The idea of this project came to me one late winter more morning almost three years ago and this post and the Entry Submission page have sat in the drafts folder here on my website now for over a year. As a creative, I’m always dreaming up different project ideas. Sometimes I am able to dive right in, but other times the timing doesn’t feel quite right. This project has been one of the later, as I have been afraid of not being able to give it the attention I know it deserves between my workload and family responsibilities. But, 2024 for me is about diving in and going after the passions of my heart: starting first with this project! And on this note, it brings me much joy to (finally!) be putting this out into the world and officially begin accepting applications for participants!
Please note in advance, I will only be accepting applications for a limited number of weeks, with an entry deadline of March 15, 2024. So if you are interested, please be sure to get on this right away!
Who will this project be for/about:
Parents (women, men, or gender fluid/non-identifying) in the WNY community (Buffalo and immediate surrounding suburbs) who have become full-time stay at home parents or who have and are still currently scaled back in their careers after welcoming children (biological or adopted) into their lives. Whether you chose this path willingly or if you had no other option but to go this route, I welcome you to share your story and your unique why for leaving your job/career or scaling back in work to experience the shift of working less to provide more care for your child(ren).
A little backstory:
Before asking applicants such deeply personal questions and inviting you to participate in this project, I wanted to take a minute to openly share with you my own story, which is the inspiration for this project.
Photo of my boys and I taken by Sarah Bridgeman in 2023
Before I began my photography business and long before I ever had children of my own, I knew that one day when I had babies of my own, I wanted to have flexibility in my schedule to care for my children the majority of my days while still working a schedule I was in control of setting. Even though I had already been passionate about photography since I was in grade school, this goal was ultimately the driving force for me going out on my own in photography full-time instead of just having it as a side passion to the full-time career in graphic design/advertising I had worked since college.
However, after our first son was born and my busy season began, I quickly learned it was not as easy to still work the hours I had been working while caring for my child like I wanted. I focused my days solely on being with and playing with my son, gave up trying to get any work done during the times he was awake during the day and began working only in the evenings after bedtime. This was often challenging since he would wake up every 2 hours and I’d often end up staying up way too late for his early morning wake ups. I had looked into daycare options for 2-days a week, but of course was put on a wait list (a list I can only assume we must still be on since I never received a call to tell me a spot opened). Then when my son was a year old, we hired a babysitter who helped out a few hours one day a week so I could work during the day, but that was not as productive as I had hoped it would be. Feeling overwhelmed, I started to limit the work I took on in an effort to not get too burned out. Then, just before our oldest turned two, everything shut down (a year that is forever a blur!) and the year after that we welcomed our second child (which was probably a crazy thing to do because it was also my busiest year work wise since having our first son). It was ROUGH trying to watch both kids during the day without help and work tirelessly editing in the evenings after bedtime. So I decided to scale back even more on work in 2022. I booked only what I needed to, blocked off certain weeks so that I could plan to space out my editing and not get too backed up, and decided to start scheduling things not so far out. And that’s been my plan and will be until I’m ready to dive back into work in a greater capacity.
Taking the cut in workload and setting other business things off to the side for now (like blogging, advertising, etc) has been a necessity for me in order to give me this time I’ve desired to have with my children. Has it been challenging at times, for all of us? Of course. My husband and I are constantly rotating schedules around one another since we don’t have babysitters lined up or other family in the area who drop in to help out. But this time with my children has been EVERYTHING and I would not trade it for anything, even on the hard days. They are only little for such a short period of time and I’m so incredibly thankful to be the one with them during most of their days, teaching them and wondering with them, while still working as needed and saying yes to only the weddings and sessions I feel most passionate about.
My why for starting this project:
It is not lost on me that I am very fortunate to have chosen this path. While I know there are other parents like myself who have scaled back in work to raise their children out of a desire to do so, I also know that there are many others who had NO choice. For starters – and only one of many possible reasons – it might not make sense financially to have children in daycare when the costs of care are higher than the paychecks received. And on the flip side, many parents do go back or continue to work full-time because possibly their family needs their income or they have no desire to be the ones at home with their child(ren) all day, so those parents instead are mastering the balance of both full-time work and family life. Regardless of of how we spend our days, we are all amazing parents; all doing our best to raise the next generation. And that’s something we can all be truly proud of.
Since my own experience has been the one of scaling back on work, however, I felt very inspired to hear more from other parents who are on this journey, too. And from this, the Parenthood Shift Project was born.
If you are interested in participating in what I hope will be a unique project highlighting parents in our community who have sacrificed the traditional expectation of working and raising a family, I invite you to apply on my application page, via the link below. This page will dive further into the qualifications necessary and what YOU will receive from your time sharing your story with me and our community!
Thank you so much for being here and most of all, for your time. I look forward to connecting with you soon!
