A friend of mine recently asked me if I thought that she and her six-year-old child should stay in Xiamen or go back to her hometown in northern China. She asked for my advice as a mother of two children who has been in the education field for more than 10 years.

Her main concern was that the average scores for high school students on the gaokao (China’s college entrance exam) are higher in northern China than in Fujian. On the other hand, she felt that Xiamen has better air quality and a more entrepreneurial atmosphere.

My friend is a great mom who only wants what’s best for her child. Sometimes what’s best is hard to figure out when you’re planning ahead for a decade and more! She reminded me of the legend of Mencius’s mother, who supposedly moved homes three times to find the ideal learning environment for her son.

I asked my friend a direct question: “What do you actually want?” She said that her personal preference was to return to the north because her husband is tied to their hometown by his work. She was so focused on her child’s needs that she hadn’t even directly considered her own personal needs until we talked.

I noted that an unhappy person is unlikely to be able to make the people around them happy. Self-sacrifice is noble but not the only metric by which to judge anyone, including a mother.

Family psychologist John Rosemond warns parents not to succumb to the seductive idea that the more you sacrifice your own life for your child, the better a parent you are. We can simultaneously be both a businesswoman and a mom, a father and a husband, a mother and a wife.

Our needs in each of these roles are real and worthy of consideration. Ignoring the need to be each other’s life partners in order to give priority to a child can lead to long-term problems that can wind up hurting the family in unexpected ways down the road.

Yes, we need to re-bond with our children after a long day’s work, but we also need to do the same with our life partners. And if we are single, sometimes a bit of me-time is every bit as important as time spent with our children.

And we are role models for our children. By showing our children what a healthy adult relationship looks like, we are teaching them how to practice dealing with emotions. We also help them feel secure enough to leave us behind to explore their world.

To return to my friend’s question… only she could really give herself the answer. The best that I could do is to remind her to listen and respect everyone’s needs, including her own!

In my own life, I think of myself as a person, a partner and a mother, in many ways in that order. That’s important for me but it’s also important that I don’t put too much pressure on our children.

When our kids grow up, I want them to know that they can be who they want to be. I love them without end and that means that I want them to live their own lives as adults, on their own terms. Knowing that my wellbeing does not depend on them being or acting in any particular way, they can rest assured and truly be themselves.

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