A stay-at-home mother’s process of finding a career path

Before I became pregnant, "full-time mother" did not exist in my life dictionary. I never thought that I would live a housewife-style life where I did not work and took care of my children at home. The challenge in life is that suddenly you do what you least want to do, and reality pushes you onto a path that you had never considered.

It has been four years since the complications during pregnancy until my daughter is over three years old. I have been trying hard for my future career, and I have been accompanied by waves of anxiety. Recently, I finally got some clues. I thought I would summarize my various attempts to find a career path over the past four years, divide it into several stages, and share it with stay-at-home mothers who have the same problem and don’t know how to restart their careers. them.

After my graduation internship, when my husband and I first moved to Rouen, I looked for a job for a while, but there were no marketing positions for foreigners in that small city.

Then I became pregnant and had pregnancy complications, so my job search was completely put on the back burner. This is how I spent my pregnancy, either resting at home or going to the hospital. I was worried every day that something would happen to the baby in my belly. However, I persisted and passed the Dalf C1 test in the second trimester, which was a little psychological comfort.

Then my daughter was born prematurely, and I couldn’t care about anything else. I took care of her every day, eating, drinking, sleeping, and going to rehabilitation once or twice a week. I spent a lot of time learning how to provide early education for her. .

At that time, I started to write public accounts, but after three days of fishing and two days of posting on the Internet, I admitted that I could not compete with other parenting account bloggers.

At the same time, I started learning to drive and did the questions while my daughter was sleeping. At that time, my daughter always had to be held while sleeping during the day, so I sat on the sofa holding her with one hand, put the computer on the table in front of me, and clicked the mouse with the other hand to do questions.

Later, my daughter turned one year old and her condition improved a lot. The various developmental delays caused by premature birth gradually caught up. I started to think about finding a job and began to investigate the surrounding nurseries. But all mothers who have applied for a nursery in France know that you have to apply for a seat when you are six months pregnant. It will definitely be useless for us to apply when we are more than one year old.

Then, my husband graduated with a doctorate and found a job in the suburbs of Paris. When we were preparing to move, a private nursery school near our home suddenly called and said that there was a place. I was so sorry at that time that I had to move to Paris and look for it again.

After moving to Paris, private nurseries, let alone public nurseries, were completely out of the question. After understanding the situation, I started looking for Nounou. It was March, and there were no spots available at the nounou near my home. I could only book a nounou that would start in September, so I continued to take care of my daughter full-time for half a year.

In September 2017, her daughter began to be cared for by Nounou three and a half days a week.

I remember that my daughter went through the adjustment period. On the day when I stayed at Nounou’s house for the first time, I even felt that the air was filled with the "smell of freedom". You must know that it was when my daughter was born. In the next 20 months, for the first time, I had a full day without looking after my children.

Finally, I can have time to do something of my own. Finally, I can feel free to find a job.

However, reality began to hit me, and finding a job became a source of anxiety for me.

At this stage, I wrote in my previous article "Talk about the Recent Job Hunting Situation" that due to the gap period of more than two and a half years on my resume, most of my resumes fell into the dust. Several companies that got interview opportunities declined because they doubted whether I could balance work and family.

Later, in order to add some polish to my resume, I took self-study online courses at home in the direction of E-Marketing, which is relatively easy to find a job, but there was still no improvement.

Later, there was a job opportunity at an airport that was not related to my major but I was still interested in. However, the child could not arrange the special working hours, so I had to give up.

Only then did I realize that my original thinking was really naive. I thought that even if I was idle for two or three years, I would definitely be able to find a job as long as I worked hard to find a job. However, the situation of finding a job after having children is really very different from that before having children.

In addition to the recruiting company’s concerns about my work and family coordination, I also have to consider a lot myself. Since no one can help take care of my children, I can’t work too far away or work overtime. If I get home too late, my husband will be too busy, and I can’t tolerate less time with my children. Everyone knows that Marketing work is busy, fast-paced, and involves a lot of group work, and most of the marketing work related to the Chinese market is done in Little Paris.

So, I am getting more and more discouraged about finding a job. I slowly accepted the reality that it was difficult for me to find a job related to my major or that interested me.

So I started thinking, why do I have to find a job?

In order to have an income, that is for sure. Also, it’s to gain a sense of self-worth.

But there are so many ways to earn income and gain a sense of self-worth, why do I have to find a job?

Because this is the safest path, and because many of my former business school classmates are working very well in large companies, I always feel like why can’t I? But, given my current situation, that's not possible.

As for my ideal working status, I think the most important thing is that I can work hard when I am working, but when my child is out of school, I have to pick her up and take her home, and I want to give her the necessary After she goes to bed, I can continue working. In other words, I work hard when I'm at work, but I need to be able to make time when my children need me.

Fixed working hours will never allow me to work in this ideal working state.

Only freelancing or starting a business can meet my special needs for family time.

I registered as a Micro-Entrepreneur (formerly Auto-Entrepreneur) in October last year, and I plan to try to do some consulting on the Chinese market and E-Marketing, as well as the translation of business documents.

