<p>I also want to emphasize, the “well, I turned out all right.” or “the kids turned out fine”, that it’s like a train ride. The whole train pretty much will get to the destination all right and those not making it there have some unusual fate related issues. It’s the quality of the ride that is the issue. That my son survived his cancer probably had little or nothing to do with whether I was there with him most of the time vs not being there had I had to work. The cell type and treatment was more the determiner there, along with fate and luck and other such things out of anyone’s control. But that he had his mother there was a lot of comfort to him being a 5 year old little guy, scared, hurting and feeling cursed. And it was a comfort to me to be able to be there. It ripped those moms who could not be there to shreds, emotionally. So many I sat with as they sobbed. They HAD to work as they brought in the only income to the household. There wasn’t one who would have in that scenario if it weren’t for that when things went down to the tough points, even though it would not have changed the outcome.</p>
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Wow, that is so sad that your Mom felt that way and that you now do as well. Certainly not my experience. I trust many of the women in my life with my life and hope they feel the same way about me. (yes there have been some I wouldn’t trust with a dead dog, but there are always going to be people, male and female, like that!)</p>
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My mother never said that - I had to find out that it was true on my own. From the woman who gave me away at birth to strangers to the “mean girls” who made my school days a living hell to my last boss who accused me of lying in order to cover her own @$$, everyone in my life who has truly stabbed me in the back in life has been female. That’s not to say men can’t be utter bastards. And yes, there have been exceptions, but on the whole, I’ve found that women are much more duplicitous and difficult to deal with.</p>
<p>Such an interesting thread. This is a very complicated issue because everyone has her own set of circumstances that we base our choices on. I happily worked full time when D was young. My wonderful job ended (company was moving/reorganizing) when I was pregnant with S. Took a part time job when he was 3 months old, but left after a year and was at home for 10+ years. Do I regret it? In my case, no. But then I say that as someone who has been fortunate. My H did not divorce me, die, become ill or disabled, get downsized, etc. I might very well feel differently if something like that had happened.</p>
<p>I enjoyed being at home with my kids, but I am really a career person at heart. I’m just not that talented at domestic things and really don’t have the interest, but have a file full of work reviews with top ratings. I have been back in the work force for 6 years now and it’s where I want to be. I would honestly have liked to have worked all along but H’s job involved travel and we had no family nearby to help and it was just too hard to pull off. As for the volunteering, I did lots! Loved being a Girl Scout leader and really got a lot out of being on the board of the swim team. I regret volunteering so much in the schools , however. Seems strange that I would say that, but ended up being very discouraged and tired of the endless politics and b.s. there. My kids both ended up as strong students, but I do not believe that my volunteering for the schools had much to do with that.</p>
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<p>Not true at all in my experience. Perhaps I have been unusually fortunate, but I have always found support and friendship with other women. Adore my mom and sister and grew up close to my paternal grandma, several aunts and female cousins.</p>
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<p>Some people are trustworthy. Others are not. And still others may be trustworthy in some situations but not others.</p>
<p>I’ve never noticed a gender difference in people’s trustworthiness. I’ve been treated well by people of both sexes and stabbed in the back by people of both sexes.</p>
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<p>I agree with you, Marian.</p>
<p>It’s helpful to remember that regret is a product of having a choice in the first place, something that many women in the past never had.</p>
<p>I only had one child and went back to full-time work when she was four. it was not easy, I was frequently exhausted, and there were times when I resented it. Now, however, I’m glad I stuck it out, partly for financial reasons and partly for reasons of personal fulfillment. My mother was a SAHM and felt tremendously frustrated and undervalued. It was very hard for her after the children went away. I don’t think she regretted her choice (it wasn’t really a choice; it was what was expected of her), but I never idealized staying at home. I also felt expected to make my mother’s “sacrifice” worthwhile by being a successful child in a competitive environment, someone she could point to as a tangible accomplishment. I don’t believe children ought to feel responsible for justifying their parents’ life choices.</p>
<p>The risks are that when you don’t work, and you need to get back to work for whatever reason, it is possible that finding a job will be difficult and finding one to support a certain standard of living not possible at all. Death, divorce, disability or spousal un or under employment, any number of catastrophes can do it. That is the chance one takes. Some of it can be mitigated by having job qualifications in a field that tends to need those so skilled, and keeping in touch with work place.</p>
