When my first child was two, my older sister said to me, "Your children need you more when they get older." At the time, I thought this was just another example of sibling passive aggression. Of course she, with three teenagers, was bound to imply that she had it hard while I was struggling with a relatively simple toddler.
But I was wrong and she was right: your children do need you more as they get older. When they're small, they need a lot of attention but it can come from a wide variety of people: grandparents, cousins, babysitters, nannies, the kid next door. When they're teenagers and grappling with drugs, sex, relationships, grades and college applications (never mind the future of the world) no one but a parent will do.
But this isn't the mental model with which most women consider when planning their careers. Instead, what I hear all the time is: I'll take a few years out when the kids are born and then, when life gets back to normal, I'll go back to work. That's the idea. The reality is always shockingly different. Because life never does go 'back' to 'normal'. Instead, the kids grow more and more demanding, the mothers grow less and less confident and, before you know it, 20 years have passed, the career never happened and legions of smart, highly educated women are wondering what happened.
I see this all the time when I talk to women everywhere from Harvard Business School's women alumni association to female entrepreneurs who've figured out the only way to find a role in business is to start one. The prevailing mental model of how careers work for women is just wrong. The idea that you can work for a few years, take a few years out for the family and then jump back onto a career ladder simply does not work. The off ramp, as Sylvia Ann Hewlett likes to call it, is smooth enough -- but the on ramp is steep, bumpy and an easy place to crash.
What does work?
Early Motherhood?
You can try having kids really young -- before your career starts at all. I know a few women who've done this -- usually by accident -- and when the rest of us were wrestling with toddlers, their kids were in college. It worked for them. It wouldn't have worked for me; when I was 21 I was incapable of looking after anyone besides myself. But it works for some.
Solid Achievements
It takes most women more than a few years to identify what they want to do and where. Once they've found that, they need to stay long enough to bank some solid achievements, skills and expertise. Then, when they take time out for kids, it's critical that they stay connected to work. Some companies (like IBM) make this easy, by keeping women on email, making training and networking events available and striving quite deliberately not to lose their women. Other companies don't bother, which means women themselves must make this effort.
Don't Stay Out Too Long
Business changes fast. Which means that even where company policy or country legislation allows, you shouldn't stay away too long. You won't look serious and you'll lose your sense of how things work. I once had a fabulous female CFO who, almost immediately after her baby was born, came back to work for one day a week. She said she did it for her sanity -- which I'm sure was true. But it also kept her connected and visible.
Forget Normal
The idea that, after kids, life will go back to 'normal' is a fantasy. Life changes when you have children: that's one reason to have them. And life keeps changing as they do. I think this keeps us on our toes and makes women uniquely good at change. Embrace this as a positive rather than hankering for the good old days where you could go out most nights.
Do Something You Love
Facebooks's Sheryl Sandberg, in a recent New Yorker profile, made the point that, before you have kids, you should find work that you love. If you do, you'll excel and you'll want to return to work. If you don't find that work first, kids will be the perfect excuse to give up.
Equal Partners
No serious career is possible for women without support from their partner. Glenda Roberts, who used to be a M&A lawyer for Microsoft, had the best approach to this I've ever encountered. When her husband contributed to domestic chores, she never thanked him -- because, she argued, the house work was not hers to begin with; it was theirs. He wasn't doing her a favor -- they were doing their work together. The minute women accept the idea that domestic duties are primarily their responsibility, the battle begins.
Nothing depresses me more than meeting highly intelligent, creative, energetic women who now put all their gifts into the carpool rota and planning the perfect lunchbox. I love my kids as much as anyone. But I like them more -- and myself more -- because they are part of my life and not the reason I never had one.
I thank my husband every day for being here now to pick up the pieces and help me to deal with this health crisis. I wish I would have thanked him more in the early years, even if it was his responsibility to help, because he deserved the gratitude! Life is hard for everyone, and we all need recognition, gratitude and encouragement, regardless.
My advice to mothers. Follow your heart. You have a nature about you that men cannot fulfill. Don't try for equality with men in the home. You are already equal, but in different ways. There is no such thing as "superwoman". That is a deceptive myth that will trap you everytime. Have fun with life, it doesn't always have to be so serious. Having a list of achievements is not a substitute for being the loving, nurturing role model your children so desparately need. The center of the universe in your home, and you are the center of the home.
Her career is everything to her. It's most of her personality. In High School when I pictured myself at 40 it was helping my kids with their elementary homework. My dream 15 years ago is almost here. The only job that worked out, a tutor for elementary kids at Sylvan. I got laid off with the recession. Most parents don't need tutoring for 1st - 3rd graders. I loved that job and miss my students. My boss says she wishes she had kids for me.
This author is wrong about SAHM. My working mom wasn't home during the bulk of the day. My babysitter was there for everything. My mom tried hard to be there but still missed a lot. I choose to be a stay at home mom because my mom wasn't.
wow - well said. I love my children more than words can ever express - but I also love what I do (PhD, int dev work) and want them to know what it is to have a mom that is engaged and is passionate and is able to contribute.
The article is fine but, life doesn't always give us the option to make such clear decisions along the way...so being able to adapt and change plans as we go along, that's pretty important, too!
Your point about the teen years needing the parent is true but not recognized.
I was one who stayed IN the paying workforce while my children were babies and little - in fact, I stayed in the paying workforce in an amended fashion as they got older - working from a home office for a corporation. But those are often "invisible" (at risk) positions, and there are surprisingly few despite our technology options to make them viable.
In a bad economy - "in" the workforce or "out" for a time - getting BACK in can be quite a challenge.
I might add that if divorce comes into the picture (and custody issues), that complicates things - more often for women than men - women already at a disadvantage when it comes to pay (roughly 77 cents to the male dollar). Add in older motherhood, which we are now encouraged to enjoy, and you may find yourself aged out of the marketplace, still raising kids.
No one should underestimate these issues. And our kids NEED us, but they need us differently than when they are little.
That "village" concept? That's what we need. Along with more flexible employment structures, and so-called "social benefits" not dependent upon our marital situations or employment relationships.
So stick to the reasonably good advice for MBAs, and leave the merits of using one's life to RAISE THE NEXT GENERATION out of it.
It never fails to amaze me that there are women like the author who feel it their duty to belittle and shame the work other women choose to do - whether it's the paid work of a high-powered CEO or the unpaid work of raising children. While I can appreciate that there are careers in which stepping out means not being able to seamlessly step back in, there are also women who prefer to take jobs that allow them to work around family, and happily anticipate all the changes this might entail over the full 18-plus years it takes to raise a child.
My mother graduated college with a degree in biology but chose to stay home with her kids, returning to the workforce part-time when the youngest was in grade school, and going back to school for a new degree around the time her first grandchild was born. And you know what job she loved the most? The one she didn't get paid for.
The author writes: "Nothing depresses me more than meeting highly intelligent, creative, energetic women who now put all their gifts into the carpool rota and planning the perfect lunchbox."
In my own experience, I see and hear from women from their 30s to their 50s who have enormous skills to contribute to the workforce. They love being mothers, but they miss the other avenues in which to use their skills of all sorts. They want to do so - but in a part-time or flexible capacity precisely because they DO value and cherish mothering. In some instances, they have no options. In others, the cost of child care outstrips the economic benefit of that work-for-pay.
Sadly, fewer are able to choose to stay home with kids and "work that job" in part because there is no pay, not to mention value in our society among many. And for single parents? Another story altogether. The options dwindle. We lose out, and so do our kids.