I'm a corporate lawyer. The dumbest, and most predictable, conversations are with colleagues. The sharpest, most honest, conversations are with our kids. The idea that work is a place of nuanced erudition is nonsense. In fact, there is a serious issue as to how anyone retains any functioning intelligence in a workplace.
My first was born over 19 years ago, and I wasn’t prepared for how intellectually starved I felt. I was pregnant my last semester of grad school and then went straight to being a stay-at-home mom. My husband was in medical school, we lived far from family, and my circle of friends, who were already moms, only wanted to talk about kids and parenting. For some reason, I didn’t read while I breastfed. I think I found holding a book while juggling an infant awkward. I can’t remember. I watched a lot of tv instead, something I regret now as wasted time. However, I was driven by the conviction that staying home with my baby was the right thing to do. And it was. The sacrifice was worth it.
Fast forward a few years. I decided to homeschool my two kids, and suddenly, my brain was firing on all cylinders. There was research to do on educational philosophies and curricula. I got to relearn grammar, history, math, phonics, geography, and science. So often I found myself saying, “Ooooh, that’s what that means!” I saw all the holes in my own knowledge and education and tried to make sure my kids had a more comprehensive and unified understanding of all the subjects. I got to reread all the children’s classics and see my children delight in them. Reading them as an adult was an incredibly enriching experience. There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t learn something new and it filled me up. I also corrected a lot of my own erroneous thinking. Silly me, I thought writing would be easier to teach than math. But most of all, I was with my kids. I saw their milestones and their triumphs and coached them through their failures. Sometimes they drove me crazy and I threatened to put them on the school bus, but it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
Now my kids are 19 and almost 16. I’m still a stay-at-home mom, but I do a lot of volunteer work and I read. And now that I’m looking at an empty nest in a few years, I’m considering going back to school again. My advice echoes the article’s—find the intellectual stimulation wherever you can, in whatever small pockets of time you can. I wish podcasts had existed when my kids were babies. But also be patient. Whatever season you’re in is short-lived and whatever sacrifices you make for your kids are worth it. The culture tells you to put yourself first, love yourself first, make your own happiness your number one priority. But I believe my calling is higher than that: to love others more than I love myself.
So important to nurture your intellectual side as a mother, especially if you’re someone who craves and needs intellectual stimulation. I have three daughters ages 4, 6, and 9. My biggest piece of advice now that I’m past the baby years is to wake up before the kids. I exercise, make my first coffee of the day, and then read until I hear the pitter patter of little feet. I take a few minutes for philosophy. I continue whatever novel I’m into, lately a lot of history. It makes me a better and more present mother when I can greet my children after taking that time for myself in the peace and quiet of the early morning.
I found that motherhood really shifted my interests in unexpected ways - I am very drawn now to philosophy, theology, and the history of ideas in a way that I was not previously. I think it is because motherhood is a great confrontation with big questions: life, death, the meaning thereof; how we should live; what kind of people make a good family and a good society, etc.
I'm an employed mom of 4. I have an intellectual job as a researcher but think some of my most intellectual thinking happens while I'm doing household chores like making lunches and sweeping. Most people under-estimate what your mind can do in those mundane moments, either listening to an audiobook or mulling over ideas. And most people over-estimate how intellectual intellectual jobs are, seriously break down the steps involved in getting an article published, there's a lot of drudge work. Anyway, my recommendation is to listen to audiobooks and podcasts and read and discuss good literature with your children. It doesn't have to take much time because you and your children can continue to think about the ideas.
Interestingly, I found my “intellectual life” as a SAHM. I had my first very young, at 20. I just read, read, read everything. And yes, read with my kids, explored with my kids. After my youngest went to kindergarten, I went to back to school and got an English degree. I wouldn’t trade those thinking days with my kids for anything. Learning comes from the heart’s genuine curiosity and desire to explore. The opportunity is all around us. You don’t need school for it, although I certainly enjoyed my college experience. Thank you for the post!
Loved this. This is such a corrective to the modern notion of education, which equates it only with *going somewhere and learning from a credentialed person*. This certainly does not discount those pursuing formal education, or those in such professions, but it is helpful to widen our idea of what being a whole, educated, and life-long learning person is!
