Teaching Not a 'Sustainable' Job for Parents

Being a teacher these days seems to be an exhausting, frustrating lot, at least according to the record-high turnover rate and low job satisfaction that Lauren Quinn cites in her op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. Quinn herself recently left her job as a high school English teacher, but it wasn't a paltry paycheck or ornery students that caused her to step away—it was the fact that she had kids of her own, she writes. "Teaching was never meant to be a sustainable career for a parent. In fact, it was designed to be the opposite," she writes, detailing the history of women teachers that included prevalent bans against teachers marrying up through the 1950s. Quinn writes that teachers still have to contend with family-unfriendly policies, including a notable absence of widespread paid parental leave, inflexible hours, and teachers often having to bring work home.

None of this is conducive to being a teacher and a parent, especially for Quinn, the mother of a special needs child who needs regular doctor visits and weekly therapy sessions. "Balancing the absences these appointments required with the needs of my students and the demands of creating plans for substitutes quickly became unmanageable," she writes. These demands especially affect mothers, as women make up 77% of the teaching workforce. Quinn has some suggestions to mitigate the hardships, including national paid family leave for all educators, as well as laws that would allow for more flexible work hours when needed. "Accommodations like these ... could even lure me back to the classroom and to a profession I loved—just not more than I love my own children," she writes. (Read the full op-ed.)