Jane Mylrea

Concerning foster homes:
Mylrea: We need more foster homes, foster parents that are willing to deal with older kids, and adoptive homes. I would encourage anyone interested to contact the Department of Human Services. As the children and their problems have become more difficult, we even have programs now where you can be a foster parent of two adolescents or teenagers as your job. So we've made it easier to realize that it is a full-time job when we get that call from school, "You need to come now and deal with this." That it is a job and they take it as a professional kind of situation.

TH:It seems as if there are fewer methamphetamine busts, where they found meth houses and so on. Are these cookers more advanced or are we missing some of these?
Mylrea:I think you're right and I think the people who are making the stuff are getting much more savvy. A couple, three years ago, we were hearing all about, particularly in the rural outskirts, in fact not too far from my house, there was kind of a woods area where they had done a meth bust. Now, yeah, I think they're getting much more savvy. That would be a good question for the drug task force guys who tell me it's not getting any better. We aren't reading about it as much and I'd hate for us to get complacent. In one week, I removed five separate children group. In one week, five separate removals from homes. Then the question becomes, at what point can you safely return the children? How long do you say you've got to be clean? Then you send them back and the relapse. And then my question to the police officers and the treatment folks they're dealing with, can these people successfully parent a child? People are smoking dope and drinking alcohol all the time in parenting. They said, no, because when they're on meth, their focus is meth. They will oftentimes neglect their children. They, over time, would become paranoid and, again, it affects you mentally and physically, too. So they said really, you cannot parent a young child and be a meth user.

TH:You've said that in your job, you see the worst of the worst. How has that affected you personally over the dozen years that you've had this job?
Mylrea:That's a good a question, The way it affects me personally, the way I keep from getting completely depressed about it is working with the wonderful people that I do. I work with people, not just foster parents, but people who are devoted to children and they're not doing it for greed or any of those reasons. I work in a social justice arena. I never knew I'd end up this work but it truly is social justice. I truly believe our system and the judicial system as well, I think we save children. So if you go in with the idea that we, as a system, can actually save children from abuse and neglect, that's a good thing. The end of the story is the hard part and the challenge. But it's the people that we work with and the challenge of trying to help. I think you also have to realize that every parent has struggles and although I've talked about the dysfunction and the disenfranchised, I see kids and parents from every walk of life and, "there but for the grace ..." on a certain day. It's fascinating work because you're dealing with people, you're dealing with problems that are very difficult and challenging, but my day is never boring, it is never dull and I feel fortunate that I've kind of fallen into this kind of work. And typically, because I've been doing it so long, I know the kid, I know the family, I know the aunts, I know the cousins. We see the same families over and over again with at least 50 percent of our case load. We have a one-judge, one-family situation here. I'm the only juvenile judge. And that's good and bad. It's good from the standpoint I may have a case that's this (one-foot) tall, but I pretty much know the case because I've heard it for over 10 years. I'll get a case of a child removed at age 2 and I can have that case for years. That's part of being a small town where we don't lose our cases and our families like they do in Cook County or something. So there's some good things about what's going in the system, but I can't say that there aren't times I'm burned out. I'd like more time off. That's the down side of kind of working for the government.

TH:How did it come about that you got this particular job with the juvenile court system?
Mylrea:I've kind of worked every side of social and criminal justice. I was a prosecutor in Minneapolis. Loved that job. Worked with the big county attorney's office in Hennepin County. We moved down here. My husband got a job with Mercy Radiology. I kind of came kicking and screaming. I really missed the Twin Cities. We didn't know a soul here. I had two little kids at the time and I did have difficulty getting into the legal world here. I wanted to work part-time until the kids got to school age and found at that time that the profession was not really open to part-time work. Interestingly enough, I did actually job-share (in Minnesota). After my second child was born, another woman attorney and I created, not knowing if it really existed in 1981, '82, that we had little kids and we were going crazy and she said, how about we split one job - and we did. We were the first job sharers in the (Hennepin) county attorney's office. I was a week on a week off. It worked great. By the end of the week with my kids, I was ready to be at the office; and by the end of the week at work, I was ready to be back with the kids. We were actually written up in the Hennepin County Lawyer. When I left, there were 10 people job-sharing. I consider that actually one of our greatest achievements. It was somewhat self-serving, but I think that it goes to that very balance. At that time of my life and I was fortunate enough to not have to be working two and three jobs like so many people do have to. My husband had just finished his medical school, so he was a lowly resident. But it was great. So, I wasn't able to find anything (in Dubuque) right away. I did eventually start with Reynolds and Kenline law firm and did kind of a generalized practice. I did that for about four or five years and try to juggle the family thing. After about five years in private practice in the late '80s, I was doing a little bit of everything. Finding myself maybe needing to specialize. I had done some juvenile court work. I liked the issues. When this job became available, about 15 attorneys put their hat in the ring and I think the time was kind of ripe for a woman. I was the first full-time woman judge in Dubuque County. I feel lucky that they were willing to offer the job.

