It's working for Jammie Marte
New York, New York
2 children
It was really tough. There are people that say, I understand what you’re going through, when they really don’t. But if you don’t have kids, you aren’t going to understand the struggle. It is a big struggle for me.
A single mother’s story of juggling a full-time job with two kids.
Jammie Marte didn’t have the option of paid maternity leave.
The guest service representative for the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spas was pregnant with her second child, the father “out of the picture,” and she learned she wouldn’t have any paid time off from her job. “They said that the position is still going to be open for me if I do want to come back,” she explained. “But it wasn’t paid. It was really tough. There are people that say, I understand what you’re going through, when they really don’t. But if you don’t have kids, you aren’t going to understand the struggle. It is a big struggle for me.”
Jammie evaluated her options and moved in with her parents. “They are a tremendous help,” she says. “They take my kids to school and they pick them up when I can’t.” Although Jammie lives in Brooklyn with her daughter, Gianna, and son, Adrien, she has a long commute to her job in downtown Manhattan. Waking up for Adrien in the middle of the night exhausts her. “Since I don’t have the help of the dad, I don’t have that support,” she says. Some nights she only gets a handful of hours of sleep, then wakes her children up at 5 a.m. to begin their day. “Those are the hardest,” she says.
Jammie is already looking toward the future, trying to find a job that would be better than her current position, with better upward mobility and an easier commute. “I need to move on and support my kids.”
“I just want people to know, that it’s going to be hard at times, very hard. You can’t beat yourself down for it. You can’t pull yourself sad and down and that is going to come out of you, and the children are going to see it, and your job will see it too.”