@mycupoftea Who watched the kids while you and your husband were both working? Did you have grandparents around to do that? Its a real blessing for those who have that option.
@gallentjill No, parents in their fifties needed to support their own living, first by washing and folding clothes in a laundromat, later by working entry-level jobs at close to minimal wage. But both managed to earn enough credits to earn their (meager) social security benefits. With our support, they live basic, but comfortable retirement. Back then, they were indeed able to visit us and watch the kids on weekends (we had spacious guest sleeping quarters in our 600sf apartment, ha!)
When I was in grad school, I sent the toddler to nursery by private bus, and had a part-time help (a retired woman) to meet the bus and babysit for 2-3 hrs. I was back home after a day of classes by ~5pm, then went back to a lab 8pm till midnight, of whatever it took. H was home by that time (he was not in grad school yet). When I was a postdoc, I was within a working distance, so I took an hour-long break to meet a school bus, put dinner on a table, then went back to work. My D watched her sibling until H was home. She knew to either contact our floor neighbors, or concierge/security downstairs, or call me at work for emergencies. It surely helped us to raise very independent kids - she was usually done with homework by the time we were home 
I still managed to take them to taekwondo and music lessons, or whatever…
This has been such an interesting discussion with so many commonalities, differences, value judgements, and seemingly plain old anxiety at the topic. The reality is, there’s really no right or wrong answer nor is there an easy, one size fits all solution. So many of you post your stories, and right or wrong, fair or not, when you have a career/job and small people who depend on you and a spouse or partner, you do what you have to do to take care of them. Sometimes you have to give something up to do that; the person who quits or drops down to part-time may give up future options to progress in their career, while the person who hires a nanny and continues their high powered career ways gives up the day in and day out moments with their little one. Then there’s probably every level of possibility in between. You do what you feel like you have to do with the opportunities and resources you have.
I want to add that many of us who post on this website have had the relative luxury of being able to ponder this issues and repercussions for us and our personal situations, past or present. We have had choices when many in our country in the world don’t have that option. They are too busy trying to survive and feed their children and themselves.
Education, even a professional one is foundational. There’s no guarantee that a high powered career will result or for many even be desired. But that foundation provides the potential for choices.
My only daughter is going to graduate with an engineering degree in about 10 days. We were talking the other day and l told her that now that she has earned a degree that she has something of value that no one can ever take away from her. No one can repossess her head. Further, she now has the ability to support herself and as a woman she will never have to depend on anyone financially if she doesn’t want to. She can choose to depend on someone, as she might in the future (to take care of children if she and a partner decide this would be best for them or other reasons why one might want or need to take a wor/career break) but she doesn’t have to. I love that she has the freedom of make choices, for that her education is invaluable. If she doesn’t stay in engineering for all time that’s fine.
We all make choices, but it doesn’t mean the choices everyone gets are the same. I’m in a STEM field. I’ve known women who lost out on promotions, raises, and job opportunities because the managers assumed they were going to have children and either reduce their hours or quit. So when they had children their choices were to let their husband take on the demands of childcare (work their hours around daycare and sick children) and risk being seen as not serious about theircareer or protect their husband’s job so they’d have one stable career between them. It’s not really a choice if someone else is stacking the deck to force your hand.
Even when things look equal, they aren’t. I know professional women who went on maternity leave and returned to a “comparable” job but one that didn’t have the advancement or income trajectory of their former position. So their “choices” are to stay and earn less throughout their career or change fields (generally starting at the bottom) and still earn less throughout your career than you would have otherwise. Women, as a whole, aren’t making a choice. It’s being made for us.
The problem is that women as a whole are making a choice, but that limits the choice for individual women. The reason that woman are looked at with suspicion is because so many of us do leave or cut back on hours to raise kids. If woman stopped doing this and insisted that men take half the burden, it would be much easier on everyone. Unfortunately, I don’t think its likely to happen. Whether its socialization or biology, or the very road blocks @austinmshauri detailed, women are the ones who keep volunteering to cut back. (I include myself in this group). So, those in charge are not delusional in their worry. That definitely makes it harder for those that stay.
I’ve hired for Big Law for years and I’ve watched this issue with great interest - some of you may know how big of a deal this is right now in the industry.
