Career Vs Family? It’s just a big con!
When I was seven months pregnant with my first child I was working in a government department, writing press releases about public toilets. One day a woman walked in for an interview for one of the corporate communication jobs, and after she left, my boss came out and said “Well, she’s qualified, but she’s been a stay-at-home mum for seven years, so I’m not sure she’s suitable.”
The woman was a former-journalist. She was more than qualified to write press releases about toilets, but what left an imprint in my mind was the thought that if I stepped off the corporate ladder I’d lose any opportunity to advance my career.
Back then, in the 90s (ehem), the only choices women felt they had were to keep working for someone else or leave the corporate world behind, and it seems that in 2014/15 women still believe that this is the case.
A recent article in the New York Times pointed out that the rate of women in the workforce has dropped from a peak of 74 percent in 1990 to 69 percent in 2014. The article revealed that 61 percent of women left the workforce due to family responsibilities or lack of family friendly workplace policies in contrast to 37 percent of men.
Does every working mum feel like this?
Many of those interviewed expressed their desire to return to careers but felt they would be marginalised due to being out of the workforce for an extended period. Even shows like Modern Family perpetuate this myth of the can-t-get-her-shit-together stay-at-home mum vs the career-driven jet-setting professional in heels. It’s ludicrous, and it’s time to expose the con.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that traditional media outlets reinforce the work vs family paradigm by giving a megaphone to people like Mark Latham. He would have you believe that every woman with career aspirations has a leftist political agenda and selfishly neglects her kids. The truth is, the Mark Lathams of this world are just pawns in the big con that women have to choose between career and family, so lets not waste any more time on perpetuating that myth. Instead, let’s look at how women are creating a new paradigm.
Here’s the thing: Women can have it all and can do so sustainably, without the mother-guilt, without feeling like they’ve sacrificed a life for work or work for a life. Not only can they have their cake and eat it too but they can take the whole damn cake shop. It doesn’t need to be a choice.
There’s a quiet revolution happening in suburban homes, and it is beginning to create a wave of social change that turns the whole career vs family myth on its head. That revolution is the rise of entrepreneurship. The startup trend is not just catching on for the bearded frat boys hanging out in cool co-working spaces across the country, it is sparking new possibilities and opportunities for women who used to believe that their only choice was to work for someone else or not work at all.
Women are starting to see that they no longer need to rely on the good graces of employers to meet their needs, open doors or break through glass ceilings. They can forget the corporate politics and forge their own paths, and in so doing create a new corporate culture, one that is inclusive and one that integrates life and work rather than doing one at the expense of the other.
A US study commissioned by Amex Open Forum found that more than 50 percent of all new businesses were women-owned and more and more initiatives are aimed at enabling women to launch, and leave the traditional 9 to 5 jobs behind.
Confessions of a modern day working parent.
Crowdfunding, online networks such as the Australian Businesswomen’s Network and She Takes on the World, as well as growing awareness of angel investment and start-up seed funding has helped women see they can take their destinies into their own hands.
I’m not saying it couldn’t be better. There still seems to be a bias in the start-up funding world toward young, mobile men, and women-owned start-ups are often condescended as temporary, work-at-home, “mumpreneur” ventures, but the chocolate box is offering way more than just the two options presented to women before the online boom.
I have worked on and off in the time I have been a mother. When my third child was a baby I was dragging him along to boardroom meetings and breastfeeding him at conferences and seminars. This often raised eyebrows and sometimes provoked annoyance because our current corporate world separates women from their messy, noisy lives.
After freelancing for many years I started my first enterprise 5 years ago, and now as a single mother, I run a thriving content marketing agency and co-run a tech startup, raise and home educate my three boys, two of whom are on the Autism spectrum, and still manage to take time out for myself. How do I do all this? It’s simple really. I leverage modern technology and I integrate work with life. My iPhone is my office and I routinely get up at 5 am to get shit done. However, what’s made the biggest difference is to rewire my thinking about what I’m capable of doing on my own steam.
Holly: “A comprehensive list of the things I did before 9am.”
Even for women who have made the leap into entrepreneurship, many still struggle because they haven’t let go of the money for time paradigm. This paradigm is a by-product of corporate culture, and I believe that as more women learn how to trade money for expertise, more ideas and opportunities will open up for other women looking to follow the same path.
