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The Jobs Not Taken

A feminist confronts the career realities of motherhood

Kelsey Breseman
Modern Mothers
6 min readJan 15, 2025

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A woman wearing professional attire and a hands-free mic holds her hands out in a smiling shrug
Still from a video by Codegram of the author speaking at Fullstack Fest Barcelona, 2017

There’s a job opening at the local climbing gym. It’s shift work, greeting people at the counter, teaching little kids climbing, making coffees at the fancy espresso machine.

“I want to do it,” I tell Robert.

We talked about just such a job for the pregnancy: low key, walking distance, social. I’d get perks like access to most climbing gyms in London (they have reciprocal agreements) and route setting lessons.

But now, I’m confronted with the reality of our baby. The time on my feet would have been hard but plausible while pregnant. But though I’m now more physically able, I’m hardly likely to bring the pram behind the counter and intermittently breastfeed. And frequent interruptions to diagnose baby tears aren’t the thing when you’re on the clock.

The only way it would work is if I could take only evening and weekend shifts, when Robert could watch the baby — cutting into our already scarce family time.

I’ve been grateful that Robert is up for earning nearly all the money while I’ve been busy growing and feeding a baby. But it suddenly hits home for me that he could not do his job without me — or somebody — in my current role. He couldn’t produce the baby, and he can’t feed it from his body…

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Modern Mothers
Modern Mothers

Published in Modern Mothers

Dedicated to exploring motherhood through articles, personal essays, and a bit of fiction.

Kelsey Breseman
Kelsey Breseman

Written by Kelsey Breseman

An adventurer, engineer, indigenous Alaskan writing the nitty gritty. See my recent posts for free on Substack: https://ifoundtheme.substack.com/

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