Mom vs career-woman - advice needed

[sonta8]

Heyy,

All moms here who are working in highly competitive and intense jobs - how did you manage the change from career women to career women + mom?

We are trying to conceive now. I find it hard to reconcile that I am adding another priority in life apart from my career goals. It’s quite scary. I am worried I won’t be as ambitious anymore or will resent having a baby if my career starts suffering. I do really want to have a baby. But, can I still dream of being super successful in my career or I am making a choice to let that dream go?

It would be great to hear your experiences. How did you manage it all?

I don’t think that you’re making a choice to let anything go. Your thoughts are pretty normal for first time mums. There are many Mums in very senior positions who are fully committed to family life also.

your child will be loved and dearly wanted, I don’t see why you’d ever feel resentful.

personally, I put my child before everything. Once you experience motherhood it will all fall into place.

on a lighter note I’ve never seen an obituary with the statement “she wished she’d worked more”.

beat wishes

Do you definitely want children?

I am super successful in my career and have gone from being a junior manager on £30K when pregnant with first child to a senior executive on £100K+ 15 years later.

Key to this was a strong and equal partnership with DH. We each did spells of SAHP and part time during the pre-school years. Once both back to work full time we still have an equal partnership when it comes to parenting and housework etc.

I think it goes wrong when the woman is expected to do it all by herself.

You'll be fine. Men manage to have children and careers without issues.

I’m very career minded and have had two promotions since my first DD was born 4 years ago to get to a senior position in the city

certainly not easy but made easier with a supportive boss and husband

have just had a second and I’m feeling slightly different - exhausted and wondering how I’ll do it all with another one and actually whether I want to go for that final life changing promotion - yes lots of women do it but I was just wondering if I really want to

so I think the motto is everyone is different and it’s hard to predict how you will

I wanted to be a trailblazer but actually i found it tiring and love seeing my kids in the morning and evenings

but I have friends who travel every week for work and work really really hard - and others who haven’t worked for years after giving birth

so don’t think about it too much

yes you might change your priorities and ambitions- but also you might not care about doing so

having kids is truly life changing and you do change anyway - you get to a new normal rather than the old normal

in my experience often different because successful men can either afford full time nannies OR their wives stay at home - so reduced childcare fees and someone to be around for drop off and pick up

successful women need stay at home husbands or full time nannies for the same benefit

It really depends on if you have a supportive partner who is willing to take on half the load. Or if you have the money to outsource the grunt work. Otherwise it's going to be quite impossible to put 100% effort into both.

I have 3 DCs and am relatively senior in consulting at one of the big global consulting firms.

I outsource as much housework as possible, so that I don’t spend my precious home time doing laundry and mopping floors.

I try not to think about “work time” or “family time”, knowing that both are full time jobs. So: I don’t hesitate to volunteer at my kids’ school every now and then during traditional work hours. I block evening time most nights when I’m not travelling to have dinner with the DCs and put them to bed, and then go back online when they’re asleep. Instead of going out with colleagues for team-building, I often host colleagues at my house for family dinners.

My DH is WFH, so he’s typically the one to do nursery drop off and pick up, and to look after DCs if they have a mild bug and need to stay home. We call him the “default parent” responsible for the daily grind. I’m then the “extra parent” that tends to do aaaaaaall the ad hoc stuff. Doctor visits, dentist, parent-teacher visits, school registration, school volunteering, birthday party organizing, holiday planning, kids’ play dates, hair cuts, making sure they have clothes that fit for every season, days out, etc. It adds up to a lot, but because it is less time sensitive, I find ways to work my way through it (pun intended). Not going to lie though - having my spouse able to take on a 60% load is pretty key to this being viable. I could never pretend we’re truly 50/50.

It works for us, for now. DCs are 6/4/2. I am considering going part time when they’re a bit older. I’ve heard from a few mentors that being around and on call for teens is arguably more important than for toddlers, and I think I buy that. Logistics also seem to get harder when they’re older. Right now the three DCs go to the same nursery inside my DD’s school. My eldest plays one instrument (my DM brings her to her lesson after school on Mondays) plus swimming on the weekend. Once we have 3 older kids doing different sports and music lessons, I suspect I’ll need to be more hands on.

Seriously "career woman" grates like "manageress".
You're just a person with a career. It's not so unusual for a woman to have a career that the role needs to have a sex-based name anymore.
I'd pull your thinking out of that and all of the dated connotations of it before starting to think about having a family because otherwise you'll be "doing everything" thinking it's all your job to manage the house and kids while DH has his big important career (note we don't say "career man").

Also for most people it's not all or nothing. It's muddling around doing as much of everything as you can and sharing the workload between equal partners in a relationship.

If anything I've been more ambitious since DD because i want her to have the childhood i didnt and my ex husband chucked us out with nothing when she was 6 after bleeding me dry. I've almost tripled my earnings in the last 4yrs, and I don't have a nanny or cleaner or grandparents to help, minimal input from exH and certainly not financial! Insisting on WFH roles allows me to do it. I dip out for school runs but can still meet targets.

I think the most important thing is having a husband who doesn't see you as the default parent simply because you are a woman and who also doesn't believe that his career is more important than yours because he's a man.

I had some of your concerns also but I've found that if anything, having my son has made me more determined to succeed in my career. He is approaching 6 months and I went back at 3 months so it is still fairly new thing for me but as of now, I'm happy with the balance and despite working full time manage to spend plenty of quality time with him.

It's an adjustment, sure, but like any adjustment you work through it, figure out new priorities and just make it work.

But that is ONLY possible with a supportive partner or co-parent fronting up 50% of the care/housework/responsibilities. IME, every % of equality you don't have at home is 'taken out' of either your career or personal wellbeing.

Men who procreate are seen as strong and stable and settled, women who procreate are seen as flakey part-timers (obvs generalising!) which doesn't help either. You have to be militant about protecting that boundary, which again you can only do with equal support from a partner.

Your point?

How easy it is also depends on the flexibility your employer offers.

Someone really needs to sort out the language issues in the ChatGpT bots.

The OP has started two threads on this same subject so to avoid any confusion we're closing this one and directing everyone to this one in the Work topic which the OP has been responding to - https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/work/4810711-mom-vs-career-woman-advice-needed