I came across something a few months back saying just because someone earned a PhD doesn't mean they know a ton about *everything* ...or even important things. With examples of very narrowly defined "educated" or "prestigious" people not having a clue about some really basis and important things in life, the world, etc. (My husband has a PhD in radiochemistry, but even he will admit he just knows a lot about... separating isotopes. haha) Credentials can be helpful but even those do not encompass all that a widely and liberally educated person can be. Some people never read a book after graduating college, while someone without a degree might read voraciously and widely! We can seek out the riches of so much wisdom and knowledge, if only we take the time for it.
I've been in the fortunate position to be a full-time mother to three little ones, and have been the most intellectually alive I've been in years. All by weaving it into our days and in the cracks.
I have a two year old and an 8 month old, and doing whatever I can to maintain some reading/level of intellectual life helps me feel grounded and sane, when the days are full of love, yes! But also full of non-stop movement and tasks and care for others, in a way nothing else I have experienced is. My husband reads t night because he can stay up late, and I read in the morning because I can get up early. We both take notes/keep narration style journals to make us feel like we are retaining something of what we read. I would like to recommend Autumn Kern’s “Mother Academia” series on her YouTube channel The Commonplace for wonderful encouragement, ideas, & resources on how to keep reading as a mom!! She is so helpful
I love these ideas! And want to add one more: a book club called “The Well Read Mom”. It’s national in the U.S. and I believe it’s expanding internationally. I have gotten to read books that are for me, harder to approach like Dracula, Gift from the Sea, East of Eden, Practice of the Presence of God, and Brideshead Revisited. The discussions are great fun since the ladies are from such different academic backgrounds.
Thank you for sharing this. Before my husband and I decided to start our family, my biggest fear was that family life would be a shift from "interesting adult things" to "boring kid things." This essay is a reminder of parents' ability to cultivate their children's tastes (we can read the *good* children's books, like Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats). But it's also a reminder that kid things, in bringing joy and silliness, can jolt us out of our boring adult fixations.
Plus, breast feeding can add up to a full-time job! I'm going to get so much reading done
Thank you, Mary and Mary, for putting this out in the world. It is culturally accepted to pit intellectual life against motherhood, and---considering the stakes---that is a tragedy. Kids need moms with robust intellectual lives. Communities need moms with robust intellectual lives.
I'm especially grateful to see Mary's encouragement to cultivate your intellectual life in a homeward direction. Any way you look, in your home or yard or pantry, there is so much potential for things to learn (as our children daily remind us).
On a practical note, as a homeschooling mom with four kids, I rely heavily on audiobooks and podcasts (my noise-cancelling headphones are amazing, on days I haven't misplaced them). I've also been blessed with a number of "smart buddies" with whom I swap reading and listening recommendations. Very often our reading interests are influenced by needs in our families/social groups/churches/larger communities. If anything, I think the stay-at-home moms have *more* time to think and read deeply about things than I had when I worked 9-to-5 as a lawyer (even if some days it doesn't feel that way at all!).
Those are all good ideas and I relate to many of them. I had a stack of books by my nursing chair as well, and I would read on my computer too, sometimes using my toes to operate it, lol. I didn’t have a smartphone till my oldest was 9 months old.
Podcasts have probably been my biggest vehicle of intellectual exploration since having kids. I can listen to them while doing chores, after going to bed, or when I can’t sleep at night. The disadvantage is that this is solitary learning: we could all theoretically listen to a podcast together but that’s not what happens; also we need time to talk to each other. So it’s important to have some good books around and share experiences we can talk about as a family. Both girls are taking music lessons and dance lessons, and I dance too. My husband and I schedule date nights when we can that are usually slow dinner and lots of conversation.
I also have a couple of blogs that I’ve written in for many years: it’s hard for even me to say exactly what I’m trying to accomplish with them but it matters that they are there.
My daughters presented as curious and independent from a young age, which I like: for their sake and because it frees me up to do my own thing sometimes, which is important to me. Much as I love my kids I don’t want to be their main source of entertainment. I like to be able to sit and read a book while they do their own thing (preferably not a screen, which they do have access to but limited). Quiet leisure is so important; that’s when cool thoughts bubble up!