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<p>This got me thinking… and wow, I am either completely oblivious or leading a charmed life. I can only think of one case of being taken for a ride and that was a boyfriend in my 20s who was two-timing me. Maybe I’m just losing my marbles and can’t remember stuff anymore :D. I think it helps that I have been my own boss for all of my working life and no one has really had any power over me.</p>
<p>Getting back to the previously scheduled thread:</p>
<p>My mother dropped out of college when she married my father. He died a couple years later and left her with a baby and no viable means of support. She married another man, whom she did not love, as she felt she had no options. 50 years later, she still regrets her choice. Long time ago in the old country…</p>
<p>As I was growing up, she drilled into my head that I should have a career that would make me self sufficient. I became a doctor. And as I went off to work everyday and DH stayed at home as a SAHP (who did no shopping/cooking/cleaning BTW), she did not like this one bit. It turned out her ideal for me would have been that I’d be a SAHM with a skill that would allow me to jump back into the working world only if needed.</p>
<p>I started this thread because some of that the author said resonated with me. H and I both worked fulltime before kids, and after a fairly brief maternity leave, we both did again, S went to daycare. When D was born we planned to continue after my 6 week leave but she really, really had trouble with daycare and being away from me in general. As in cried constantly at the same home-based daycare S had loved, for 6 weeks. Eventually I gave up…got a part time job - they even let me bring her with me - and from there developed a business I could do from home in a part-time way.</p>
<p>I was offered jobs in that field around that time that would have meant a lot of money and also would have meant being gone from home for 60 hours a week, minimum. H’s job had a crazy schedule that was unpredictable and not possible to control…or he felt trying to control it would mean giving up advancement, so he didn’t want to.</p>
<p>So I worked at home and was able to be there for the kids, saving daycare money and being able to get them to doctors and home if sick and no being alone after school and all that. </p>
<p>Then…H and I separated. He took his career to a different city where he made more than he had here, and the kids and I lived on my part time work and child support. The job opportunities I was offered were long gone, even if I as a single mom could have spent 60 hours away. So I find myself in a somewhat similar situation, though my career may be able to be ramped back up somewhat, maybe.</p>
<p>In the meantime we drastically downsized and frankly, I suck it up and deal with it, and enjoy that I can be there for my kids as much as I am. Do I regret my choices? Not really, because I don’t see how it could have been done differently given that H refused to dial his career back and someone had to take on some at-home responsibility.</p>
<p>If anything I rather regret making the call to marry this particular person, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have the kids, and they are great. So I guess it’s a mixed bag.</p>
<p>I always worked, except for few years when I worked part time and I think ~8 years working from home. I was very fortunate that I was able to maintain my “earning power” even while taking the less traditional route. I was upset about not getting the Managing Director title when some of my friends did. I eventually did when I returned back to work full time, and that wasn’t until D2 was out of grade school. I was lucky that I had the flexibility. Now that I am in the position of setting some policies, I make it a point of hiring more women and let them have more flexible schedule (we do the same for men too). </p>
<p>My husband’s husband did take a bit of back seat to mine. We got married right out of college. We didn’t count on me being the major bread winner, but that’s how it turned out. When I went back to work full time, H worked out of the house and couldn’t devote as much time to his work. Now that the girls are out of the house, both of us are focusing more on our jobs. </p>
<p>As far as trusting women vs men. I have been stabbed by many men because they viewed me as a threat, but I have been “saved” by women. Both of my best girlfriends are from my first finance job. I always have very nice network of women at work</p>
<p>One advice I give to young women (I am a mentor to few people at work) is to spend money on childcare. Do not think that I make $100 then my childcare can’t be more $50 or it wouldn’t be worth my while. Yes, it will be. You child will only need childcare for 5 years (or whatever that is), but your career will be 40+ years. I tell them to get the kind of childcare which would give them a peace of mind. So many parents stop working because it is not “worth it” at the time, but they forget that by staying in their career they could be making a lot more money and get promoted later on, by leaving it would be a lot harder to get back in.</p>
<p>Both H and I decided to have a sitter at home rather than sending our kids to daycare. It did cost a lot more, but it made me a lot more comfortable to have one person taking care of my kids. At times I felt like I was working for them. I didn’t have to miss work often because my kid was sick.</p>
<p>*Then…H and I separated. He took his career to a different city where he made more than he had here, and the kids and I lived on my part time work and child support. The job opportunities I was offered were long gone, even if I as a single mom could have spent 60 hours away. So I find myself in a somewhat similar situation, though my career may be able to be ramped back up somewhat, maybe.</p>
