To think women can't have it all?

[0Cripes]

I'm pregnant with DC3 and due soon. My boss recently announced he was leaving at the end of this month on a 9 month secondment. His role is a natural progression for me and he has been teeing me up for it for 7 years. However, someone will backfill his role and gain experience for 9 months that I won't have a chance to get, therefore when the permanent position comes up (my boss has no intention to return) I'll be at a disadvantage.
If I wasn't going on mat leave I would stand a very good chance getting this role. I am annoyed as I feel I'm now at a disadvantage and my career is suffering because I've chosen to have a child. I appreciate that I still have the opportunity to apply but I'm pretty sure I won't get it knowing I'll be absent for 6 months of it!
I know the timings are nobodies fault but AIBU to be annoyed at this and think it's so hard for women to have kids and a successful career?

@StrangeToSee

You needed to do that, but others don’t. We don’t. We both work full time in professional expat roles. The house is always in a reasonable state, we home-cook all our food and the DC have plenty of time to read with us before bedtime and at weekends.

We both pull our weight at home because neither of us is prepared to step back in careers we studied for years to access (PhDs in science, MBA). We’re organised and we make it work. And if anything happens to one of us, we’re safe in the knowledge that the other one’s income can fully support the family.

Women absolutely don’t have to sacrifice their careers if they don’t want to (a supportive partner makes this easier, though).

Women absolutely don’t have to sacrifice their careers if they don’t want to (a supportive partner makes this easier, though).

Completely agree.

What do you expect OP? Not fill the position while your off? Or not let someone else with more experience it? You are unreasonable to annoyed, no one is forcing you to have children. Life goes on for other people.

[quote FloconDeNeige]@StrangeToSee

You needed to do that, but others don’t. We don’t. We both work full time in professional expat roles. The house is always in a reasonable state, we home-cook all our food and the DC have plenty of time to read with us before bedtime and at weekends.

We both pull our weight at home because neither of us is prepared to step back in careers we studied for years to access (PhDs in science, MBA). We’re organised and we make it work. And if anything happens to one of us, we’re safe in the knowledge that the other one’s income can fully support the family.

Women absolutely don’t have to sacrifice their careers if they don’t want to (a supportive partner makes this easier, though).[/quote]
This is our experience, too. Neither of us ever considered downgrading our work, both of us do childcare and housework, and pick up one another's slack on the rare occasions there's a real issue. Likewise two careers involving multiple postgraduate degrees, and we deliberately didn't have a child until we were at a stage of seniority at which we were both able to be flexible and dictate our own schedules to a large extent.

3 months is somewhat different that 2 or 3 weeks. I mean i had to start my mat leave for my second, 3 weeks before my child was born as i was medically signed off and in hospital. With some of these mats leaves i'd have been back at work before the delivery!

My company is trying to promote a level gender playing field, including making managers like me aware of different career behaviour between men and women. Obviously NAMALT / NAWALT…

But what jumped out at me was you saying you’ve been teeing up for this for 7 years. For one level up. My training says that more men than women would have said - fuck that, and not waited around for the dead man’s shoes for 7 years anyway.

I appreciate that if this is your third child, you’ll say some of that 7 years was mat leave, but it’s still a long time to wait to profess.

Versus some men, they’d have jumped ship for the same promotion round about your first pregnancy.

So yes, it is harder for a woman, in general, if they want children.

But you had other options - your husband taking a better share, securing that promotion before children, or getting the progression before a third. Or moving to a company like mine where I regularly see women return from Mat leave into promotions.

You needed to do that, but others don’t. We don’t. We both work full time in professional expat roles. The house is always in a reasonable state, we home-cook all our food and the DC have plenty of time to read with us before bedtime and at weekends. We both pull our weight at home because neither of us is prepared to step back in careers we studied for years to access (PhDs in science, MBA). We’re organised and we make it work. And if anything happens to one of us, we’re safe in the knowledge that the other one’s income can fully support the family. Women absolutely don’t have to sacrifice their careers if they don’t want to (a supportive partner makes this easier, though).

I’m glad it works for your family.

DH and I are both postgrads too, both studied for many years, but his career really took off when I was pregnant with first DC. By the time second DC came along I didn’t ‘need’ to work thanks to his salary but I was reluctant to give up my career as I’d worked so hard to establish it. So I ploughed on FT until youngest started school.

DH does his best but he’s often away for long periods of work or needs to work evenings/weekends. His availability varies according to the project he’s in so it’s hard to predict how much he can support eg with school runs.

Maybe ‘sacrifice’ was the wrong word; although plenty of women (and men) have no choice if childcare is unaffordable and they have no family support nearby. The lower earner either becomes a SAHP or they reduce their hours to school hours only, with school holidays off etc.

I feel like I missed a lot of my DC’s childhood when they were in wraparound care, as they were out the house 7am-6pm then often fell asleep on the way home from nursery. When other kids were enjoying half term at home I was taking mine to holiday club which they hated. I also missed so many school plays, concerts, and at weekends they were clingy as they rarely saw me. Mornings were a rush to get ready for nursery/school/work. I was on a rota so missed most Christmas Days, DH and I could rarely take a day off together etc as it was constant tag teaming. For me, FT work sucked all my time and energy.