Maybe others think that my work qualifications are not enough, or maybe people like to find companies to do similar consulting work. In short, I have not received any projects in the Chinese market consulting field.

I have received a few translation jobs, translating menus, mobile applications, advertising soft articles, etc., but the salary is very low. I have to say that the vicious competition in the translation industry is really serious. There will always be someone with a lower price than you. One month, I had two translation projects going on at the same time. Four days a week after my daughter went to school, I kept translating at home and worked late at night. However, I only earned less than 600 euros that month. I don't think it's okay to continue like this. On the one hand, the salary is low, and the growth at work is also very limited, making me very tired.

I am confused again, but if I don’t do this, what else can I do? ?

Like many people, apart from my major, I have no other hobbies that can be converted into economic value.

I took several career tests online, used various models to analyze myself, analyzed my strengths and weaknesses, ideal values, etc., and asked myself over and over again what I wanted to do and what was worth it. Something that I’m all in and willing to completely start over? ?

After a period of searching, I got some clues: I have always been interested in psychology, and I have always been a little confused about myself and my family. After having children, I was even more concerned about children. A deep interest in psychology.

However, after checking the admission requirements for psychology majors in France, it is necessary to study psychology in France starting from L1, and it lasts five years from L1 to M2, and generally studying psychology requires It takes eight years to get a Ph.D., plus three years, and psychology is a major with a high elimination rate and fierce competition. If you repeat another grade, it will take almost ten years in total.

Ten years, I am already in my thirties, and I really don’t have the courage or the conditions to bother like this.

Therefore, psychology can only be a hobby for me.

I can only continue to look for direction.

I even looked through the various career lists in France to find out what was suitable for me, but my aimless search would only increase my confusion.

I gradually felt that instead of searching in the outside world in such confusion, it would be better to go through my past experiences carefully, intersect with the fields I am interested in, and see what combinations I can find.

Later, I went round and round and tried to join several different types of ateliers, and my ideas gradually became clear.

My major is brand management. In fact, I have always had a dream to create my own products and brands. My undergraduate major in China was landscape architecture design, which included many courses on plants. Some time ago, I learned more about the mood-improving effects of many plant aromatherapy, so the idea of ??starting a business gradually became clear: I want to make all-natural plant-based indoor fragrance products.

By connecting the messy past, the confused present, and the looming future, things that I thought were unappreciated or out of reach, when I think about them as a whole, I get a whole new way of thinking. .

Of course, the most important thing is the courage to explore.

Although my entrepreneurial project is related to my past studies, making indoor fragrance products is still a quite unfamiliar field to me. Even though I know a little about plant aromatherapy, I still need to Making professional fragrance products is no small challenge.

I remember reading a survey before, but I forgot the specific number. A large proportion of stay-at-home mothers switched careers and started over in a new field after working full-time. There are many successful cases, the most well-known of which are the many parenting websites now. There are also some mothers who resume their studies and then enter new fields, or start a new job and start from the bottom and then counterattack.

It is really not easy. Only those who have experienced working full-time at home for a long time can realize how much these mothers will cherish such an opportunity to start over, even if it is hard.

Now my daughter attends classes four days a week. I have packed these four days, including online classes, participating in Ateliers, self-study courses, preparing for Formation next fall, buying materials for experiments, and thinking about operating models... ?

However, there are always all kinds of delays: trivial matters at home, cumbersome procedures in France, daughter being sick or on vacation (for example, this past vacation, my daughter was sick for a week+ before the vacation) I have two weeks of vacation, and my daughter is at home for three weeks in total), and things are progressing very slowly.

The old saying goes back to the balance between family and career. For mothers, including me, who have no one to help and no money to hire help, it is really impossible. I have to make choices under many forced circumstances. For me, family is actually more important, and my daughter is more important. Then, I can only try my best to optimize time allocation and improve efficiency.

In the preparation stage of starting a business, in addition to always feeling that there is not enough time, another difficulty is self-doubt: Can I really do this?

There are so many things to learn, and the preparations to be made are so tedious. I always work alone, and profit seems far away. There is also the ultimate question, can I do it?

I am the kind of person who thinks a lot, but I am a pessimistic taker. Even if I think negatively, I will always work hard to do it.

So later I persuaded myself that since I really wanted to do this and tried my best, that was enough. Everyone's life is different and has a different rhythm. Just move forward step by step.

Starting a business is not about forcing yourself, but about giving yourself a chance, not forgetting your original intention, and moving forward calmly.

Since I have just started this stage of entrepreneurship, what I have written is very limited. I will write more slowly in the future as it progresses.

The above are the various stages in my search for a career path. It took me four years to figure out a clue in the past few months. It was very slow, but worth it. Because I don’t want to be the person who is always pushed away by life, and I always remind myself: You always have the right to choose.

Share this with all stay-at-home moms. Whether you are confused, have started over, or want to continue being a stay-at-home mom, I wish you can find the option that you want most and that is most suitable for you.