Thanks to a super supportive husband, I managed to publish several novels while raising our 10 kids, and that was wonderful intellectual stimulation. I actually wrote several of them while breast-feeding at the computer.
One thing I did at least for the older kids, was to put them through my own version of a creative writing class every summer, where we would watch a range of movies from highbrow to Disney and analyze what made them good or bad or even great. This has created a culture of active storytelling and story critique in our house which is very enjoyable. Last night my husband and kids were watching “Prince of Egypt“ for the 670th time and I heard the children talking to each other during the movie, pointing out tiny details in the well constructed story and shouting “payoff!“ when something that was set up earlier in the movie was fulfilled. I don’t know if any of them will go into writing, editing and publishing as I have done but it has certainly enriched our family culture. I am now teaching creative writing at a local college and one of my sons, who is not particularly literary, asked to sit in on the class so he could fill in the gaps of his own story-creation knowledge.
Having worked in editorial offices and worked on my own as a stay at home mom, I would say the latter was definitely far more creative, flexible, and ultimately more profitable to my writing.
Thank you for this great post! Mom of eight here (15 year old down to seven weeks). I appreciate a lot of the ideas shared. I’d also add that book groups can be a great blessing. I’m in two right now, one more casual, one more intellectual. Both groups involve women, all of whom are mothers at varying stages. I’d seek out one friend to start a group with, then add a few people (small groups are better).
Nothing to add, I just have to say this is all how I’ve organically nourished my intellectual life without realizing it, as a mother. I’ve just always had a voracious appetite for knowledge and passion for discussing ideas. The more I read the more I wrote, and while I’m a college drop-out with no higher career aspiration than to earn a modest living writing, it’s occurred to me that cultivating my own intellectual life as a mother is now shaping that of my two sons’. If I do nothing else of significance in my entire life, I would feel I had an immeasurably significant task in that alone.
I'm a corporate lawyer. The dumbest, and most predictable, conversations are with colleagues. The sharpest, most honest, conversations are with our kids. The idea that work is a place of nuanced erudition is nonsense. In fact, there is a serious issue as to how anyone retains any functioning intelligence in a workplace.
My first was born over 19 years ago, and I wasn’t prepared for how intellectually starved I felt. I was pregnant my last semester of grad school and then went straight to being a stay-at-home mom. My husband was in medical school, we lived far from family, and my circle of friends, who were already moms, only wanted to talk about kids and parenting. For some reason, I didn’t read while I breastfed. I think I found holding a book while juggling an infant awkward. I can’t remember. I watched a lot of tv instead, something I regret now as wasted time. However, I was driven by the conviction that staying home with my baby was the right thing to do. And it was. The sacrifice was worth it.
Fast forward a few years. I decided to homeschool my two kids, and suddenly, my brain was firing on all cylinders. There was research to do on educational philosophies and curricula. I got to relearn grammar, history, math, phonics, geography, and science. So often I found myself saying, “Ooooh, that’s what that means!” I saw all the holes in my own knowledge and education and tried to make sure my kids had a more comprehensive and unified understanding of all the subjects. I got to reread all the children’s classics and see my children delight in them. Reading them as an adult was an incredibly enriching experience. There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t learn something new and it filled me up. I also corrected a lot of my own erroneous thinking. Silly me, I thought writing would be easier to teach than math. But most of all, I was with my kids. I saw their milestones and their triumphs and coached them through their failures. Sometimes they drove me crazy and I threatened to put them on the school bus, but it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
Now my kids are 19 and almost 16. I’m still a stay-at-home mom, but I do a lot of volunteer work and I read. And now that I’m looking at an empty nest in a few years, I’m considering going back to school again. My advice echoes the article’s—find the intellectual stimulation wherever you can, in whatever small pockets of time you can. I wish podcasts had existed when my kids were babies. But also be patient. Whatever season you’re in is short-lived and whatever sacrifices you make for your kids are worth it. The culture tells you to put yourself first, love yourself first, make your own happiness your number one priority. But I believe my calling is higher than that: to love others more than I love myself.
