Ethnography Paper

Ethnography: Teacher

For my ethnography paper I did research on a teacher (Libby Bray) who chose to stay at home for 10 years and raise her kids. She just recently went back to work now that her youngest is in 4th grade. She is a remarkable woman who gave me wonderful advice about the hard decision of having to choose between work and family, which is the central concept of my paper. I am very interested in learning why women choose to stay at home with their kids and sacrifice their careers that they worked so hard for. I picked this topic because of my interest in it and also because I feel that I might have to sacrifice my job one day to stay at home and take care of my kids. I have always wanted to be a mom and feel that I would choose to be a stay at home and raise my kids. I wanted to ask very detailed questions so that I could come up with an answer to this question: "Why do women choose to stay at home and sacrifice their careers?"

Questions:

1) Did you feel pressure to get married and have kids? Not really, I have always wanted to be a Mom so I just told myself to be patient and it would happen. The only time I felt a little bit pressured was when my friends started getting married and having kids.

2)How old were you when you got married? 27

3) How soon after you were married did you have kids? We waited a year.

4) Did you have any friend that had to sacrifice a family for their job? Yes, many of them did. One of my best friends is college was a lawyer and she chose to excell in her career instead of have kids.

5) Do you think this is a difficult choice for women? Yes, this is such a hard decision for many to make. But, I believe that a mother should stay at home with her kids and raise them. I think it is a man's job to be the provider and the woman should take care of the kids. I'm a little old fashioned...I think that we would have less problems in our world today if mothers' stayed at home and raised their kids rights. I think that if a mother is not at home watching her child, that the child is more likely to get into trouble.

6) Did you make your career choice based on your want to have kids? I guess you could say a little bit. I always wanted to be a teacher, but also always wanted to have a family. I thought about these things a lot throughout college. I think young girls should think about this when in college. As long as you're thinking about it you're on the right track.

7) Why do you think women choose to stay at home and leave their career? Because children become their #1 priority. You want to raise your kids right and if you leave them in the care of someone you don't know...you never know what they will be taught. By staying at home, you can raise your kids the way you want. This has a huge influence over what kind of person they turn into when they are older.

I began observing Mrs. Bray when I arrived at The Highlands School at 8 am on Friday March 13th. She is a 3rd grade teacher who teaches about 20 girls (the girls and boys are taught in different buildings). Her day consisted of teaching the girls many different subjects, passing back papers, and also grading many papers. This is her first year back after being a stay at home mom and she told me that she "couldn't have been happier" because her kids also go to The Highlands. She said she really enjoys teaching again and is happy that her kids are in the same location as her. According to my research and observation, I came to the conclusion that many women choose to stay at home and raise a family because they see children as more important than working. I agree with Mrs. Bray that it is vital to raise your own children because you never know how they could be raised otherwise. Something that could be missing from my research, however, could be more sources since I only observed one woman who was extremely steadfast in her beliefs. An anthropologist could get more information about this issue by interviewing and observing more women. I really enjoyed doing this project and feel that I learned a lot from Mrs. Bray. She truly gave me a lot of insight about choosing between a family and working.