Should I quit teaching after maternity leave?
Balancing grading, lesson plans, and student behaviors is overwhelmingly difficult when surviving on broken sleep and navigating the daily slog of pumping. This intense physical and emotional drain frequently destroys any remaining passion for the job, leaving mothers either resenting their students or choosing financial hardship over returning to the classroom.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1taking unpaid leave or staying home for a yearDid this help you?
- 2relying on grandparents for childcare helpDid this help you?
- 3enrolling infants in daycareDid this help you?
- 4sharing night shifts with a partner to handle feedingsDid this help you?
- 5finding a job closer to homeDid this help you?
- 6Strictly enforcing contract hours and refusing to take work or grading home.Did this help you?
- 7Declining extra responsibilities and saying no to parent requests.Did this help you?
- 8Pumping in the car during commutes or finding quiet times during recess duty.Did this help you?
- 9Changing schools to find a more manageable workload and supportive administration.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Currently I am on maternity leave with my first until late January and I am already feeling sick to my stomach about returning to the classroom… :(”source ↗
“The idea of working pumping into my day and then working with little sleep is 😵💫”source ↗
“Yet I’m not sure that I want to return in January when my baby is 6 months.”source ↗
“My daughter is wonderful but she is a crier, colicky, and poor sleeper and requires a lot of me to get through the day and night. I am often running on 3-6 hr chunks of sleep.”source ↗
“I’m so stressed about making this all work. Pumping, meal prep, lesson planning, grading, behavior referrals, keeping the house in order. All on broken sleep.”source ↗
“I bawled the first day I dropped him off at daycare and continued to cry all throughout the day lol.”source ↗
“I pumped in the car on the way to work and the way home and twice during the day. It was a slog.”source ↗
“Just decided not to return this year after having my baby in June. We’re going to be broke and I don’t like the feeling of not having my own income. regardless of that I am feeling such a sense of relief. Teaching/breastfeeding/being exhausted/leaving my infant was sounding way worse than being broke.”source ↗
“I went back around February and was really bad at my job the rest of the year because I just didn’t care anymore and all I could think about was my son.”source ↗
“You will lash out at your students because you’ll realize that you’re missing time with your own child to essentially take care of someone else’s and put up with their behaviors when you could be snuggling your baby.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3Can I afford to take unpaid maternity leave?
- 8How to catch up on work after extended leave
- 2Will a two-year career break hurt my chances of returning to teaching?
- 4How to deal with separation anxiety going back to work
- 3Forced return to office when hired as permanent remote
- 2How to survive a mid-year maternity leave teaching position