There is a lot more accommodation than there used to be, with women stepping off and then back on to the partnership track in many cases. But the interesting thing for me is how many women simply don’t want that at all at any time. What I am seeing is many women who want to be counsel (or what a particular firm calls a permanent, senior lawyer who isn’t a partner), and many women who choose to leave law firms entirely when they have children. Part of the issue is hours, but many don’t want to be partners because of the (a) 6-7 figure buy-ins, and (b) the need to constantly generate business. Most law firms are eat-what-you-kill and up-or-out models, which means that you’re never really settled, and even if you wait to have kids, you’ve still got to generate the business because if too many partners in a particular firm aren’t bringing in enough business, the firm can’t make it.
Also, in law firms, senior associates can easily make more than $500,000 per year with bonuses, but in the up-or-out model, if you’re not elevated by year 8 or 9, you suddenly find yourself having a hard time finding any job. I can’t tell you how often it happens that associates are passed over and then take more than a year to find a new job at a huge pay cut. It’s hard to make family-related decisions when things are so uncertain for so long. The people I know after more than 30 years in the field, who have been most successful in managing the uncertainty are people who absolutely know that they aren’t gunning for partner, and manage their finances with the big picture in mind. There are a lot of people who have huge debt and don’t manage paying it off as quickly as possible to maximize future options. Those people deal with that choice for decades.
^We have a close friend who was an attorney for a long time. He didn’t enjoy it particularly, but he did a good job. When he wasn’t offered a partnership in the up-or-out situation, he decided to work for a non-profit Christian organization. At the time, he had FIVE kids, several of whom were approaching college age. The way a lot of Christian organizations work, you have to raise your own support. So that’s what he has done now for many years. He was posted in Singapore for about five years. I admire his stepping off the treadmill. His wife was a SAHM the entire time. I think four of his five kids attended college (the fifth has mental health issues).
D2 just graduated from law school, has one more year to get her MBA as part of joint degree. We paid for this so that she can enter the field debt free. I can’t imagine the weight of some of these loans.
I think she’d like to be an in-house counsel at a corporation, but you never know how the future will actually work out.
Thank you @Bromfield2 ( post 194).
When I started back to work I was part time. Ended up doing higher lever work than what was in my job description but without the title and pay. I finally got promoted a few years after I went full time ( top performance reviews but I had to basically demand my promotion), then still was paid at the low end of the scale. I finally took a job in the same company , different department with less stress and no extra hours. My replacement was a male, several years younger. You guessed it- higher title and salary grade ( fewer years experience, less education than me). He lasted 6 months. I still interact with my prior department and the work I did at staff level is being done by senior staff.
I truly believe being part time contributed to this. The fact that I was a SAHP for several years probably did too. I was never considered more than a clerk and was paid accordingly.
That department got a great deal. I sure didn’t.
I worked overseas for a Big 4 audit firm and we had very clearly defined busy seasons from Jan thru end of April. Obviously we had things going on throughout the year but busy season was quite brutal and we needed everyone.
We actively spoke to the women we hired about trying to ensure children were born outside of busy season. For the most part, it worked. To the extent someone missed a busy season, there promotion was typically held back for one year.
Isn’t that illegal???
It wasn’t illegal there…i.e., outside the US.
There was no threat to terminate anyone, quite the opposite as a lot of time/effort was invested in everyone in the smallish office. I think for the most part compliance was not due to fear of losing a job or promotion but due to knowing that if you left during busy season, you were somewhat screwing over your co-workers as it was not possible to bring someone in and train that quickly.
Once again, the way the work there occurred, if you were not there during the busy season, you really would not gain the experience necessary to be able to get promoted.
I agree with doschicos. If you are fiscally prudent with the high pay, “greedy” job, you can cash out early. We did too.
My husband started as a financial analyst for a chemical company and then leveraged his experience into consulting…eventually landing in management at a company.
We were extremely frugal…our parents having taught us well. And yes, we were lucky the market was kind to us.
From the time we graduated we saved as much as we could. Unlike many of our friends we did not buy a new car or new furniture for years. We were used to “cheap stuff”…perhaps our public school experiences helped(?). Anyway, waiting to start a family and trying to live way below our means meant that by the time we turned 30, we had paid off my husband’s student loan ($20K) and were financially comfortable. Frugal living was not done with early retirement the goal. Frugal living was a lifestyle choice that felt right for us, as we both come from modest homes. There’s less stress is you aren’t worrying about money.