I realise not everyone has the option to just quit and wait for the ideal wfh school hours job to come up. I feel really sorry for women (and men) who have to give up their careers completely due to lack of childcare. There also seems to be the fear that once you leave a profession you’ll never get back in, though once I left I had so much time to research jobs and prepare for interviews, and a few months gap doesn’t seem to bother employers.

The minimum legal maternity leave is something like 2/3 weeks isn't it? And your partner/the father can take time off now as well.

Not 3 weeks, but also not necessarily the 6months you're talking about. 3/4 months may be a good idea, no? Depending of course on what you want in the long term, says the "dropped the job to be a sahp" person a friend at 4months had to fly to another country to do a final masters presentation!

This is our experience, too. Neither of us ever considered downgrading our work, both of us do childcare and housework, and pick up one another's slack on the rare occasions there's a real issue. Likewise two careers involving multiple postgraduate degrees, and we deliberately didn't have a child until we were at a stage of seniority at which we were both able to be flexible and dictate our own schedules to a large extent

Out of interest, how do you manage day to day? Do you have a nanny to do school runs and look after DC in the holidays?

My issue was partly I’d changed career a few years prior to having DC so was still finding my feet. Whereas DH’s career was well established by then and enough to support all of us comfortably, provided he didn’t have too many distractions. He’s in a senior position but it comes with a lot of responsibility and overtime, so it’s hard to predict when he’ll be able to help and when he’ll be abroad or busy.

I was sad to leave my FT job at first but I also didn’t want the DC feeling I was prioritising my job over them (nursery was ok but once in school they both disliked wraparound care and holiday clubs).

@StrangeToSee

This is our experience, too. Neither of us ever considered downgrading our work, both of us do childcare and housework, and pick up one another's slack on the rare occasions there's a real issue. Likewise two careers involving multiple postgraduate degrees, and we deliberately didn't have a child until we were at a stage of seniority at which we were both able to be flexible and dictate our own schedules to a large extent

Out of interest, how do you manage day to day? Do you have a nanny to do school runs and look after DC in the holidays?

My issue was partly I’d changed career a few years prior to having DC so was still finding my feet. Whereas DH’s career was well established by then and enough to support all of us comfortably, provided he didn’t have too many distractions. He’s in a senior position but it comes with a lot of responsibility and overtime, so it’s hard to predict when he’ll be able to help and when he’ll be abroad or busy.

I was sad to leave my FT job at first but I also didn’t want the DC feeling I was prioritising my job over them (nursery was ok but once in school they both disliked wraparound care and holiday clubs).

No, no nanny. He goes to afterschool club, and one of us always manages to drop him in the morning we've chosen to live in a city centre very close to his school and both our workplaces for this reason. Holidays, we take annual leave and combine it with holiday camps/clubs etc. I'm an academic, so I can work from home fairly flexibly outside of contact hours and meetings, and we just calendarise very carefully if DH or I are travelling, so that we don't overlap absences. DH is CEO of a big organisation, but makes up for travel and the need to take calls at midnight with a pretty flexible day to day pattern not presenteeist.

DH and I have equivalent full-time senior jobs (same job title, different company, both lawyers).

I have only recently stepped up to this level - 2DC, youngest is 3.

Here is how we manage:

• pay a shit ton for childcare (part time daycare, part time nanny)
• in the 7 years between DC1 and getting this job my career slowed down, I worked various iterations of part time though I tried to keep progressing/keep my hand in
• outsource everything: cleaning, dog walking, meal boxes
• I work flexibly - leave work early one day a week so I can pick up DS from school, wfh 1 day a week. Have also forced DH to be more flexible - his ideal would be 45 hours a week min in the office.
• work, daycare and school are all a 5 min drive from home and I have a carpark
• i do my best to ensure domestic chores are split 50/50 but in reality I do all the wifework

I realise that most of my “hacks” are privileges - fixing problems with money.
I also only have 2DC and think having a third child makes career harder for women. Not impossible of course, I’ve seen lots of amazing working women with more than 2 kids, I’m just not that capable 😂

We have a nanny do school runs 3x a week @StrangeToSee, I do one day & DH does the other. I do morning school run. Nanny does extra hours in school hols and/or we WFH to cover gaps.
I am contactable 24/7 and generally do a few hours over the weekend (this weekend I worked on and off all day Saturday including 2 hours of meetings - that’s quite unusual though) so I’m not fazed if I’m not super productive on a Monday afternoon!

YANBU, it's really not the same for men I'm surprised so many are suggesting it is. I've had to turn down so many amazing opportunities that would be impossible with young DC (fellowships abroad for example).

However I think three children is really pushing it if you want to excel in your career. I would have stopped after one or two max if you wanted to get the balance right for "having it all". Some people with larger families will manage it of course but IME that's very rare as three tends to tip the scales too far in the direction of "kidzone".

