It’s impossible to do this all, isn’t it? We have all the tasks, responsibilities, and aspirations we’ve always had—eating and sleeping and working and paying our taxes and taking out the trash and following our dreams—but now we have little people to care for on top of all that. Little helpless people with infinite needs. How can we do it all? Ursula Le Guin was a full-time writer. She was prolific, publishing twenty-three novels, thirteen children’s books, twelve volumes of short stories, eleven volumes of poetry, five essay collections, and four works of translation. Additionally, she worked as an editor and taught college undergraduate classes.
Oh . . . she was also the mother of three and the wife of a history professor, Charles Le Guin.
How did she do it all? How did he do it all? They didn’t.
“One person cannot do two full-time jobs,” Le Guin once explained. “Writing is a full-time job and so is children. But two people can do three full-time jobs. . . . That’s why I’m so strong on partnership. It can be a great thing.”
Parenting is so hard to do alone; so hard. For too long, too many mothers had to do it alone, were forced to sacrificed alone. But, of course, we are stronger when we, our children’s parents, parent together. We go farther, together. It’s one of the only ways to make the math work—not just for the benefit of the children, but for the parents as well.