I have an opportunity of a lifetime to take my 16-year-old and 10-year-old to Taiwan for five months, starting next Tuesday. I have been awarded a US Fulbright Scholars grant to do research on working mothers in Taiwan, and the grant not only pays for our plane tickets but pays me a salary, helps with housing, research, and moving costs, subsidizes two thirds of my children’s education at the Taipei American School, and even gives each child $200/month as additional stipend support. My husband will accompany us for the first 2 1/2 weeks, but then he will return to Canton and teach the fall semester.

While I would love my life to be flowing, airy, and abundant in Taiwan, my actual ruminations have been about running a household again without my husband and the logistics behind that. There will be cooking, cleaning, dishes (with no dishwasher), laundry (with no dryer), commuting to the office (45 min. to 1 hour), PTA(?), mothering a teenager and tween, adjusting to a new country, buying pots and pans, etc.

And then some wonderful help arrived this week. In Zooming with a colleague earlier in the week, she said that I needed to hire some help. And, I think I gave every reason in the book why I couldn’t–is this setting a good example for my children, I don’t know anyone, etc. And then later in the week, I interviewed someone who spoke to me about the mutual benefits of hiring help. You are offering someone a job, and as their employer, you might help extra if a child is sick or give time off if it is a spouse’s birthday. Hiring help is not a transactional exchange but one that can accrue benefits on both sides. She even gave an example of a previous tenant passing on her lease who wouldn’t give her apartment to a potential renter unless she hired a particular cleaning lady (despite the woman’s plea that she could clean herself).

And in the end, is my goal to spend all my time caring in the home at the expense of doing the research Fulbright has funded me to do? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

At least for the next five months, and perhaps beyond, I will blog about being a working mother in Taiwan while researching working mothers. My project includes Taiwan, Spain, and the US. The first thing I’m wondering about is that Taiwan and Spain are more comfortable hiring help than in the US. I wonder why.