Part-time delivery driver, mom and wife

Tara Spates, 39, downshifted to a part-time delivery job with FedEx to have more time for her daughters, Tehya, 5, and Zhane,´ 8. Her husband sold their dry-cleaning business to work for FedEx for the same reason.

"I have business degrees and planned to go into management. In fact, my only regret as far as my career may be that I didn't jump on the opportunity to do that earlier. But becoming a mother for the second time made me see God's plan was for me to be the best Mom possible, and that meant not working so much.

My husband made changes, too. After our first daughter was born, and I was still putting in 11- to 13-hour days on my job, she was with him at work every weekday. After our second, he took both girls to work and I would relieve him at noon. Since we sold the business he's finally had weekends off; he's even had time to be a soccer coach.

I felt comfortable reducing my hours — I'd been well-established at FedEx for 14 years and was confident I'd continue to give my best as a part-time employee. Now I don't think I'll ever go back to work full time; by the time the girls are grown I'll be ready to retire. We sacrifice a bit financially, although that mostly means the girls don't get everything they want — and neither do I!

In some ways a part-time job is harder than working full time because it's more like two full-time jobs. There's very little down time. I'm up at 3:50 a.m. weekdays and work a morning shift to be home in the afternoon. Twice a week and on Saturdays I'm with the girls while they're at soccer, basketball or track. (We have great support from our families. I drop the children off at my in-laws every day at 6 a.m. on my way to work.... )

When I see how my daughters are growing so quickly into their own persons or hear their teachers compliment them , I know I made the right decision. The time we have with our kids is so short, so very precious, and we can't ever get it back."

Mary Rothschild is a former Seattle Times editor; she can be reached at hoffelt_rothschild@hotmail.com.