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Women, how has having kids impacted your career?
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Anonymous
Yeah if grandparents will act as defacto parents it makes it very feasible. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-much-did-grandmothers-influence-human-evolution-180976665/ |
Anonymous
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If OP is still there - we had 1 kid. After DS was born and we got into a rhythm of work and daycare, we felt we were in a good spot and decided to stop there. Having a child has not affected my career in the slightest, but that is largely due to my bosses. My current one has three kids and handles many of the pick ups and drop offs and activities and appointments. He has always been emphatic about work/life balance.
Now if I had a jerk for a boss, and I had 4 kids instead of 1, and some of the kids had special needs - then yes, I'm sure juggling a career would be more difficult and sacrifices would need to be made. But there is a huge amount of gray area in "having kids." |
Anonymous
I’m a DP. The answer to this varies as our schedules allow. My DH and I usually manage to WFH on different days. We also have carpools with other working families so we are each usually only “on” once a week. This is pretty standard in my neighborhood. The best executives I know schedule time in their days for their families. We work nights and weekends at home to catch up on any late day emergencies and plan for the next day/week. Modern communications makes this very easy. It’s not 1980. |
I do tend to speak my mind about equity in such matters when I’m at his work events.
Anonymous
| What a question. Did children hurt my career or did the career hurt my being a parent or did the spouse not pull their weight? A lot of people fall into one or two — and most families fall into three. I had children and divorced. Being a single parent absolutely impacted my career. I’m in a career which always starts through internships or connections and I was limited in what I could do for free and in how much networking I could do. Plus,people knew quickly I was a divorced mom - so actually being given a staff job took many years. On the other hand, I have a sibling who prioritized her career and had the grandparents pull much of the weight. Spouse did not do much as far as the kids go. They are now facing a failure to launch situation and regret leaving so much of the childcare to the wonderful grandparents. It’s hard for everything to work out perfectly and we women are quick to blame ourselves for whatever didn’t work out. In the end, you have to think about what kind of life you want to live and create that life. I think if a career is important to you and you want children, there is a difference on the impact of one child versus several. I would have been fine with one child, even as a single parent. But personally, I am glad I had all of mine. |
Anonymous
Wow! We fight over seeing my elderly mom. My kid just flew across the country to attend his grandmother’s birthday. My other kid called her first when she got a job after a long-time unemployment. My mom is everyone’s favorite person. I’m sorry you didn’t have that experience. |
Anonymous
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Net positive.
I suddenly had more in common with most of the world and more empathy. I hated hiring nannies which influenced me to have only one DD. The work world is even more flexible now than when I had my DD. Also I worked for myself once she was 8. |
Anonymous
| One additional thought here from the C-suite executive. Having kids limited my geographic flexibility. We committed to not moving them unless really necessary. That limited our career prospects even though we have both done fine. |
Anonymous
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The short of it is, my career has suffered, but my life has been enriched.
I did not see myself as a stay at home type; I was very career-oriented, with egalitarian ideals on sharing responsibilities with my spouse. After I had my first kid, I was really loathe to go back full-time, which surprised me. I went part-time (in nonprofits, more doable than in some other fields). I had a second kid. My spouse does a lot of kid related tasks (dr appointments, packing lunches, etc). I alternated between part-time prorated jobs and contract work on nonprofit projects for about 10 years. Still doing contract work for nonprofits, but full time. If I had never stepped back and mommy tracked myself, I could have had much better earnings and seniority. But I have better work-life balance, and so it has worked out for me. It really depends on which of these things is the priority for you. It does sting a little when I see colleagues who leaned in and now have senior positions. But, all in all, this has worked for me. |
Anonymous
I personally believe Lincoln freed the slaves so no interest in being free forced labor in my old age. Watch your own kids or pay someone is my motto like every other person who retired to Florida to escape grown kids demanding slave labor from them. |
Anonymous
Most of you have been lied to. So-called work life balance is a grand myth designed to make you crazy. No man has it, nor does any woman have it. Each parent makes either a paycheck OR household/children their priority. Ideally, one parent is the primary wage earner, while the other takes primary charge of the home front. Single parents are typically forced to prioritize the paycheck, so the children and home get whatever energy they have left over after earning that paycheck. If they’re lucky, there’s a grandparent willing and able to help. Most parents do the best they can with whatever circumstances they have. No one has it easy or perfect in spite of what they post online. OP, if your job/paycheck means the world to you, stick with that and forget about parenting. No one gets to do-it-all or have-it-all, all at the same time. |
Anonymous
Working nights and weekends I guess is fine, but pickup is 340 and our kids have actives at 5 4 nights a week, so you just don’t have meetings after 330 on those days? And have carpools that deep? All of our neighbors in Bethesda have SAHM so don’t really want to get involved in carpool a the hassle of other peoples kids. |
Anonymous
NP. I’ve always scheduled my meeting to be fine by 3:30. If you have 3+ kids carpools are just a fact. I didn’t I had 2, so I didn’t need to carpool but I was always fine helping others out. I would work 9-11pm after the kids went to sleep, if there was something pressing. It happened but not always. My H had odd hours so he helped a lot in the am depending what decade we are discussing. Kids really only have intense schedules in middle school (that’s 3 years) and HS they are pretty independent. My son even does his activity in college so he had high level involvement. I just think some people are really active and organized and others aren’t |
Anonymous
I’m home by five when I commute. I leave at 6:30 AM and DH handles departure those days. We have one middle schooler. We work at home a couple of days a week. Start early, end early, no meetings after 3 if I can help it. Calls are fine and happen at home or in the car or wherever. And yeah our carpool is deep. Kid takes the bus to and from school and can be home alone for a couple of hours if both of us get stuck. This was not possible when kid was little though. That was tough and we had no flexibility back then to WFH. Lots of before and aftercare $$$ |
Anonymous
What industry ends meetings at 330? As I was a rising manager to director, we often had meetings schedule at 4 and 5pm. If you bow out and say “kids!” It would stymie your advancement. In zoom age there are more call in meetings but the last two decades, most meetings were in person |