The best part about running my own business is that my kids and I all work alongside each other. They are learning that they don’t have to wait for someone else to hand them their dreams because they are seeing their mother take the reins every single day.
Career vs family? Pfft. It’s time to put this myth to bed.
Cas McCullough is founder of Content Marketing Cardiology, co-founder of The Likeability Co and author of Your Brilliant Un-Career: Women, Entrepreneurship, and Making the Leap.
Top Comments
Starting a home business or the likes could work for some, but why should parents have to resort to that to remain employed?
The working mothers that I have worked with over my 10 years in the workforce have always been worth their weight in gold and often achieve more in part-time hours than many of my colleagues in full-time roles. Seriously, businesses would be mad to not hire people simply because they are mothers and require flexible hours.
This always seems to be news to some but I say it often: I've never had any problems with anyone coming back from maternity leave because of the fact that women don't lose their brains and all the skills they've built up over their career because they've given birth.
Any employer that discounts a person's skills and experience simply because they are a parent is a fool.
I agree with you! I don't think employers should sideline women who have become mothers. Perhaps with more women taking the reigns over their careers and becoming entrepreneurs, workplaces will start to feel the heat and bring about change. That is my hope in any case.
As a woman who doesn't have kids, I see both sides of the story here,I have worked with a lot of women with kids and I don't think they take more sick /kid leave than others, yes of course some do, but some childless people do too. One woman I work with who is invaluable to our organisation because she will go out of her way to do things (such as drive and run emergency errands when this isn't technically part of her job and she could easily say no to it but is a big help to the rest of us) had had a fair amount of leave because her kids were often sick and in actual fact some of it ended up being unpaid, however she really is the glue that makes everything work in our office. On the other hand another woman there with kids never takes leave ever yet she is a totally unhelpful and I wish she would take leave!
The helpful worker has twice brought her child in to work when we were flat out busy and we really needed her. On both occasions he was very well behaved. If he got too chatty she caringky told him to go back to his computer game (or whatever he was doing) but in general he was very well behaved and always was within her eyeline.
On the other hand I did work with a woman once whose very young child was pretty much dumped with me in the office, whilst she went off to a board meeting. The child destroyed something in the office. Also as I don't have my own kids I'm not too practical with them because I don't always know that things that seem safe to me can be actually dangerous so I didn't appreciate being put in this situation. But I think this situation can just be put down to her being an inconsiderate person and not because she is a working mother.
I think there are some things that would impede a woman's progress if they had been out of the workforce a long time, for instance I know some women who don't know office type software because the last time they used a computer for work purposes was 10 years ago, and I have seen them really struggle to get up to speed with that. But of course that would be relevant if they were applying for an office or secretarial type job, it may not be such a big deal in other work, other skills such as communication skills etc remain the same whether a woman has been put of work a long time or not. If I was hiring a woman to be a receptionist/office worker and she had been out of the workforce a long time I would like proof that she is either up to date with the latest versions of Microsoft word or she has the tech skills to be able to learn it and get up to speed quickly. If she can prove that and has all the other normal skills such as good communication then I would hire her, but because I have come across quite a few women who due to long work absences have been bad with office technology that would be my only hesitation, because many jobs need these skills. Therefore I would say to any woman wanting to return to the workforce get yourself the latest version of Microsoft office and in particular learn Word. Excel is less important but it depends on the job, some jobs you may use it a lot. PowerPoint is less important also. Good to learn all three but concentrate on Word. Then practice regularly (if you can't do a course get an instruction book and work through the exercises), then see if a temp agency will test you and ask them to print out the results for you, that way you have some proof that you are up to speed with word. Of course a temp agency will probably only test you if you register for work with them, and not all will accept you but it's worth a try. If this fails when you go for a job interview if the employer seems hesitant about your tech skills ask them politely if you can show them a demonstration of how well you know word. Another thing to do is practice typing then get a certificate from a community college, as they will test you (for a fee) and give you a certificate with your typing speed on it.
As for working from home I don't know if that is always so great because running your own business can be hard and often customers expect you to be available at all sorts of times, but if you can make it work then good on you.
Thanks for your comment. Some great advice there for people who want basic admin work. It's really easy to learn these skills and often, temp agencies offer training programs. I usually find that technology skills are not such a great problem. Modern women are smart and savvy and use smartphones and lots of tech on a daily basis.