That said my husband was traveling a good deal as a consultant…leaving Sunday night or Monday morning and returning on Thursday evening. We knew it wasn’t going to be a long-term lifestyle for us. So after our daughter was born, my husband drew an imaginary circle around our home and looked for job opportunities for greater work/life balance. As luck would have it, he got a job within about a 15 minute drive from our house that didn’t mean too huge a drop in compensation. His resume/skill-set allowed him to jump several levels at this company, compared to where he would probably be if he had worked there since college. This is one of the benefits of the “greedy” job…employment at a higher level within a company in a shorter time frame.
We have shared our story with our children. What they choose to do is up to them and their significant other. Delaying gratification, short-term pains for long-term gains and running your own race are a few of the things we have tried to instill in them.
- Re: 21 year-old men, etc. My son, at 23, and a year out of college, broke up with his penultimate girlfriend because she said she didn't want to talk about getting married until she was 30. They were a college couple. He said he didn't mind waiting to get married, but he minded waiting to talk about it. He didn't want to be in a relationship without direction for 6-7 years. Six months later, he reconnected with a college classmate with whom he had never been involved, but whom he had always liked. In her case, any relationship had to be serious -- her family did not belong to a culture that tolerated casual dating, and she had a longstanding conviction that if she got into a relationship she would not try to hide it from them. They married at 28. The penultimate girlfriend -- the final ex- -- is 30 now, and just got engaged to a guy she met three years ago.
No one in this story was responding to pressure about what women should or shouldn’t do with their careers. My son’s parents met in college and got married at 26. His ex-girlfriend’s parents married in their early/mid-thirties. His wife’s parents had an arranged marriage – all but a small piece of their courtship occurred after they were committed (and indeed in their case after they were married). All three older generation marriages are successful; it’s not surprising that each of the children viewed the relevant parents’ pattern as optimal (perhaps with some minor adjustments). (On the other hand, our daughter, with the same influences, had zero long-term interest in any of the straight men she knew in college. She met her future spouse on OK Cupid when they were 27.)
- My wife and I had an unusual configuration of the issue under discussion. I was in a much higher-paying career than she -- although she had the credentials to pursue that if she had wanted -- but she, in her way, was much more ambitious than I. She wanted to change the world; I wanted to support my family. Apart from the few years around the birth of our children, she worked much longer hours, with much more travel, more stress, and much less pay than I got. Her work took her away from the place we live; for a decade, including all of our kids' high school years, she maintained an apartment elsewhere, and only got home on (most, not all) weekends. My career slowed considerably because I needed (and wanted) to spend time with our kids. I also very much wanted to enable my wife to do what she was doing.
What exactly is wrong with a woman sacrificing to be home with her children? Having 2 parents working a 60 hour a week job isn’t sustainable for any family. When mom decides to go back into the workforce, yes, she’s going to be less experienced than the people who worked the whole time. That’s just the way it works. Paying someone more for less experience because she happens to be a woman is discrimination.
There is nothing wrong with an individual family’s decision of one parent (whether it is the mother or father) doing that. Where things can be more problematic is when societal pressure or expectation expects that it is always the mother rather than the father who does this, where such expectations can ■■■■■■ the career growth and opportunities of a woman who does not intend to be the stay-at-home parent.
Of course, whether such societal pressure or expectation can be separated from other gender discrimination at work (as observed by transgender people) is another story. Perhaps observations of same-gender parents (where there is no gender-based reason for anyone to assume that one or the other is more likely to become the stay-at-home parent) could be of interest in the differences female and male parents find in terms of these types of societal pressures or expectations.
@coolguy40 there is nothing wrong with a woman choosing to take a break from work to be home with young children.
What is wrong is the expectation that a woman has to be the one to take a break and the expectation that a man shouldn’t be the one that takes the break.
@bajamm I agree and would add that it is also wrong to assume that someone that takes a break cannot ramp their career up again.
^ I have a SIL and a sister who have been very successful at doing just that. They both took breaks for the child rearing years for at least 10-15 years and have now built very nice, well paid ($150-200+K salary) careers for themselves. It is definitely doable.