Have you and your partner/spouse both managed to have successful careers whilst raising children, or has one career suffered?

[Dr1ppin]

I keep reading that you ‘can’t have it all’ and something has to give. My husband is currently the breadwinner and works long hours but I want to start focusing on my career now (he has never stopped me and has only ever encouraged me). I just wondered how realistic it is of me to expect to be able to focus on my career whilst raising children especially if my husband works long hours? Our children are 18 months and newborn. Is it going to be one or the other for me?

You can't have it all, it's a myth. You'll feel guilty/like you're missing out whichever one you choose. SO make sure you pick the option which will make you feel best about yourself.

I chose my career. I went back to work when DD was 4 months old, and my husband took parental leave until she was a year old. He's a teacher, so he then negotiated a new role (pastoral rather than classroom) that runs part time, so he's home with her 2 days a week and the other 3 days she's at nursery. Similar set up for subsequent DC.

When they're all at school, DH will go back to working full time. He can pick up and put down his career, i can't, so we prioritised my job over his for the duration of their childhoods.

It's worked well for us, but Working Mum guilt is real.

I really don't think you can have it all. We decided to prioritise our children until they're secondary school age. I work part time in a fairly Jr role. The hours required for me to take a more senior position would have a negative affect on our children and would mean long hours in childcare. We decided it wasn't in their best interests at the moment.
That doesn't stop me getting frustrated some times though!

I didn't get a choice as DD was unexpectedly born with a disability and my work wouldn't be flexible enough to allow me time off for all her appointment's.

It's become easier as she got older and I'm now working again but put me back in my career by at least 5 years (if indeed any career development can be seen as linear!) Someone had to keep working and it made sense for it to be DH as he earned more.

Even if there aren't issues like we had, I see so many of my colleagues struggling to work around childcare. It's very hard to have it all without feeling guilty about something being your lesser priority!

I don’t think it’s one or the other but it requires a lot of work from both of you.
Me & DH are both progressing in our careers, with me being in my role a year (son is 3), and I will be in uni for a further 3 years. DH is currently working his way up in his company and we are both relatively happy.
There is a lot of stress, and I always feel like I’m running around but I know it will be worth it in the long run. It almost split me and DH up though, but he has always been supportive of me progressing, just not with the helping out at home side.
DS loves his nursery and was so happy to be back after lockdown. So for me it is doable, just a lot of planning and work.

Agree that you can't have it all. Even if you think you have it, I suspect your children wouldn't agree if neither of their parents are there when it matters. You definitely can't do it if one of the parents works away for long periods of time as was my situation.

IMO you cannot have it all. I went back to work full time two years ago in a flexible but demanding role. It has come at the detriment to my mental health.

Unless you have a housekeeper and nanny, even with a DH pulling his weight I still end up pulled in a million different directions. I've packed in the demanding job for an easier one now!

Dunno.
My DHand I both work
Always worked full time 2 kids now teenagers
I think we do ok- both earn pretty much equal -£100-150k each depending on bonus
Both work long hours but flexible - eg I’ve done school picks up and bedtimes etc but then work into the night fir example and dh done pick ups etc then worked and weekends. He progressed, then me, then him then me etc - although it’s never been a competition
Kids do multiple sports which we ferry around, we attend sports days, assembly ( when younger) help out at their clubs etc
I don’t think they’ve suffered

Don’t get me wrong,at time’s its been hard work and exhausting and I think it’s easy to forget you’re a couple too, but overall I think it’s possible, just be realistic that you ensure balance

Lone parent to three Still all under 10, absent ex husband, just been made director of my company.

It’s a mix of working from home and UK/International travel. I am not saying it is always easy but if you choose the right path and make sure you keep a good work/life balance then it’s absolutely possible to have it all and not deprive your children in doing so. A lot of companies now respect your ability to deliver and allow you the space to make it work for you so long as you prove you can.

It also helps to have good childcare, my kids love “X” sport, so my child carer is a local girl who does “x” sport so they can combine the two.

From my own experience and observations, you need one or two things.

Lots of family support
Lots of money

If you have both, you're winning. If you have neither, you're screwed career wise.

I was at a decent level before I had my first - and am still at that level eight years on. For us, it wasn’t possible to have it all (/compatible to have two of us working full time long hours in a stressful role)

I can’t answer your question but DH and I are currently both trying to do this. Both FT, in fairly demanding roles. I went back from mat leave in July.

So far, it’s pretty tough. And that’s with us both WFH. I don’t think I could cope if we were both commuting FT.

We have some friends whose kids are slightly older and they’ve both got successful careers, but the husband isn’t as successful as he could be because he’s stayed in a safe and comfortable role rather than push himself. But he is nonetheless objectively successful.

I think you absolutely can have it all, but I'm not sure I want to give myself away that much.

The desire to have it all just create pressure that's unnecessary.

You can have it all, but the 'all' isn't all at the same time.

You can do it, but not at the same time. I got 4 years to focus on my career (the DC were 3 and 5 at least he start of this period) whilst DH stayed put in a flexible job that allowed him to deal with day-to-day child wrangling. Then - once I’d finished retraining we swapped, and he got to focus on his career. Our DC are 14 and 16. We both work FT and earn £200k between us (I’ve been the higher earner for at least the last 13 years, but he’s recently caught me up).

