Author
Trexler Communications, LLC.
How I Continue to Pay Even Though My Children are Now Adults
Most moms make enormous sacrifices for the people we love.
We give up our time, our energy, and oftentimes our own wellbeing to enable our children to thrive. Being selfless, giving, and nurturing is who we are by nature. For me, the sacrifices of motherhood have been deeply fulfilling, but they have also cost me dearly, in very real and practical ways.
As a young mom, I thought I might be one of those fortunate women who could have it all. I was in my mid-thirties, working my dream job as a morning anchor in my hometown of Denver. It was often painful waking up around 2:15 a.m. to get to the station, but I was grateful when my shift wrapped up at noon and I could rush home to my other, more important job: Mom.
I thought I had the best of both worlds: a career that satisfied my ambitions, provided me a solid paycheck, and allowed me to have quality time with my family.
As our children got older, however, my husband started traveling regularly for his job. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a working mom, I was a working mom doing most things single handedly.
I was exhausted and stressed to the point of chest pains, constantly trying to meet the demands of two roles that both mattered to me.
The pace got so overwhelming that when my kids were nearly five, I made the difficult decision to leave the news desk, move out of state, and support my husband’s career path.
I had no idea how that choice would impact my identity, sense of self, and financial wellbeing for years to come. The moment I left the station, I went from being the highest earner in the household to bringing in nothing and being completely dependent on my husband’s income.
At first, I didn’t see this as a problem.
I didn’t think I was leaving news, the career, name recognition, and earning power I’d built over fifteen years, forever. I thought I was taking a break, rebuilding my tired body, and enjoying time with my children before they went into kindergarten.
Only life didn’t quite go to plan.
It was harder than I expected to find another job in news. I also recognised that returning to a demanding, full-time schedule would cost me valuable time with my son and daughter.
So, I reinvented myself and took a new professional path, freelancing in PR.
Pivoting gave me flexibility so I could be the primary caregiver for my children while also trying to build my new business.
I was hoping to strike a balance between career and motherhood. Turns out that balance also had its costs, many of which were invisible.
Despite wanting and needing to contribute to our family finances, I limited my work to what could happen between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. when the kids were in school.
As a freelancer, I didn’t have a steady paycheck. The work ebbed and flowed, and my income was a fraction of what I made as a news anchor. For several years I didn’t make contributions to my 401K, I had no employer match, or compounding growth.
Compared to my husband, a disproportionate amount of my time was committed to unpaid labor, the carpooling, the homework, activities, the doctor and dentist appointments. I rarely questioned these choices, because I loved my kids.
I valued that I was able to make my children and their lives a top priority and believed it made me a better mom.
I was also deeply invested in my marriage.
With me handling everything on the homefront, my husband was able to fully devote his time and energy to his career. He no doubt carried a lot of stress knowing our family relied on his income, but he was able to focus on his work with relatively few distractions or added responsibilities at home.
He traveled whenever it was required, worked as late as needed, and left it to me to cancel meetings or adjust my schedule if one of the kids got sick or an emergency emerged.
It made sense for us to divide and conquer like this. We needed one of us to manage the various needs of the family and the other to be dedicated to our financial future, attain promotions, earn higher salaries, and receive large bonuses.
I was often grateful for his contributions and our comfortable life. And yet, as an ambitious woman it wasn’t always easy to sit back and watch my husband’s professional progress.
I often felt like I wasn’t living up to my greatest potential. Especially when I watched friends and former colleagues achieve success at the network level in television news or others climb to impressive heights as doctors, lawyers, or in corporate America.
Most of them were also moms but had remained immersed in their work because of strong support systems with care providers, or in a few cases, because they had husbands who stepped into the primary caregiving role.
I have to admit, there were many times when I resented my husband for being able to focus on his career with relative ease. And I resented myself for not having an awareness that me and my job growth equally mattered.
I felt that resentment most profoundly nearly ten years after leaving my dream job at the station, when my marriage unexpectedly ended. Yes, the man I counted on, the man I believed was my lifelong partner wasn’t as committed to me or the marriage as I expected.
Suddenly I found myself in a position I never anticipated. I was in my mid-40s, looking at an uncertain future without the financial security I counted on when I first adjusted my career path all those years ago.
After our divorce, more than one person said to me, “You kind of got screwed.”
Well, yes, that is one way of looking at it.
From a financial and practical perspective, I certainly did get the short end of the stick.
Sadly, I know I’m not alone.
The so-called caregiver penalty impacts a disproportionate number of women.
According to the Pew Research Center, about 65% of mothers adjust their careers, reduce their hours, or pause work to care for their families.
Stepping away from the workforce, even briefly, has a lasting impact on a woman’s lifetime earnings. Research has shown that women who took a single year off work had lifetime earnings that were 40% lower than those who didn’t take time off.