<p>In the meantime we drastically downsized and frankly, I suck it up and deal with it, and enjoy that I can be there for my kids as much as I am. Do I regret my choices? Not really, because I don’t see how it could have been done differently given that H refused to dial his career back and someone had to take on some at-home responsibility.*</p>
<p>It’s these kind of situations that I was mentioning. Not everyone has a spouse who can/will “dial back” their career. Not everyone has a spouse who will even begin to look at home responsibilities as a 50/50 (or even 70/30) proposition when both are working full-time. </p>
<p>Even here on CC, many lament that working women are really working 2 jobs. If I hear one more guy say, “I take care of the outide while my wife takes care of the inside,” I’ll scream. Unless the house is sitting on some high-maintenance acreage, I doubt many men are spending nearly the number of hours on yard stuff that a woman spends on inside stuff.</p>
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<p>Right. Which is partly why it can be hard to stay married to that kind of person, and why it’s sensible to anticipate that the ideal does not always last. </p>
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<p>Too funny…someone I work with just said this exact thing to me yesterday. On the upside, her husband is a plumber so at least when there are inside jobs that are beyond her ability to handle, he gets to do them.</p>
<p>One’s choice of a life partner matters tremendously. My H has been working and schlepping into NYC since the age of 22. I think what will happen is that he will retire earlier than me because the nature of my job is such that I can easily see myself working until 67.5 or longer. He, on the other hand, is 50 and is getting tired of the commuting grind. I see men dropping dead of heart attacks in their fifties living this high-stress commuting lifestyle. DH has provided the main salary in the first twenty years of working life. I can see myself doing it in the last twenty years. Once D is out of school and we don’t need the high annual household income to meet the bills, I think we will make adjustments, and I will become the breadwinner/benefit provider. This seems fair to me, as his work allowed me to stay home when D was an infant. Life is long.</p>
<p>So many parents stop working because it is not “worth it” at the time, but they forget that by staying in their career they could be making a lot more money and get promoted later on, by leaving it would be a lot harder to get back in.</p>
<p>Good point, but that is also assuming that they have a career, or the education to stay in it.
Both oldest and I had health problems surrounding the pregnancy & while I did have a very good job, they had to hire someone else when i was on bed-rest with the pregnancy and the person who originally hired me for a job that was actually above my skill set was no longer there when I tried to go back to work, after D came home from the hospital when she was 8 weeks old( which was still before her due date)
It was pretty frustrating, but Id been at home about 5 months by that point.</p>
<p>To make a long story short, I stopped working when my first child was born and returned to work when she was 19-1/2. I am glad I took those years off, and I enjoyed all of the wonderful times I had with my kids. However, it took me 2 years to find a job when I did return to work - and it paid very little. In the past 5 years, I have switched jobs twice and received good bumps in pay each time. I work very hard and am considered a valuable employee. I like my job.</p>
<p>But the truth is, I lost so much earning power during my years off - and it’s hard to handle sometimes. I have so much responsibility, yet I earn so little. I am in my mid-50’s, and no one wants an old lady with just 5 years of recent experience (no matter how well I spin my time off in my resume). So not only did I lose a lot of money during my time off, but I am still losing because my earning power was eroded. Yes, I like my job, but let’s be honest. I work because I want to make money (I volunteered for years, and it was more flexible and less stressful, so I can admit it’s the money that drives me now). Sometimes I feel pretty much like a loser in life.</p>
<p>So, there you go. I am glad I didn’t work when my kids were growing up. I don’t care what any other woman does - if she is happy, whatever she chooses is best for her. But the flip side of my choice is that I have at least another dozen years of work left, during which I have to sock money away in case I live until I’m 90 … and I swear, if my H & I croak before we retire, I am going to have a few words with God.</p>
<p>I’m not bitter, just honest. My advice to my D has been that she should find a job that will lend itself to part time work, because she may want to scale things back but still keep a hand in her career while she raises her kids. Or she may want to quit. Or she may want to keep working. But she should be know that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.</p>
<p>A woman maintaining her CV gives herself more options</p>
<p>One of the reasons dermatology is such a prized field for women is that it does allow considerable flexibility. I know a woman who has been PT nearly all her professional life but earns good salary and benefits in the field but has been able to have the flexibility to be there a lot for her kids. At times,she found it very tough, especially when the kids were young but now she’s so glad she kept her profession.</p>
<p>Dermatology is a prized field for <em>both</em> male and female med students, because it offers both salary and lifestyle. That’s why dermatologists are almost always among the most accomplished graduates of their med school classes–they have to be to match into derm residencies. Ironically, the least competitive fields for residency (family medicine and psychiatry) offer lifestyle but not salary. Make of that what you will.</p>