Reply to How do moms with "big careers" successfully find a balance between kid stuff and self care?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The sexism on this thread is astounding.

Astounding.[/quote]

Starting with the thread title. How do men with “big careers” (whatever that is?) make it work?[/quote]

Well, for one, the men usually have a supporting spouse at home.

True story.  My mom was a senior VP in a Fortune 500 company.  She was the only woman in the senior leadership.  She was at a late meeting one day with other senior leaders.  It was about 8 or 9 pm.  As they 6-7 of them were walking out the door, one man turned to my mom and said something like "Wow, I'm hungry.  I hope Larla has something good ready for dinner tonight when I get home!  What about you?"  My mom, without missing a beat, said "When I get home I'm making a good dinner.  I'm sure Laslo is looking forward to it!"  The speaker and the other men were completely nonplussed.  All of them had spouses who were SAH and who waited on them hand and foot.  This was in the 2000s.

Gender roles are hard to break.  On the other hand, the loud and prolonged sound that you heard in the 90s was of the glass breaking as my mom clawed her way to the top, using her hammer to chip a hole in the ceiling so that she and other women could climb through.  And my dad was right there with her boosting her in any way he could, just like she boosted him earlier in his career.[/quote]
That's fine...and good for your mom. Mine was similar.

But the most heart-warming thing I ever heard at a Fortune 50 company I used to work for was a senior executive walking out of a meeting and waiting for the elevator (in the building I worked in, but he was coming from another location). Someone else asked him whether he was going for the dinner that was planned. His response, "Probably, but first I've got a couple kids to Facetime before they go to bed." At that same company, I literally said on the phone that I couldn't present to a senior VP at the time I was asked to because of my infant's feeding schedule. Without missing a beat, they rescheduled my presentation. And on that project, the executive in charge ranked my contribution one of the best he had encountered.

I guess what i'm saying is that big jobs can go both ways. You definitely should not feel like you have to be at every single event in your kids' lives. By the same token, employers who are interested in the long haul recognize employees are human and want them to feel like they can be parents and spouses and children of elderly parents at the same time that they are employees.[/quote]

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