What I Learned Tagging Along to My Parents’ Work

Around the time I learned to walk, my parents started bringing me to work with them. In the beginning, it was often for the sake of convenience – my parents had divorced when I was three years old, and my grandparents were not always available to watch me – but over time, it started to play a crucial role, not only in deepening my relationship with my parents but also in my own education. Even past the age at which I could stay at home by myself, I continued to tag along with them, sometimes lending a hand, sometimes just watching them in action as they applied their skills and talents in their daily work.

My mom’s day job was as a health educator for a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), which required her to go out to schools, churches, and community centers in the inner city to host workshops and events. At first, I’d do homework in the back of the room as she taught on topics ranging from nutrition and hygiene to asthma and lead poisoning. But the more I hung around, the more interested I became in learning about what I was observing – an interest sparked above all by my mom’s expertise and the way she engaged with the people.

When I started asking her more about her lessons during our car ride home, she decided to let me help her prepare the materials for her lessons and set up the room and hand out fliers to those attending the workshops and events. I started to notice that the kinds of questions that the people were asking my mom indicated that their lifestyles were fairly different from mine – in part due to their different cultural backgrounds, but also due to socioeconomic disparities. Eventually, my mom and I started to discuss these differences.

Illustration by by strekalova / Adobe Stock.

As a single mother, sometimes she needed to take on some extra work. She decided to get certified as an image consultant, which allowed her to start teaching college classes about fashion, as well as to be hired as an image consultant for individual clients, or for events like bridal showers. As her side job started to pick up, I began enthusiastically helping her set up for her classes and events, absorbing details from her expertise on what colors coordinate with each other and which ones clash, and which types of fabrics complement each body type.

Then there were the days spent with my dad. Like my mom, my dad’s work traversed numerous fields. His earliest days had drawn him into state politics, inspired by a very politically involved upbringing. Being Italian, getting involved in your family’s work was not really an option as much as it was a given. My grandfather was a formidable force who, on top of having founded a large social service organization and charter school, was known for his ability to train budding young politicians and organize people to go out to the polls to vote. His family members were among the first he’d send out to canvas for the politicians he was supporting, which my dad realizes in retrospect taught him to be unafraid of tasks outside of his comfort zone. I remember him telling me of the time the organization’s headquarters burned down. Of course, the workers and community members were devastated. He told everyone that they could spend the night crying, but by morning they had better be at the headquarters ready to clean up and start figuring out a way to rebuild. In that moment, my father says, he learned that in the face of hardship one should never give up or play victim, but resolve to get to work and find a way to get the job done.

The few years my dad spent involved in politics allowed him to discover and hone his gift for communication, which soon led him toward a career in media and public speaking. Throughout the years, he hosted several television shows, wrote articles and books, taught college classes, and hosted seminars on communication and public speaking skills.

I slowly came to see how much he valued preparedness and precision in whatever job he was doing. He would often have me help him organize his notes before a taping, and compile research for his writing. His high standards were in part a matter of pride – wanting the product he put out to speak highly of him and his team – but they were also a matter of passion. What connected all of the different jobs he took on was his sincere love and fascination for all that he did.

Both his precision and passion set the tone for those who worked for him. Thus, when I was with him at the recording studio, people were quick to pull me in and teach me about their jobs and sometimes let me do it with them. The camera people showed me how to work the camera, the graphic designer let me do the chyrons for several segments, the makeup artist showed me how she adjusted the type of makeup according to the lighting of the set. During lunch, we’d sit around a big table cracking jokes and talking about our families. On top of following him around at the studio, in the classroom, and at seminars, I got to help out at his office during the summers, making photocopies, and organizing databases in Excel, transcribing interviews, and even copyediting one of my dad’s books. As a shy and reserved kid, I respected his confidence and boldness. While on one hand I was very much aware of how distinct my personality was from my dad’s, I absorbed much of what I was observing, not realizing how it was going to play a role in my approach to work in the future.

Following my parents around at their jobs may have made it clear to me from a young age that I would never have any interest in pursuing politics – though these experiences certainly sparked an interest in community engagement and education.

