Agony Of Choosing Between Dreams

In June, family outscored hockey: Darryl Sutter resigned as coach of the Chicago Blackhawks to spend more time with his family - specifically his 2-year-old son, Christopher, who has Down’s syndrome.

It was an extraordinary sight. He gave up a position that offered enormous satisfaction and financial reward, not to mention a chance to win a Stanley Cup.

The event received public attention commensurate with its rarity. Who would make such a sacrifice, relinquish a prized goal, change life so utterly?

Women. Every day of the week.

There are no press conferences for mothers who give up their careers for their children. No public jaws drop; no throats tighten.

But the fact is that for many women, the joyous arrival of a child, whether healthy or in need of special care, is a catalyst for agonizing soul-searching.

You look in the eyes of your baby, and a hard question looks back: How badly do you want what you always thought you wanted?

To be sure, it is a dilemma of privilege. Most working mothers can’t afford to quit their jobs. And only women fortunate enough to have careers that give them pleasure would be tormented by the question.

The question is deeply personal. Many mothers continue to enjoy both careers and children, and they resent any suggestion that they are short-changing either.

But enough women choose otherwise that in upper-middle class communities, a mother leaving or cutting back on a successful career is unremarkable.

“I’m surrounded by women like me,” said Janet Herbstman, 38, of Flossmoor, Ill., who quit her job as a lawyer when her first child was born 10 years ago.

The soul-searching often hurts.

“It was a very hard decision,” said Margaret Determan, 37, who resigned in November as a partner in the law firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal to spend more time with her 3-year-old son, Nate.

“I loved being a lawyer,” said Determan, a litigator. “I always felt bad when people said bad things about being a lawyer. But when I put my son in preschool, I realized that I didn’t have much time left to spend significant amounts of time with him; that if I was ever going to do it, I really had only a small window.”

Facing enormous time and travel commitments on a major case, Determan, then working in Sonnenschein’s New York office, proposed working part time. Her request was ignored.

“I was literally doing this calculus in my mind: ‘Is this worth it anymore?”’ she said.

“When that seed gets planted, you start to do some hard analysis of what you’re getting out of the job. I started to realize that more of me was doing it for the money than I liked.”

Nate outscored money. Easily.

Even when the decision carries no regrets, there may be an occasional twinge.

“There are times when I think about what I could have been doing had I had different priorities,” Dr. Diane Schaar, 42, of Olympia Fields, Ill., a pediatrician and mother of two, said of her decision to practice part time.

“But I can’t say I regret the decision I made. I have these wonderful kids.”

No one wants a press conference. But a little more understanding of the difficulty of the choice wouldn’t be unwelcome - not to mention more opportunities for part-time work or reduced hours.

And not to mention more Darryl Sutters.

“If men start really saying, ‘Listen, my family is more important,’ it will really alter the landscape of the work world,” Determan said.

Someone recently asked whether she missed being a lawyer.

“I thought, ‘I wish I still had a secretary,”’ she said. “There is very little else I miss.”

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