On her personal approach to her occupation:

When I'm at my job, I'm at my job and I keep chit-chat to a minimum because I like the other part of my life. When I said I didn't take work home, occasionally, you can't let these cases go all the time. I do remember a situation where on a Saturday morning I got a call from the department that one of our children, who I had placed in foster care had been killed in foster care. It was terrible. On cases like that, you take it home. You can't just turn your brain off, so there are cases like that. I'm still very much an advocate of family-friendly work places. I think the hardest job for a parent, father or mother, is to balance the two. It was my greatest struggle. I think we still struggle with that. I'm very supportive of "your kids come first," and if your kid is running a cross-country meet at 3:30, you need to be there. Our work days aren't geared that way. I wish we had more flexibility and change and I'm going to work for that.

TH:Since we're ruining your future career opportunities with some of these questions, there aren't many women who are judges in this state.
Mylrea:Right. It's getting better, though.

TH:Do you foresee expansion in the number of women judges?
Mylrea:Yeah. It's already happened.

TH:The law school enrollment, the female population in law schools is ...
Mylrea:It's amazing how it's changed. It was 20 percent and still kind of an old-boys club when I went to law school at the University of Minnesota. Now, I hear, it's at least half. My concern is and what kind of jobs are the women getting? We still have what is sometimes referred to as the pink ghetto. They tend to get the family law jobs, the less well-paying jobs, the jobs not dealing with business and finance. Now, if part of that interest, as in my case, perhaps, part of that it's difficult to be a rainmaker, and part of that is part-and-parcel of being a successful attorney. I see certainly definitely some improvements in the judiciary and in that respect, the judicial job is better than when you're in private practice and have to be available to clients 24/7. We all take a call schedule in judiciary, but at least there is some end to the work and the next morning you come in and there will be another docket. In that regards, it's more of a manageable work than some private practice. I think that is changing too. We have women on the supreme and the appellate courts. Who wouldn't love to do that kind of work? I'm a reader. I would love to get into more writing. I do write termination opinions and they're almost always appealed, but in my daily work it's more volume and I would love to do a little bit more legal research and writing. I was an instructor for a time. Dubuque is kind of a closed house in that we have only six judges here. There's only so many jobs. These jobs tend to be very sought after. There are a lot of people that go for them. Right now, I'm very committed and comfortable in what I'm doing.

TH:Do you feel, or did you find when your own children were at home that you parented a little differently because of your job? Do you feel that your parenting was ...
Mylrea:... Impacted by it. I'm sure it was. I kind of see again the extremes of parenting. I see parents who are rigid and perhaps abusive and then I get the single moms or whatever who just let their kids roll right over them all the time. I see those extremes. I tried to be moderate in whatever I did, but I would be the first to admit that whenever I went home I was a marshmallow. At work, I kind of had to be the hammer; that's my job. They're not there to see another social worker. They're there to get the final answer and they're there for someone to be the hammer sometimes. So, I think when I got home maybe I was less inclined. I also was very aware of how fortunate my children were and how fortunate I was, but even moreso my children. Because I saw the other side every day and I came home to children with financial resources and education and all the things I wanted for them, they had.

TH:You said when you first came down to Dubuque, it was for your husband's job and, let's say, you were "reluctant" to come to a small Iowa city.
Mylrea:He said that I had my bags packed for the first year or two, ready to head north.

TH:You have unpacked them since?
Mylrea:I have. What a great place to raise kids. I look at the experience that my children had here in Dubuque and it was wonderful. They were able to be active in their schools, they were close to everything, five minutes from anything. I fully expect them to move and see the greater world, and I want them to. It's worked out. I would never have gotten this job anywhere else.
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