Kate decides to quit her job and raise her child herself

Kate’s decision to quit her job and raise her child herself makes motherhood a deliberate priority, shaped by her own childhood and by the example of Margie. When she tells Tully she plans to stay home until the child reaches kindergarten, the friends disagree about whether a woman must choose between work and family. Their exchange sets Kate’s model of hands-on care against Tully’s faith in combining both, while revealing how profoundly Tully’s experience of maternal absence informs her response.

The Decision and Its Circumstances

Kate has known what she wants to do since Johnny married her, but has not found the courage to tell Tully. When Tully asks about life after the birth and whether Kate will take time off, Kate answers that she is quitting. Tully is taken aback: Kate and Johnny are earning good money, and, in Tully’s view, Kate does not need to leave her job to become a mother. She suggests hiring a nanny instead.

Kate rejects that arrangement because she does not want someone else raising the child, at least until kindergarten. Tully hears the length of that commitment and jokes that kindergarten is eight years away; Kate corrects her to five. The exchange makes the choice concrete: Kate is not proposing a brief pause, but intends to devote the child’s early years to daily care.

Margie’s Example and Kate’s Reasons

Kate explains that her decision grows out of what Margie did for her. Margie went on every school field trip, volunteered in Kate’s classroom each year until Kate asked her to stop, and did not let Kate take the bus until junior high. Kate also remembers talking with her mother on the ride home from school. These are ordinary, repeated acts of attention, not an abstract ideal of motherhood; Kate wants her child to have the same presence in everyday life.

She tells Tully that she can return to work later, and that being a good mother matters to her. Her appeal to Tully is especially pointed because Tully grew up with a mother whose care was unreliable. Kate does not treat that history as a reason to dictate Tully’s choices; rather, she asks her friend to understand why a child’s experience of being cared for matters so much to her.

Friendship and Disagreement

Tully argues that women can have both careers and families, insisting that the choice is not confined to the expectations of the 1950s. Her objection reflects her own ambition and the shared dream she and Kate once formed of becoming reporters together. Kate does not persuade Tully that leaving work is necessary for every mother, and Tully cannot persuade Kate to alter her plan. The disagreement remains personal but affectionate: Kate smiles at Tully’s exaggerated calculation of the years until kindergarten, then turns the conversation toward Tully’s job and says she will live vicariously through her stories.

Significance

The decision links Kate’s future as a mother to the care she remembers receiving from Margie, while Tully’s response exposes the different meaning that work and family hold for the two friends. For Kate, staying home is a chosen form of presence that she hopes to pass on; for Tully, career and motherhood need not be mutually exclusive. Their conversation preserves both positions without reducing either woman to a simple argument, and shows how the same friendship can hold a shared history alongside distinct ideas about the life each wants.