I thought I was nailing the work life balance when I just had one child. We have a 3.5 year gap and I thought that after we had #2 after the initial sleeplessness period of about a year (see I was being realistic) we would fall back into the same pattern hollow laughter
We are f*cked 😂
I take my hat off to those of you managing 3+ kids and jobs as well

Don't count yourself out of the promotion just yet OP. OK you won't be able to get the covering role, the timing doesn't work out. But many times when the role eventually is advertised, it doesn't end up going to the person that covered. Sometimes they weren't so great and it's understandable, other times they were good and the decision leaves everyone scratching their heads. But it's far from a done deal.

Thanks, it’s interesting to hear how other families manage FT careers.

Out of interest do nannies look after kids when kids are unwell or need picking up from school? I feel like I’m always on call for this, especially for youngest who gets sent home from nursery for things like a grazed knee or slight cold!

Unfortunately neither of us can plan far in advance due to the nature of DH’s profession, so I try to fit mine around his. Mine requires me to be physically present, which is mostly fine (now that I’ve reduced to very part time term time hours)… but still causes a problem with my work if I have to take unexpected leave for ill DC or zoom off before my normal finish time because one of them bumped their head etc. As DH is the main earner I’ve accepted my profession comes second to his on a practical level; without his salary we wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage, bills etc! Eg I’d never expect him to cut his working day short to pick up a child early when I can do it.

As DH is the main earner I’ve accepted my profession comes second to his on a practical level; without his salary we wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage, bills etc! Eg I’d never expect him to cut his working day short to pick up a child early when I can do it.

I often wonder if it's easier to fall into these stereotypical roles when the man is the higher earner. I am the main earner in our family, and bring in several multiples of DH's salary, but it never occurred to me that I shouldn't do my fair share of looking after dd when she was ill etc. Tbh, it was always easier for me to be flexible in a more senior role in any case.

I get the sense that some women see it as inevitable that the lower earner has to pick up all the child-related slack, but if both partners are full time, I don't really see why it has to be that way. I wanted to be hands on and involved with my dc, so I worked around it. I reckon most of the men who claim that they couldn't possibly take time off with a sick dc are just saying that because they don't want to and don't see it as their responsibility.

@AlexaShutUp I have to say, also as the higher earner, I agree.

All the women I know who work full time in senior roles also do their fair share of illness care pick ups etc.

Yet the men 'just couldn't possibly fit in' or 'couldn't possible ever have to stay home with sick kids'.

There's very few jobs where you can't ever do some childcare.

@AlexaShutUp

As DH is the main earner I’ve accepted my profession comes second to his on a practical level; without his salary we wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage, bills etc! Eg I’d never expect him to cut his working day short to pick up a child early when I can do it.

I often wonder if it's easier to fall into these stereotypical roles when the man is the higher earner. I am the main earner in our family, and bring in several multiples of DH's salary, but it never occurred to me that I shouldn't do my fair share of looking after dd when she was ill etc. Tbh, it was always easier for me to be flexible in a more senior role in any case.

I get the sense that some women see it as inevitable that the lower earner has to pick up all the child-related slack, but if both partners are full time, I don't really see why it has to be that way. I wanted to be hands on and involved with my dc, so I worked around it. I reckon most of the men who claim that they couldn't possibly take time off with a sick dc are just saying that because they don't want to and don't see it as their responsibility.

I agree entirely. I earn less than DH because I stayed in the field for which we both qualified, and he took a big leap sideways into an entirely different, far more lucrative one, and is now a CEO. However, it never occurred to either of us that I would ‘naturally’ treat my career as a lesser priority when we had DS. Our relative earnings are irrelevant to my desire to remain FT and be married to someone who is a fully hands-on father. He wants to do as much as he can, therefore he moves things around, ends board meetings on time so he can pick DS up from after school, takes time off when he’s sick etc.

You can’t have it all but you have a choice. Maternity leave isn’t compulsory save for a couple of weeks. In lots of countries shorter maternity is the norm.
Have a few weeks off go back and baby cared for by your husband or a nanny.
You’ll get experience and hopefully job that benefits your family and you longterm. You’ve already presumably had 2 maternity leaves and experienced that, circumstances change.

You only need to legally take 2 weeks off (4 if work in a factory) so no difference to a holiday. Won’t impact your work opportunities at all if that’s what you want.

I think in traditional jobs it's very much geared towards male or non parent success and it's very hard to "have it all". I really think the easiest way to be able to balance career and children is being self employed or running your own business, as then you get to call the shots and can work wherever/whenever you want as early as you want but keep control of the flexibility. But I know it is incredibly difficult to become a business owner regardless so not an easy solution.

@user1464279374

I think in traditional jobs it's very much geared towards male or non parent success and it's very hard to "have it all". I really think the easiest way to be able to balance career and children is being self employed or running your own business, as then you get to call the shots and can work wherever/whenever you want as early as you want but keep control of the flexibility. But I know it is incredibly difficult to become a business owner regardless so not an easy solution.

Or maybe it's time that we changed our understanding of how flexible "traditional" jobs can be so that both male and female parents are able to do their fair share?

@AlexaShutUp absolutely! I'm a big campaigner for that within my industry. But change is sadly slow...