Getting over the fact that contemporaries who didn't take time out with kids are so much further on in careers?

[Bleenherbe]

Just that really. Having attack of the "I coulda been a contender" glooms. Keep telling self:
wanted to spend time with children;
glittering prizes not that glittering;
World full of people with real problems.
Grateful for any ideas of how to give self a shake or just anecdotes from people struggling with similar thoughts!

does it really matter?

xenia will be along to box your ears if you aren't careful

How old are your children?

Have you been going on Facebook? [stern]

I think we all have moments like this, just as they will probably at least have the odd moment where they wonder 'what if'.

Maybe I am lucky in that I had comprehensively failed to build a glittering career LONG before having children, just like I'd got really overweight long before I was pregnant so I know it's just me really. Probably not so in your case.

but I know I really hated going to a university reunion and listening to stories of career derring-do and fame, made even worse by the immense kindness they all showed in listening to my anecdotes of failure and poo-wrangling.

The only thing I would say is - life is long. My grandmother started a new career aged 60, wrote a standard textbook in the field and won a prize from the national institute. She used to work from home so her employers wouldn't realise how old she was. There are many, many years ahead, and these nightmarish golden years with young children are short, short, short. (I hope).

You are right. Was a bit worried only Xenia would come along and explain to me how it's all my own silly fault. In current mood am worried might agree with her!

Oh hey, I know what you need. Hie thee to Amazon and buy The Diary of a Provincial Lady. Wonderful in all circumstances but especially perhaps in yours/ours.

Hi choosyfloosy - not facebook, just various other internet sites! Thank you for your very thoughtful post, just the kinds of thing I need to think about. Your grandmother sounds great!

Youngest child is three, btw. Proviccial Lady may be just the thing. It seems like it's been a looong winetr...

Everyone has their 'coulda, shoulda' issues to deal with. In the nicest possible way - get over it. You could have been two promotions ahead, but you wouldn't have your kids. Those 'ahead' of you will either a) never know the pleasures of having a family or b) end up having kids later in life and have their own issues to deal with.

And it is never too late to pursue your ambitions and dreams. Often having children gives people renewed vigour and focus (eventually - the first few years can be tough).

What you 'lose' in a couple of years at home you gain in experience, maturity and focus if you give it a positive spin. The more you tell yourself 'this has really fucked things up for me', the truer it will be...

Your youngest is three? If I were a betting woman, I'd be riffling through my winnings right now. Life with a three-year-old can bear a remarkable resemblance to that children's book where there's a whole load of people on a treadmill (which book was that? Possbily Russell Hoban. Must find out one day.) would make anyone feel like things are going nowhere. You know they will, though.

All true, TweedyneeCole, and thank you - I really do need to kick self out of this.

Sorry. With regard to my earlier post, it should of course have read 'Hie thee to your local independent bookshop and buy The Diary of a Provincial Lady' so that Virago get their full share of the price'.

sigh

That made me laugh, choosyfloosy! I almost think the bigger ones with their ishoos about schoolfriends exhaust me more but it is also wearing arguing with a three-year-old about how a person cannot ride on the back of a buggy if there is no counterbalancing person inside the buggy and other irrational nonsense...

Shamefully was thinking of hieing me to Abe Books for a cheap secondhand copy!

I know the feeling. Even though I know it's ridiculous I did identify very strongly with my career, pre-children, and these days I'm totally on a half-baked mummy sideline. And it does bug me.

However unrealistic it is, I still beat myself up for not being simultaneously a super-successful career woman + earth mother + eco-campainging activist.

am hoping that choosyfloosy is right and there are decades yet for those other things once my children are a bit bigger.

"Maybe I am lucky in that I had comprehensively failed to build a glittering career LONG before having children, just like I'd got really overweight long before I was pregnant "

PMSL

you sound awesome

Me too, Fennel. I am not even quite sure which achievements I envy most - the good-doing ones or the look- here -I -am -at-top-of-tree ones. I hope it is more the former. Doesn't help when have been shouty with children and feel like crummy mother also... bah!

You need a confidence booster, I think.

I had completely lost hope towards the end of my few years at home with my children. I seemed to have spiralled down remarkably quickly from a high flying media type into the drudge sitting on the park bench in the wind and rain watching her kids play on the swings. Cliched as it sounds, I used to cry myself to sleep asking how I had let this happen.

When I went back to work I very quickly got my mojo back and couldnt believe I had ever doubted myself so much. I used to come home from work and pat myself on the back BIG TIME for doing my job as well if not better than most of my childless contemporaries ...and then coming home to my 'evening job' as a mum.

Get back in the game (doesnt have to be full time work - voluntary work or an invigorating new hobby might be the answer) and be a contender again

Respect, Tweedynee! My circumstances a bit more complicated - been working part-time in a field where that is well-nigh hopeless, so half time sat despairing in rain, half time feeling doing stressful job inadequately. Now trying to segue into something else but the something esle is a little incoherent and really needs me to get lots of energy together to figure out exactly what it is and make it happen. Think have got daunted by transition blues maybe!

Joan Bakewell wrote this week that at 74 you learn to stop beating yourself up over the things you haven't achieved and just enjoy what you have or are doing. We can look forward to that.

Choosyfloosy is right too, I wasn't actually single minded about career before children but I tend to forget that now, all those moonths and years I wiffled around backpacking or TEFLing. I was probably always a conflicted wiffler trying to do too many things, but now I think it's due to having young children.

Actually, Fennel, now you say that, I remember shortly before having children, sitting in a cafe with a friend, trying to persuade her it would be a good idea for us to walk across Europe and write a book about it... This was in the middle of so-called career..
Maybe just need to accept am inveterate wiffler and embrace wiffliness. These are very helpful thoughts. And cheering.

Bleenherbe - ah, the transition blues! I know them well. I think the entire 4 years I spent at home with the kids amounted to those blues, really. Don't get me wrong, I needed to be at home with my children, it was just something I had to do, but I was also aware that I was well out of the media game with little chance of getting back in, but with no clue about what else to do. Ende dup retraining, actually, but that is a whole other story. What I will say, though, is that trying to figure out what I should retrain in was like pulling nails and took a couple of years of false starts.

Keep your head up. Without trying to do an amateur (patronising) counselling job on you - often these periods of nothigness and self-doubt are a prelude to us getting our shit together and figuring out some 'next steps'. you need to summon the energy, though, and that may not come immediatel;y (especially if you are spending much of your time dealing with a 3 yr old...)

Good luck

Thank you, Tweedynee, actually feeling much better for "talking" to you lot. I think I have been in transition for a long time - old job not really working, not really sure what to replace it with. What (in broad terms) did you retrain to do?

This is a lovely thread.

I was looking at Gaby Hinsliff's blog the other day (here - she used to be Political Editor of the Observer and gave it up recently to spend more time with her son. She referred to herself committing 'career suicide' and I couldn't help thinking 'oh come off it Gaby - you still have a freelance career, you will go back to some fabulous (by most people's standards) job when your ds is bigger.

I have Ishoos too having just given up my job, but it's all relative innit? We all feel like we could have done more and we all made the decision not to, for good reasons.

Ah, I remember someone mentioning that blog, BadGardener, when I was muttering in rl about my angst! Thsi is a lovely thread; it has turned my gloomy morning around!

You're going to hoot at this...a careers advisor!

Ah, that's brilliant! Has continued my upcheering...