So important to nurture your intellectual side as a mother, especially if you’re someone who craves and needs intellectual stimulation. I have three daughters ages 4, 6, and 9. My biggest piece of advice now that I’m past the baby years is to wake up before the kids. I exercise, make my first coffee of the day, and then read until I hear the pitter patter of little feet. I take a few minutes for philosophy. I continue whatever novel I’m into, lately a lot of history. It makes me a better and more present mother when I can greet my children after taking that time for myself in the peace and quiet of the early morning.
I found that motherhood really shifted my interests in unexpected ways - I am very drawn now to philosophy, theology, and the history of ideas in a way that I was not previously. I think it is because motherhood is a great confrontation with big questions: life, death, the meaning thereof; how we should live; what kind of people make a good family and a good society, etc.
I'm an employed mom of 4. I have an intellectual job as a researcher but think some of my most intellectual thinking happens while I'm doing household chores like making lunches and sweeping. Most people under-estimate what your mind can do in those mundane moments, either listening to an audiobook or mulling over ideas. And most people over-estimate how intellectual intellectual jobs are, seriously break down the steps involved in getting an article published, there's a lot of drudge work. Anyway, my recommendation is to listen to audiobooks and podcasts and read and discuss good literature with your children. It doesn't have to take much time because you and your children can continue to think about the ideas.
Interestingly, I found my “intellectual life” as a SAHM. I had my first very young, at 20. I just read, read, read everything. And yes, read with my kids, explored with my kids. After my youngest went to kindergarten, I went to back to school and got an English degree. I wouldn’t trade those thinking days with my kids for anything. Learning comes from the heart’s genuine curiosity and desire to explore. The opportunity is all around us. You don’t need school for it, although I certainly enjoyed my college experience. Thank you for the post!
Loved this. This is such a corrective to the modern notion of education, which equates it only with *going somewhere and learning from a credentialed person*. This certainly does not discount those pursuing formal education, or those in such professions, but it is helpful to widen our idea of what being a whole, educated, and life-long learning person is!
I came across something a few months back saying just because someone earned a PhD doesn't mean they know a ton about *everything* ...or even important things. With examples of very narrowly defined "educated" or "prestigious" people not having a clue about some really basis and important things in life, the world, etc. (My husband has a PhD in radiochemistry, but even he will admit he just knows a lot about... separating isotopes. haha) Credentials can be helpful but even those do not encompass all that a widely and liberally educated person can be. Some people never read a book after graduating college, while someone without a degree might read voraciously and widely! We can seek out the riches of so much wisdom and knowledge, if only we take the time for it.
I've been in the fortunate position to be a full-time mother to three little ones, and have been the most intellectually alive I've been in years. All by weaving it into our days and in the cracks.
I have a two year old and an 8 month old, and doing whatever I can to maintain some reading/level of intellectual life helps me feel grounded and sane, when the days are full of love, yes! But also full of non-stop movement and tasks and care for others, in a way nothing else I have experienced is. My husband reads t night because he can stay up late, and I read in the morning because I can get up early. We both take notes/keep narration style journals to make us feel like we are retaining something of what we read. I would like to recommend Autumn Kern’s “Mother Academia” series on her YouTube channel The Commonplace for wonderful encouragement, ideas, & resources on how to keep reading as a mom!! She is so helpful
I love these ideas! And want to add one more: a book club called “The Well Read Mom”. It’s national in the U.S. and I believe it’s expanding internationally. I have gotten to read books that are for me, harder to approach like Dracula, Gift from the Sea, East of Eden, Practice of the Presence of God, and Brideshead Revisited. The discussions are great fun since the ladies are from such different academic backgrounds.
Thank you for sharing this. Before my husband and I decided to start our family, my biggest fear was that family life would be a shift from "interesting adult things" to "boring kid things." This essay is a reminder of parents' ability to cultivate their children's tastes (we can read the *good* children's books, like Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats). But it's also a reminder that kid things, in bringing joy and silliness, can jolt us out of our boring adult fixations.
Plus, breast feeding can add up to a full-time job! I'm going to get so much reading done
Thank you, Mary and Mary, for putting this out in the world. It is culturally accepted to pit intellectual life against motherhood, and---considering the stakes---that is a tragedy. Kids need moms with robust intellectual lives. Communities need moms with robust intellectual lives.