As I got older and started working full time as a teacher, I began to appreciate how much I had learned from my parents bringing me to work. In addition to developing practical skills, it inculcated in me a passion for work, for taking on tasks both menial and exciting, challenging and fun. And it helped me recognize how much work is connected to other facets of life, and to discovering who I am and God’s plan for my life.

My work has also alerted me to the fact that many of the young people I now teach have not considered these connections much. Each semester, I begin my freshman theology course with a question for my students. Knowing, for the most part, how they will answer, I ask them to think of a good reason to stay in my class … and if they can’t think of one, they are free to walk out. While some answer that they want to expand their minds and know more about the world, the vast majority concede that they are there in order to get a credential – without which they know it would be quite challenging to live a “comfortable life.”

Later in the semester, we study the history of the Catholic Worker movement, whose cofounders, Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, believed that all forms of work, whether intellectual or manual, play a role in humankind’s pursuit of meaning and fulfillment as co-creators with God, in whose image we are made. After studying Maurin’s and Day’s philosophy of work, I ask my students if their work as college students is meaningful in itself, and if it could play a role in their pursuit of a truth that has the capacity to unify the various factors of their life and imbue them with meaning. This way of thinking about education often seems foreign to them. The more work becomes compartmentalized, the less it has to do with other parts of life. Our leisure time becomes reduced to instinctive entertainment and distraction, and our relationships become thinner.

My parents worked hard. Their work often bled over into their free time – though without ever “eating” into it. For them, work was not a separate compartment. It was deeply connected to their sense of purpose, their identity and values, and their relationship with me. And though I didn’t fully understand it at the time, tagging along with them to work imbued me with the awareness that God can meet us on the job – as much as he can meet us in our relationships, in cleaning our home, in breaking bread, and at the altar.

Talking to friends who bring their children to work has solidified my conviction that it should play more of a role in education and childrearing. Joe Enabnit, a small gym owner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, says he initially started bringing his three kids to work for the sake of convenience. “It seemed absolutely outrageous to pay a thousand dollars a month or more for someone else to raise our kids when there was any other option.” He wanted to “keep them close.” Despite having made a play area dedicated to the kids with toys and a television, he tells me, “they almost never go there. They mostly run around freely, talking to clients and playing on my equipment.” His clients “don’t really mind the noise and nonsense. Everyone knows their names, everyone talks to them. Sometimes they get gifts.” He never knew much about his own parents’ work while growing up. He’s found that bringing his kids around “has completely demystified work for them; they know exactly what I do and it builds in them a sense of trust and investment in my job.”

Catherine Ryland Kuhner, who runs an independent bookstore in Steubenville, Ohio, with her husband, also wanted to create a child-friendly workplace. “I was impressed as a child by seeing family-run shops where the whole family was clearly present and helping, including elderly people and children.” She explains how important it is for her and her husband that their young children spend the majority of their time with at least one of their parents. When their children are at the store, they spend their time reading, playing with toys, or watching videos, sometimes with their friends whose parents bring them by. “Occasionally we will give the older children age-appropriate tasks, including helping us at the register for a few minutes, or putting books they remove back on shelves.” Though the oldest is only eight, “they know the work is meaningful, and they love feeling included in it.”

Of course, bringing one’s kids to work can be challenging at times. Enabnit admits that “when they lose patience and make my job more difficult, it strains our relationship,” making him stressed and worried about judgment from his clients. The Kuhners find that when the kids are at the store, far less gets accomplished, which is a fact they accept. “Sometimes the kids run around and speak loudly or cry at times, need to be fed, make messes in the back office, or pull books off the shelves and forget to put them back.” Still, Catherine says, “having a balance where my husband and I can take turns bringing our children in to work, and then have quiet time alone at our workplace helps us all be able to tolerate each other better overall and be kinder to each other both at home and at work. The value of spending more time with our children, and having them be able to learn about other people and about our business in my opinion outweighs any inconveniences.”

Of course, most families are not as lucky as the Kuhners and Enabnit, who have jobs that can accommodate such family arrangements. Parents whose jobs are less conducive to bringing their kids might have to find creative ways to show their kids that work is not detached from other spheres of life but an integral part of the whole.