Reply to Feel like the choice is binary re: whether to work or not after baby is born

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The choice to leave entirely or stay working full time is binary, yes, but there's also quite a range of employment options. These include freelancing, contracting, part-time, working full time but somewhere with generous leave and flexibility, etc... I think you'll find a lot between 0-50 hours/week of paid work. Sometimes it's job market circumstances that makes re-entry particularly hard, but sometimes it's also life choices (partner used to doing less at home, kids in different schools in opposite directions, certain extracurricular activities for the kids) that come into a family's routine b/c of a SAHM and are near impossible to unwind. I stayed in the workforce full time but went to a flexible, less intense, non-profit leadership role, and I'm so glad I did, I have also hired someone who has been out of the workforce a long time and she's amazing but def coming in at a lower salary/title than what she would command if she stayed in. [/quote]

I don't disagree with any of this but I also think the examples you give of life choices that are hard to unwind are just things to keep in mind if your plan is to re-enter the workforce. We always knew I was going back to work in some capacity after taking time off. So, for instance, we would never have committed to sending kids to schools in opposite directions, and my DH understood from the start that me staying home did not mean me becoming the maid or the person solely responsible for childcare (and we consciously assigned a couple categories of childcare that we knew would become bigger as our child got older to him to keep us from falling into this trap).

I think the key no matter what choice you make is to be intentional in your choice. If your plan is to take a couple years off and then go back because work is important to you, than make choices that enable that plan, both in how you leave the workforce and also how you set up family life after the baby arrives. This is the whole problem with the SAHM/WOHM binary -- it assumes that these are two different kinds of women leading two very different kinds of lives, but the truth is you can pick and choose to some degree and there are very few choices (except the choice to have a child at all) that can't be changed down the road. Just as you can choose to work part time or freelance, you can also choose to not work but keep your partner involved and set yourself up to work in the future.[/quote]

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