I'm especially grateful to see Mary's encouragement to cultivate your intellectual life in a homeward direction. Any way you look, in your home or yard or pantry, there is so much potential for things to learn (as our children daily remind us).
On a practical note, as a homeschooling mom with four kids, I rely heavily on audiobooks and podcasts (my noise-cancelling headphones are amazing, on days I haven't misplaced them). I've also been blessed with a number of "smart buddies" with whom I swap reading and listening recommendations. Very often our reading interests are influenced by needs in our families/social groups/churches/larger communities. If anything, I think the stay-at-home moms have *more* time to think and read deeply about things than I had when I worked 9-to-5 as a lawyer (even if some days it doesn't feel that way at all!).
Great post!
Two words: Inner Life
If that is nurtured and tended to, then you can be anywhere with anyone...makes me think of the prison scene in Shakespeare's Richard II
KING RICHARD II
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd
With scruples and do set the word itself
Against the word:
As thus, 'Come, little ones,' and then again,
'It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.'
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there;
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and by and by
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing. Music do I hear?
Those are all good ideas and I relate to many of them. I had a stack of books by my nursing chair as well, and I would read on my computer too, sometimes using my toes to operate it, lol. I didn’t have a smartphone till my oldest was 9 months old.
Podcasts have probably been my biggest vehicle of intellectual exploration since having kids. I can listen to them while doing chores, after going to bed, or when I can’t sleep at night. The disadvantage is that this is solitary learning: we could all theoretically listen to a podcast together but that’s not what happens; also we need time to talk to each other. So it’s important to have some good books around and share experiences we can talk about as a family. Both girls are taking music lessons and dance lessons, and I dance too. My husband and I schedule date nights when we can that are usually slow dinner and lots of conversation.
I also have a couple of blogs that I’ve written in for many years: it’s hard for even me to say exactly what I’m trying to accomplish with them but it matters that they are there.
My daughters presented as curious and independent from a young age, which I like: for their sake and because it frees me up to do my own thing sometimes, which is important to me. Much as I love my kids I don’t want to be their main source of entertainment. I like to be able to sit and read a book while they do their own thing (preferably not a screen, which they do have access to but limited). Quiet leisure is so important; that’s when cool thoughts bubble up!
Thanks to a super supportive husband, I managed to publish several novels while raising our 10 kids, and that was wonderful intellectual stimulation. I actually wrote several of them while breast-feeding at the computer.
One thing I did at least for the older kids, was to put them through my own version of a creative writing class every summer, where we would watch a range of movies from highbrow to Disney and analyze what made them good or bad or even great. This has created a culture of active storytelling and story critique in our house which is very enjoyable. Last night my husband and kids were watching “Prince of Egypt“ for the 670th time and I heard the children talking to each other during the movie, pointing out tiny details in the well constructed story and shouting “payoff!“ when something that was set up earlier in the movie was fulfilled. I don’t know if any of them will go into writing, editing and publishing as I have done but it has certainly enriched our family culture. I am now teaching creative writing at a local college and one of my sons, who is not particularly literary, asked to sit in on the class so he could fill in the gaps of his own story-creation knowledge.
Having worked in editorial offices and worked on my own as a stay at home mom, I would say the latter was definitely far more creative, flexible, and ultimately more profitable to my writing.
Thank you for this great post! Mom of eight here (15 year old down to seven weeks). I appreciate a lot of the ideas shared. I’d also add that book groups can be a great blessing. I’m in two right now, one more casual, one more intellectual. Both groups involve women, all of whom are mothers at varying stages. I’d seek out one friend to start a group with, then add a few people (small groups are better).
Nothing to add, I just have to say this is all how I’ve organically nourished my intellectual life without realizing it, as a mother. I’ve just always had a voracious appetite for knowledge and passion for discussing ideas. The more I read the more I wrote, and while I’m a college drop-out with no higher career aspiration than to earn a modest living writing, it’s occurred to me that cultivating my own intellectual life as a mother is now shaping that of my two sons’. If I do nothing else of significance in my entire life, I would feel I had an immeasurably significant task in that alone.