Are My Children Hurting My Career?
Genuine | June 20
My mother recently gave me an article about being a father in today’s business world. I wish I had kept the article, but I think I used it to wipe up some spilled cupcake or pop during a picnic. Essentially, the article talked about the changing roles of fathers and the resulting changes in the job place.
Fathers used to be all about work. That was their job, their cog in the machine of the family. They provided for the children by putting a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and their other basic needs and overall welfare. Everything else was left to the mother. Then mothers began entering the workforce and we began to see double income families sprouting up all over, and the children were being dropped off at daycare, while both parents went out to bring home the bacon.
For a long time, businesses understood the needs of mothers when they needed to be home with a sick child, or if they needed to take a child to the doctor. There were certain unwritten rules that the mother had this as her responsibility. Somewhere this has changed. Fathers are taking on more responsibility and they in turn are taking more time off of their jobs to be a part of the family unit, and less as the sole bread winner.
Are companies realizing this shift in parenting responsibilities? I don’t think that the ways of old have been abolished. The companies with older men at the helm tend to expect the men under them to charge the hill right alongside with no thoughts of what Fathers are doing today. They only know one way to manage and that is by commitment and dedication to ones job above all else, including a man’s family. The family will benefit from his hard work as long as he is in that mindset. If a man wants to be a part of the children’s lives above his job on occasion, he is thought of as a slacker or someone not dedicated to the job at hand. He gets passed over for the single man or the younger man without children, because they are all about work.
The role of the Father has shifted some and companies are not catching up to that shift. Things like the Family Medical Leave Act have helped the problem, but until the shift is fully realized, being a Father can be a detriment to the workplace and your success. What do you think? Have you stayed home with that sick kid a few times and feel the pressure from above to make a better commitment to the company? I was actually asked recently by my boss why my wife couldn’t handle the child when he was sick. I guess he doesn’t understand either.
In my case, it is beneficial to have kids, since we do children’s content. Ironically, I was promoted the same year I had my daughter.
Having children hurts a mommy’s career as well. I chose a job that had regular hours and lots of leave time to accommodate my little girl. The price I pay for that is that I don’t make as much money, and I won’t be moving up the corporate ladder (I left a good career just so that I would be able to spend more time with my daughter). But that’s OK with me. So, I guess it’s only fair that people (men or women) who are all about work should be the ones who move up faster. They choose, and I have chosen as well. I think my choice is the better one.
I’d have to ask my husband if he thought that his commitment to the kids was hurting his career. Right now, a lot of his co-workers (and his manager) are having kids themselves (some of them starting a LOT later in life than my husband and I did), so that definitely adds to the level of understanding and empathy among all these dads of young kids.
All I know is that whenever I show up pregnant at the Christmas party, he gets a raise the next year. ;)
I don’t think it has actually hurt my career (yet) to be a father. I do agree that companies haven’t caught up yet (my last company didn’t give any time off for dad’s when their child was born…that’s your vacation, buddy) and the formalized structures aren’t nearly as robust as they are for moms. But all of my managers have been very understanding about parental responsibilities and basically just say, “go…we’ll work it out” if you need to run off.
Yeah, I mean, it sucks all around. For a while, the men with families got paid more simply because there was a perception that they “needed” it more, to support the wife and kids. How fair was that to the single guys?
But yeah. Welcome to crappyland. Women have been screwed tihs way for a while. I think comapnies expect too much to think that anyone cares for them more than they care for their wife (or husband) and kids. How screwed up is that?!
Maybe the answer is to just be your own boss. :)
For myself, I’m hoping I can find a way to stay home with the kids. Right now, my husband’s doing that while he goes back to school.
I am in the exact position as the commentor ahead of me. I am untilizing this time to go back to school at night to get my graduate degree while my wife is working during the day.
This is what is unusual. My wife works in an office completely run and staffed by women. I think her returning to work soon after giving birth and leaving the baby with me actually hurt her standing in the office by lessening her credibility as a woman. Completely screwy, huh?
She gets a lot of crap for leaving and trusting the baby with me.
Go Figure.
I work for the YMCA. I took 5 weeks off to bond and take care of my twins when they were five months old. Since then I have not missed one doctor’s appointment and since we have twice as many colds in our household, my wife and I trade off on who gets to stay home with the sick ones.
At my mid-year review in May, my female supervisor (who has never had kids) actually put in my review that I had a hard time balancing work and home life (i.e. that balance wasn’t in favor of the Y). I challenged her to tell me when I didn’t get something done on time or failed to do my job and all she could come up with was that I wasn’t there on nights and weekends enough. She ended up deleting that line from my review.
I definitely wonder if my choice to make my children the first priority has hurt my career. I’m in position to receive a major promotion in the coming year or so and we’ll see how much this choice has made an impression.
Our son has achondroplastic dwarfism. He was born nearly two months early and spent a month in the NICU before we could even bring him home. The company my husband worked for while our son was still hospitalized threatened to fire him because he wanted to spend more time with his son on his lunchbreaks. He quit and went into business for himself.
Most of the time it seems like businesses expect children to be not seen and not heard. That’s crazy, we can’t pretend we don’t have children. They’re a part of our lives.
My industry (construction) tends to be a bit backwards. I’ve had the good fortune to work for companies whirein the powers that be understand that I need to take time off for the birth of a child, for instance. However, I’ve been around long enough to develop a sense that when I’m gone for any amont of time and for any reason, my job might not be there when I get back. That’s less true now that I’m no longer working outside, but it’s sort of industry standard nevertheless. So no, I don’t take time off for the sickness of one of the children.
Sometimes I get the impression that the world is moving in two opposite directions at once. Yes, there is definitely more awareness of the fact that most parents should or do share the duties of raising their children. Yet a real ‘career’ these days can hardly demand less than the dedication that the bread-winning dads of old brought to their jobs. So can both parents devote themselves to careers (assuming they are even fortunate/ambitious enough to get that far)? I doubt it. Not without some kind of support network and how many of us live within close range of the extended family these days? Or with the help of nannies, child-care, nurseries, au-pairs or other kinds of cheap labour. It can be a strange world that we call parenthood.
I was let go from my last position, and replaced with an H1-B visa candidate because, “he has no family here, is able to work 24/7 without bitching, and his health insurance is less” (yes that is an actual quote… not a paraphrase… they actually expected me to “understand” their position).
Even in the “good old days” when the man was the sole bread winner, it was typical to have a 9-5 (or similar position), now companies think nothing of asking people to work longer hours, because virtually all office positions are now “salary” and no overtime (pay) is required. Hence these companies want to drain every last drop of work they can get out of you.
I don’t get much respect from my boss when I have to do the parental care thing. He’s a classic Type-A “the job is all” kind of guy; he doesn’t understand my mindset at all.
I have to say that my husand has never been able to stay home sick with our son because his job is so restrictive about these things. I’m always the one who has to call in sick with a ill baby. But then I think about it… It would cost more money for Doug to stay home a day than for me. So I guess that’s the price we pay!
My wife and I went to the hospital on a Friday (at 30 weeks of pregnancy) and delivered on Tuesday. Wednesday, when I called my boss (a woman with no kids like Matthew’s situation), she said, “Do you really want to use up your time now? It’s not like you can do anything for them, right?” I so clearly remember standing in my wife’s room, with my Okapis hooked up to wires and machines on another floor thinking, My whole family is in this hospital. How can I leave?
I definitely think my committment to my Okapis and family has been detrimental to my career and is one of the reasons I am trying to start my own business so I will have more control over my own schedule. And I’ve had it easier because my wife has stayed at home with our Okapis. It would be much harder if she wasn’t home with them.