The problem I had with your initial statement was that you seemed to conflate the two. It seemed (and I submit that it probably did to the general audience also) like you would put your child last in the short-term. That would be monstrous, just like refusing to attend to your child because you’re in the middle of sex would be.

Conflicts, I submit, arise in the long-term because short-term priority shuffling averts them. So Kelly is trying to decide between caring for her child and going to school full-time. *That* is a conflict: she can’t do both though she could say that she will put off education a little while longer because her child is at a developmentally-important stage that requires her attention. If her child were a higher value than career, then she would forego school so that she can spend time with her child. If her child wasn’t, then she would take the classes. Since she explicitly values career over child, then she will take those classes–otherwise it is a sacrifice because she has foregone a higher value for a lesser one.

Marriage falls in between. It’s easy to stop working on that relationship if you don’t choose to hold the long-range focus. Many comments at Mamapedia seemed to understand the marriage-before-children issue, but not the work-before-children issue, and it seemed that this was because they viewed work as just a way of “getting” money.

There is a difference between priorities and a hierarchy of values. I probably do need to think about this more, but there is already too much in my head. Isn’t it great when you need to make a list of all the interesting things you want to think about?

As a working dad, Bill’s points resonate perfectly with me, and I don’t understand how they conflict with what you and Kelly are talking about, and why her comment clarifies anything.