Did I ruin my career by having children?

[prettydesertflower]

It just feels women get the short end of the stick. I always struggled to balance climbing the ladder with being a decent parent. I never was sure I got it right.

Then someone sends me this more or less confirming we can’t have it all and it makes me think what was the point of all the struggle if we are going to end up poorer in the long term anyway.

Am I being unreasonable to think no matter how hard you try to climb the career ladder, you will loose out financially if you have kids?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgq4x697q5o

This is such a hard situation for you, and one which heavily skews towards mothers, statistically the dads often leave.

I tanked my career to have kids, my priorities changed and my children had difficult beginnings and subsequent additional (mild, and mitigated by my spending more time and effort with them) needs. I can’t regret it, given my options at the time: my now older kids are thriving, but a 2-year leave of absence for maternity (unpaid) & p/t return option would have enabled me to stay in my former career. I’m retraining, starting over.

I had my first at 25 surprise pregnancy, I had only been in my role for a year and hardly started my career. I had a year off, made redundant and was terrified that could be it for me. I found another role, daughter was in nursery. I earned nearly nothing, but I worked hard balancing motherhood and working for 5 years before feeling financially in a good place enough for another maternity leave. I then went back to FT, advanced careeer to then be in a position to work shorter hours when youngest started school.
Once she started secondary school back to FT.

All of these are choices, I’ve made. Yes, I earned very little the paying nursery but it enable me to get the trust from work to then go part time. My husband and I are a team he may have also hurt his career as he helped with school pick ups and nursery emergencies. But by both of us sharing the role, we both have a wonderful close relationships with our children and also have equally achieved an ok pension pot (both of us) and at fairly good points in our careers.

I'm not sure it's a left-wing thing. It's possibly a feminist thing, but mainly it comes from other women who have either managed to have it all themselves, and don't understand why others didn't, or resent what their own outcomes have been.

There was a female headteacher of a large outstanding state school in my area who would always drop into her Open Day speeches that she was a single parent of two children who both had marvellous outcomes, therefore implying she would not be empathetic to excuses about lost homework or missed parents evenings or uniform transgressions. She was a marvel, but we can't expect everyone to have that much energy and grit - many of us are lesser mortals. The constant pressure to "have it all" is just a form of finger pointing and should be called out for it.

Technically men pursue full time careers and raise children all the time though 😂

I personally agree about wanting to actually, you know, see my DC once in a while, so I’ve moved away from demanding big jobs and I’m going as PT as possible after mat leave. But men never (feel the need to) do that IME!

That said, when I started working part time, I expected that her father would compensate, but that never happened. He has lived his life without compromising and when we both retire I’ll be poor and he won’t be
Whatever the reasons why he didn't compensate, you still made the choice to go PT.

I am an example of a single mum (when children were 3 years old and 18 months) with no help from family at all (single child, parents living abroad) not their dad who only saw them every Saturday during the day, and I made it work. My choices were to work FT, and took 4 promotions over the next 20 years. My children were in nursery and then before and after school clubs, usually 8 to 5:30. They were alone to get up in the mornings and get to school from the age of 10 and same after-school. It was the only option.

They are now in their 20s. Both excelled at school, went to Uni, and are now both working in very good jobs. I am very close to them. I asked them a few times if they would have liked a different childhood and they have both said no. They said that my focusing on my career meant that there was money for them to have many opportunities. They did activities, we went on nice holidays, they went on school trips. We lived in a nice neighborhood and they went to good schools.

Our time together was reduced in time compared to many but not in quality because it was special.

I fully get that this is far from easy, and indeed, I found it very hard at a number of stages (mainly when facing redundancies), but the point is that it is not impossible and many other women do manage it as well and better.

It really really does come
to choice.

Every time I've been turned turn for a promotion or a management training course it has been by other women with fewer children than me (I have two).

It does come down to choice, and it's obviously great that we do have more choice now. However, I'd also add that for a lot of families, both parents do need to work. I couldn't just choose to be a sahm for example. We'd be broke 😂

In an ideal world, I'd love to be a sahm. I can definitely see a lot of benefits from having one parent at home. But just not possible for most families now

But to an extent there is a ceiling I’ve hit now whereby if I wanted to apply for the next promotion things would hit a stumbling block

Same here, I've progressed since having DC - did an MSc when DS1 was a toddler, and have had a promotion while DS2 was nursery age but I don't want to go any further...I don't want the expectation or after hours calls or short notice travel. Though in my case I have imposed the ceiling on myself, I don't want to do any more juggling than we already do.

I did but my daughter is an adult now. Had to give my career and worse final scheme pension up.

@vivainsomnia i agree but only up to a point. Her dad refused to compromise and made it clear that caring for her was my problem to solve, so for her well-being I had to keep my hours shorter. As a teacher I did struggle to collect her from after school club before they shut- she and the leader would be there in their coats because the journey wasn’t doable in the time I had available, and my workplace refused to mitigate that even by 10 minutes, and that was a factor in me taking a more part time job on minimum wage. So there is an element of Hobson’s choice as well.

Other factors include where you live- we are rural so commutes are longer and cost more (car and fuel rather than bus), jobs scarcer, and properties more expensive- and the parent’s resilience because of unrelated factors. It’s not such a matter of choice when the choice is forced by so many factors.

