Dear Pepper is an advice-column comic by Liana Finck. If you have questions for Pepper about how to act in difficult situations, please direct them to dearpepperquestions@gmail.com. Questions may be edited for brevity and clarity.

Dear Pepper,

I am seven months postpartum and have driven myself and my husband into a state of insanity over choosing between potential life paths.

For years, I was our breadwinner, with a successful, if sometimes slightly lame, career, while he pursued an academic job. Before the baby was born, I left the corporate world when he got an excellent job in a small town, and I started consulting. I was not particularly happy with the state of things—the work was isolating and unfulfilling, and we both missed the big city. Now that the baby is here, I am shockingly not transformed into a new person who can be a perfect domestic goddess 24/7. We are faced with the choice of: move back to the city, where I’d go back to work and my husband would stay home (but what if I regret missing these years with my kid to make stupid corporate slide shows?); or I white-knuckle it through staying home (but what if I end up depressed and depleted and leave my kid with sad and confused memories, as happened in my childhood?); or we both work and give up on our dream of providing our child with a full-time parent. Every pro-con list ends up tied. I am wringing this decision in my hands and it’s driving me crazy. Help!!!

Flailing and Flopping

Dear Flailing and Flopping,

[Stretches, flaps ears.]

Hi and congratulations!

I’m as fucked up as anyone when it comes to this whole puppy-raising business, so keep that in mind. But I️ have one clear, biased thought: I think you should go back to work. My bias has to do with pushing back against a society that tells new moms that they should stay home if they can.

The other bias I️ have is that I think it’s fine for a kid to not have a full-time parent at home, if one can afford child care (a huge if).

I’ve got a lot of other caveats, too. Which I’ll address in the form of questions. Here goes:

Are there corporate jobs available to you with schedules closer to nine-to-five than to 24/7?

I️ know that moving is no fun—and neither are compromises. But . . . how far is the small town you moved to from the city? Is it possible to relocate somewhere in between the town and the city, so that you and your husband could both commute?

How much of a non-job is consulting? Could going back to work involve renting an office nearby and dedicating work hours to that, at least for now?

If you moved back to the city, would that be the end of your husband’s career, which it sounds like he enjoys, and is just settling into? Or could he find another interesting job, now, or in a year or two, when your child is older?

Is there a way you and your husband could both work, and stagger your workdays? Someone does mornings with the baby, someone does evenings?

As someone who’s been spending more hours parenting than I️ ever thought I️ would or wanted to (blame: husband’s job, cursed sense of responsibility, “flexible” career), I mourn the professional velocity I️’ve lost, along with a community of friends.

But though I feel I’ve given up some of the brain cells that used to be dedicated to, and stimulated by, my work and my friends, I’ve also come to appreciate all the time spent with my kids—for their sake and for mine. Over my past four and a half years of parenthood I’ve shifted slowly into a more condensed work schedule and more kid time, and I️ regret not trying to spend more of the day with my older kid when he was a toddler. (But, to be fair, this year we have a nanny, so I️ can afford to be more sentimental.)

All this is to say: I️ do think you’re wise to value spending serious time with your kid—and it’s striking to me that you know how important this is, amid the upheaval a first baby brings. But all day every day for the foreseeable future sounds, in your case, as it would be in mine, worryingly sacrificial. Nice for your child at first, perhaps, but not nice for you, to lose such a significant part of yourself. So, in the long run, not nice for anyone. You mention, I️ think, being left with traces of sadness from your own mom’s choices. Or should I say “choices”? And I️ can relate. Sacrifices do have to be made when a big, wonderful baby enters your life. Only, I️ think, not sweepingly definitive ones.

Mostly, I️ hear the agony in your e-mail. It sounds to me like a clear desire for a life outside of family trying to free itself from layers of expectation—yours and others’ and society’s—with a confetti sprinkling on top of dissatisfaction with the corporate world.

I️ could be wrong about much of this. I️ often am. My brain is mush. I️ do, however, relate very much to your quandary.

With love,
Pepper