last years’ taxi driver supplement, some of the stories were so heartwarming I just had to share them during suppertime. And when we worked on a long, disturbing piece about the Lev Tahor group, I had thoughtful conversations with my teens about dignity, modesty, and shame.

I still think my friend’s definition of a good job has value. I still try to focus on my children’s worlds during our time together and to shut a figurative door on my workday when I open the door to my home. But I’ve also learned that every rule has its exception, every family has its rhythm, and every parent needs to find the backbone to adapt, tweak, or discard what works for others.

—Shoshana Friedman

Managing Editor

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 873)