Moreover, divorce hits women’s finances far harder than men’s. According to a 2025 study by the University of Michigan, women experienced drops in family income of 46% to 50%, nearly double the reductions experienced by men. Pamela Smock, the sociologist who led this study, explained: “Traditional gender-based division of labor and unpaid labor can make women more economically vulnerable.”
In my situation, perhaps the most bitter pill to swallow was knowing that the circumstances I now found myself in were at least in part the result of choices I had willingly made. I had chosen to leave my established career in television news and later made professional choices so I could remain focused on my family’s needs.
But those choices didn’t happen in a vacuum. Many of my decisions were heavily influenced by society and deeply ingrained internal beliefs that as the woman, as the mom, I should be the person to make the adjustments, not my husband.
Looking back, he never offered to adjust his thriving career so I could refocus on mine. But I also never asked him to. Mostly because I was afraid of the impact it would have on our family.
If I’d really wanted to get back to news, I could have pushed harder and made it happen. But getting back into that industry or even pursuing a more demanding job in corporate America would have placed significant strain on our family. A main anchor job might have required us to uproot our lives and move out of state. And to make the kind of money needed to support a family of four, I would have been consumed with work and has less time with my children. Even the idea of that made me feel so guilty that when thoughts of pursuing those opportunities surfaced, I ignored them.
I don’t want to look back on my life with regrets, but I can’t help but wonder what if?
What if I’d never agreed to leave my dream job all those years ago. Where would I be right now personally and professionally. What would be my job title, the balance in my bank account, or 401K?
And how would a different decision have impacted my marriage and my family?
My husband and I had never really discussed whose career should take priority. I think we both assumed they mattered equally. In fact, years earlier, he had moved to Detroit when I was presented with a big opportunity as an investigative reporter. And we weren’t even married at the time.
But now we had two young children, two careers, and a decision that forced us to weigh one against the other.
What if, instead of agreeing to leave my career, I’d said, “No. My career matters, too. I want to stay”?
Would my husband have resented me for limiting his potential?
Or perhaps he would have taken the position anyway. Would we have lived apart for a while? Would we have stayed together?
I’ll never know.
What I do know is that at the time, asking him to sacrifice his opportunity for my career felt almost unthinkable. His new job offered our family greater financial security, while staying in mine felt like choosing my own ambition over what was best for everyone else. And as a mother, that was a difficult choice to make.
What is abundantly clear now is that for the rest of my life, I will be paying the financial price for taking the path I did, and he will not.
In fact, in the years after our marriage ended, my ex-husband kept climbing professionally, and ultimately landed the job of his dreams, chief executive officer; the prestigious title, large salary and bonuses to match.
He is talented and driven for sure, but there’s no doubt that he is now where he is because of the support I gave him all those years ago. He was in a prime position to reach those heights because his career trajectory never changed.
There’s an old saying that behind every great man is a great woman. I’ve never been sure whether that was intended as a compliment, or rather a patronising way of recognising the unseen support many women provide their husbands and families. Sadly, I now find an uncomfortable truth to it.
When I was a young mom in news, I was fiercely independent. My marriage was a partnership in which both parents could and should thrive. And for many years it was exactly that.
But slowly, over time, choice by choice, the practicalities of managing a home and taking care of children began to overshadow my own ambitions.
Somehow, in the busyness of it all, I don’t think I even realised what was happening.
I never consciously decided his career mattered more than mine. I simply wanted a balance between career and motherhood, and this was how I could satisfy both parts of my heart. It was okay to fall into the supportive role for now, because eventually, I would get back to me.
Looking back, I wonder, if I’d known then what I know now, would I have made different choices? Would I have recognised the urgency in prioritising my career and valuing my well-being along with my family’s needs?
I choose to believe that I made the decisions I did, as a woman, a mom, and a wife, based on the information I had. And those were the right decisions at the time. I also appreciate that I made the choices I did out of love, trust, and perhaps some naivety.
Like many women, I was willing to pay the costs to support my family. I will never regret being a mom. My life is rich with memories and experiences from raising my children, and I’m incredibly grateful for the strong relationships I have with them now that they are adults.
But what I wish I understood as a young mom is that loving my family didn’t require me to lose myself in the process.
About Katie Trexler
Katie Trexler is an Emmy Award–winning television journalist turned PR professional. Her greatest joy comes from spending time with family—laughing, cooking, and discussing life with her adult children. She also treasures early-morning walks, yoga, coffee, and writing when no one else is around. She’s forever grateful for the strong, loving, and hilarious girlfriends who have supported her throughout life. Katie lives in the Denver area with her husband, a high school crush she reconnected with later in life.