Nope. I really don't. You can have some of each (family life and ambitious, successful career) but not all of it to the extent you could if you chose just one. If someone's focusing on pushing their career forward, the other person is picking up the slack at home rather than pushing on at work. If both are forging forward, then the relationships between partners and/or children is going to suffer. The only ways I can see it happening are with a lot of money to hire help (cleaner, nanny,gardener) so the children and house are taken care of (but be wary of the time you are not spending with your children if you are prioritizing career) or as pp said, where she and partner were taking it in turns to each progress whilst the other kept things simmering along at work and at home until it was their turn.

Personally, I choose family and a part time career. £ is pants but a far happier family home.

We have, but it took both of us being committed to it and truly splitting the load, plus really paring back everything but ds, us, and work for a long time - but we've had no family help, nor a nanny so pulling together has been whats kept us together.

There are so many variables and factors influencing the success of careers post children. For us it was very hard for me to continue working so I’ve taken a break for a while.
We have no local family support and limited social support following a recent house move.
DH travels a lot for work meaning he can’t commit to a regular drop off/pick up schedule. We tried nannies for childcare but the expense was equivalent to my earnings and the hassle and stress were high. We had nannies who were unreliable which I know isn’t always the case. It’s a massive task recruiting someone each time once building relationships with the kids is factored in.
In the pre school days of kids nurseries worked really well but as soon as they went to school it got much harder. One of our DS has loads of time off nursery with recurrent low grade illness (Days off for an ear infection. Temperature, starting antibiotics etc) which also meant work was really challenging. My role in healthcare was really not flexible at all to unexpected requirement for time off and WFH wasn’t an option and emergency childcare wasn’t something that worked well for us.

Depending on your role and flexibility it can work but it’s all about the compromises you’re happy to make. FWIW I’m still not sure I should have stopped working and on occasion it spills to resentment of my DH and his thriving career... I don’t know when you know if you’ve made the right decision. Nothing is forever you can always change it if it’s not working.

Depends on a lot of choices you make before you realise they’re important, a bit of luck and some timing.

So, I married a man who believes in doing at least half of all things domestic. I landed on a well paid professional career with a range of options and was well established before I considered having DC. I am therefore lucky to earn enough (mildly outearning DH) that we can afford childcare of a very high quality (eg will have when has D&V/chickenpox etc). Yes, I stepped out of private practice but I still earn extremely good money and with two such salaries we can afford to throw money at stuff we don’t like doing (cleaning and ironing come to mind).

I was clear before I married DH that a career was extremely important to me. I have been lucky in landing in an industry where good professionals are well treated. And our childminder is a linchpin around which our lives work (we will be paying her FT when DS2 starts school this year to continue getting the cover for inset, sickness etc).

I think you can do it - we both work FT, have only one small DC though. We have demanding jobs where we travel a lot (pre-Covid) - I travel around 10-12 times per year and my husband 3-5 times. It’s hard but IMO worth it especially for the woman. I want to have my own career and pension and not rely on DH.

IME you need:
-good childcare/family support
-good employers who show flexibility when needed
-cleaner
-good organisational skills to make sure drop offs/pick ups etc are organised
-outsource as many jobs as you can
-can’t both have a long commute

It’s worth it in the long term!

DC dad was, and still is, useless so I had to have a successful career and raise them! Having said that I had heaps of support from my parents and my now DP who works from home and is much better than me at any day to day organising/life admin stuff.

We've both managed to continue our careers successfully but only have one DC. These things helped:

Taking 6 months parental leave each, me first, then him.
Both of us doing 4 days per week, each taking one day off with DC (nursery the other 3 days).
Totally equal commitment to the childcare. Equal drop off and pick up responsibility (picked a nursery that was equally accessible from both work places).
Sharing night waking equally - when times are bad, we take it in turns to sleep in the spare room.

And of course you need a true partner - DH needs to do half of childcare/pick ups/drop offs/housework/admin

I don’t like the phrase ‘having it all’, because it has connotations of striving to achieve something unattainable; also it sounds very dated to me, like something people would have talked about a few decades ago

Is it possible to both succeed in decent careers? Yes, absolutely. I think it takes hard work and a real willingness to communicate with your partner honestly and openly; you both need to be prepared to share the tough bits as well as the joys of parenting and home stuff as well as working.

I worked part time for a very short while when the kids were tiny but was full time again by the time our youngest turned 4, and have continued full time ever since - well over 20 years. I’ve been able to gain promotions which I wouldn’t have got had I stayed part time or played second fiddle career-wise to dh. We’ve never had family help either.

I don’t think one career necessarily has to be sacrificed, I just think you need to be prepared to work hard, keep the lines of communication open and regularly review with your partner how things are going so that you’re both happy with things.

My advice is , forget about the meaningless cliche, ‘having it all’ and frame it as ‘is it possible for both of us to be able to continue doing well in our careers?’ Ok it’s not such a neat sound bite but it’s a more realistic description

Well I think it depends on your definition of successful career. DH has turned down jobs because he prioritises being around for the DC and I suspect I'd have progressed faster if we'd not had DC. However we are both higher rate tax payers and work PT in jobs we love. Does that make us successful enough?

The reality is that some careers are unhealthily demanding and impossible to balance with children (e.g. certain parts of medicine and the law) but many professional jobs do allow PT work and as long as the father does their share of the parenting it is possible for a woman to have children and an interesting career.

To add to that: no family support. No cleaner. 100% supportive and flexible employers.

It depends what you want out of your career really. Both DH and I work in respected, professional, reasonably well paid roles and are happy with the level of seniority that we're at, while still feeling that we have a good amount of family time. However I have no doubt that I could be earning more and be more senior than I am if I had always put my career first (I was a SAHM for a few years when the kids were little and went back part time).

I do feel like I 'have it all', but for me, having it all means having a good career rather than a stellar one.