We Will Always Choose Our Children

The Place No One Tells You About

There was a young mom sitting across from me in the pediatrician’s waiting room the other day. She held her infant close, that particular posture you learn only after too many nights without sleep- half cradle, half shield. I was there with my own daughter, now a teenager, brought in for a stubborn cough.

I didn’t mean to listen, but stress carries a certain frequency. You can feel it before you hear it.

She was on the phone with her job.

“My baby is sick.”

That was it. No dramatic explanation. No excuses. Just the truth.

And in that moment, I saw her.

The Quiet Panic We Don’t Talk About

If you’ve ever been a single parent - or the primary parent - you know what comes next after those words leave your mouth. The mental math starts immediately:

• How many sick days do I have left?

• Will they believe me?

• Will this count against me?

• Am I about to be labeled unreliable?

You can love your job. You can need your job. But none of that quiets the panic when your child is sick and the system you depend on has no room for it.

I remember making that same call. More than once. I remember my voice tightening, trying to sound calm while holding a feverish child who needed more than Tylenol and hope.

I remember the day a manager looked at me and said, “If you walk out, don’t bother coming back.”

My son’s temperature was hospital-worthy.

I walked out.

The Choice Was Never Really a Choice

Let’s be honest: this isn’t bravery. It’s instinct.

Parents - especially single mothers - don’t choose their children over their jobs because it’s noble. We choose them because there is no other option that lets us live with ourselves.

Jobs can replace us.

Children cannot replace us.

And yet, the consequences of that choice often land squarely on the parent who already has the least room to absorb them.

Lost income. Lost jobs. Lost stability.

All because a baby got sick.

The Invisible Cost of “Doing the Right Thing”?

There Is No Childcare for Sick Children!

This is the part no one plans for.

When a child is sick, there is nowhere to put them.

Daycares won’t take them. Babysitters won’t risk it. Schools send them home. Family help isn’t always available. And even when it is, asking someone else to take care of a sick child often means asking them to miss work too.

So the choice collapses into a single reality:

If your child is sick, you stay home.

There is no backup system. No emergency childcare for fevers, stomach bugs, ear infections, or hospital-worthy temperatures. No infrastructure that acknowledges children are humans with bodies that get sick-often and unpredictably.

Yet parents are still expected to function as if that system exists.

We are asked why we didn’t plan better.

This is the plan.

The plan is a parent who shows up, even when it costs them everything.

We talk a lot about work ethic. About loyalty. About showing up.

What we don’t talk about enough is how many parents - mostly mothers - are quietly punished for doing exactly what society claims to value: putting children first.

There’s no line on a résumé for “showed up anyway while terrified.”
No award for “chose the ER over a shift.”
No safety net for “did the right thing.”

And still, we do it.

Because when it comes down to it, no paycheck is worth a child’s health.

So, To the Mom in the Waiting Room:

You probably don’t know this, but someone saw you that day.

Someone who remembers the weight of that call. The fear behind those words. The way your stomach drops when you wait for the response on the other end of the line.

If the world makes this harder than it needs to be, that’s not a failure on your part.

You are not weak for choosing your child.

You are not irresponsible.

You are doing exactly what a parent is supposed to do.

And even if no one else says it - I see you.

We Will Always Choose Our Children

Every time.

Even when it costs us.
Even when it scares us.
Even when the system isn’t built to support us.

Because someday, long after the jobs are forgotten, our children will remember who stayed.

And that will always matter more.

Someone Should Have Told Me to Hang Up the Phone

 Someone Should Have Told Me to Hang Up the Phone

I think I’m getting old.

Now, I know age is just a number—and according to the doctor’s office assistant who complimented my “youthful glow,” I’m apparently winning that game—but still. Age sneaks up on you, not with gray hairs or back pain (okay, sometimes with back pain), but with moments. Moments like this one...

I’m sitting in a waiting room, minding my business, when I overhear a teenage girl chatting on the phone. Correction: announcing to the world that her boyfriend is currently on the toilet, doing some gastrointestinal heavy lifting. Classy.

I wasn’t even embarrassed for him. I was embarrassed for her. She was there with a friend, laughing, scrolling, existing in a cloud of youthful chaos. I leaned over, trying to be lighthearted, and asked her friend how old they were.

“Nineteen,” she said.

Nineteen. And the girl on the phone? She was talking to her boyfriend about her prenatal visit.

Their conversation turned into a mini argument right there in the waiting room. He didn’t seem thrilled about anything, especially not the baby shower coming up in a few weeks. She offered to drive several hours just to pick him up, to which he replied that this would interfere with his “job.” And by “job,” I mean… illegal extracurriculars. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say she had to remind him that no, she didn’t want substances in her car—again—because getting arrested once was apparently enough.

My eye-rolling reached DEFCON 1.

I don’t know if it was the mom in me, or the “been there, done that, got the baby tee” in me—but something snapped. I looked that girl dead in the eye and said, “Hang up. Hang. Up. The. Phone.”

It didn’t matter that I didn’t know her. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t technically my business. All I could think was: Someone should have told me to hang up.

I got called in for my appointment and didn’t see how it all played out. Maybe she listened, maybe she didn’t. But in that moment, I couldn’t stay quiet. Because I was that girl once. Nineteen, pregnant, in over my head. Running in circles with the wrong crowd. Trying to navigate adulthood with a baby on the way and a mind still halfway in high school.

Nobody told me to hang up the phone. Nobody pulled me aside and said, “Hey, that guy isn’t going to be there when it matters. You’re not in the right space to raise a baby with someone who’s already acting like a ghost.”

But who would have told me? Who even could have told me? It’s not like people were out here giving unsolicited wisdom bombs at random OB appointments.

And yet… maybe they should’ve been.

Now, here we are—an entire generation of young girls growing into young mothers. Many will end up doing it alone. Some of them have moms who are doing their best, but don't know the full story. Some of them are hiding things. Some are scared. And some, like me back then, don’t even realize they need saving from the path they’re on.

So here’s the question: Can we, as a society, butt in? Can we speak up, from one mom to another, and say “Hey, this road? It’s a dead end. Try turning here instead.”

Can we do it with love and without judgment? Can we throw out lifelines before the ship fully sinks?

I see so many single moms struggling, so many reaching out in Facebook groups, asking for advice, support, strength. What if we could get to them before that point? What if a little truth-telling in a waiting room was the start of something better?

Maybe we’re not just getting older. Maybe we’re becoming the voices we wish we had. The ones who say, “Hang up the phone, girl. There’s a better life waiting.”