All life choices come with compromises. Unfortunately lots of us are currently being told that if we try hard enough we can ‘have it all’. Very few people can.
If you want a family then one parent (at least) is going to have to take a step back in their career. At least for a while. The other option being very intensive child care and perhaps not a lot of family time.
Which parent takes the step back is the more flexible part.

You changed it by having kids, that’s for sure. I went to 4 days for 5/6 years which my make managers took to mean I could have a promotion of any kind as I was ‘part-time’.
I don’t regret it though, those managers all eventually got made redundant, I’m still
at the company, and there’s not a single day I think that I wished I had have worked more over having a better balance at home.

They say that no-one on their death bed wishes they’d worked more… only that they’d spend more time with the people they love.
For me work, while it can be satisfying is a means to an end and if I had enough money to walk out tomorrow I wouldn’t give it a 2nd thought!

It depends on individual circumstances.

I had my first (and only) child at 36, once I’d already established my career. I took only 6 months out because DP took shared parental leave for the next 6.

Now that we’re both back at work, DP works 30 hours a week locally and I’m able to focus on my job. My employer is also flexible with home working and scheduling.

I’n extremely fortunate though. Many women don’t have it this good.

Both of mine were born with disabilities and I've had to be their carer,so yeah having children definitely ruined my career as I've not been able to work since my eldest son was born 27 years ago .

I think it’s becoming more common for men to make career compromises and prioritise childcare.

My DP has gone down to 30 hours so he can do drop offs and pick ups. He and several other men I know took long periods of shared parental leave.

It’s certainly not the norm, though!

Exactly. That graph to me looks like DM works FT before baby, then goes back PT, which is the case for many women, by choice. Most couples go into parenthood having done the maths and worked out what is going to work best for them, based on lots of different variables around what they both want, what childcare they have available (if any), what their salaries are, what their career tracks look like, housing costs and many other things. The fact is that having a baby has a cost to each family and that cost is a major factor in why so many young people seem to be deciding not to have DC at all. The UK system is just not set up to support and encourage people to procreate and actually, at the heart of all this, is the cost and inflexibility of childcare.

I'm a mental health nurse and my career isn't affected. I still rose to mid point on my banding whilst on Mat leave. My manager is really open to flexible working hours. She has no issues with you taking carers leave. And if you ask in advance and don't take the piss, she's quite happy for you to attend things like sports day, etc, in work time.

I have the opposite issue in that I work full time and would desperately love to drop a day, but I can't afford it.

Personally, though, I’d never even consider having kids with a man who wouldn’t. It’s all very well saying “men’s careers aren’t affected”, but if we just take that as an unchangeable fact that’s how it’ll stay. It’s a choice, just like women dropping hours is a choice.

Yes, in an ideal world men would just do it without prompting but if you’re a straight woman who wants kids but doesn’t want to tank your career I do think it’s important to make this very clear early in the relationship. Tell your partner that you’ll accept nothing less than BOTH of you dropping a day a week (or whatever your preferred set-up is). Have that discussion early on to scope out whether your partner wants to be an equal parent.

I know this is all very easy to say in theory, and that things change when you’ve had a baby and hormones are raging and men can agree to one thing pre-kids then turn into arseholes post-birth. Another factor is the way society is structured. The cost of childcare and short paternity leaves for a start. Low earners may be forced into being a SAHP simply because they can’t afford nursery and that’s completely wrong. Personally I think the money paid out in child benefit would be better spent funding free childcare to enable real choice for everyone.

And we need a massive culture change so that the default position is for men to be active, involved parents and also experience a lag in their careers. Too much of this research only talks about what women do, when kids have two parents. I’d like to see if the same trajectory plays out in same-sex couples - does one also tend to see a loss of earnings?

I work in Education in a senior leadership role. For many years, across multiple schools, I've noticed that the men i've worked with who are in senior leadership positions often have young children yet they are always at school before me and stay late into the evening, never take a day off to look after a sick child, will volunteer to go on school trips or residentials and still manage to have time consuming hobbies like golf, cycling or fishing. Whereas the women I know in senior leader roles usually either don't have kids, or their kids are grown up but the few who do have school aged children seem perpetually stressed, running around like headless chickens trying to juggle work with picking up and dropping off, looking after sick kids, sorting out medical appointments and costumes for dress up days etc. I never hear the men I work with talk about those things. They talk about their children, sure but the expectation seems to be that as long as they occasionally spend time with their kids that's good enough, because they're in a high pressure job. They don't seem to be responsible for any of the day to day mental load stuff. Whereas the parenting bar for women in the same high pressure jobs seems to be set much higher.

The way to do this is if your partner doesn't believe that their career is more important than yours, and that childcare is a shared cost.
My DH does the housework he is supposed to- he doesn't need a list from me. He knows who is doing what after school club, handles a lot of the school paperwork. He doesn't assume that handling Christmas or birthdays is my headache. He cooks every other day. He takes time off when the kids are ill. Has it affected his career progression? Of course. Just like having a kid has affected mine. But he's never assumed that I would want to stay at home as compared to him (and I have never assumed that he would want to be a stay at home dad).
Both of us have worked compressed hours so our kids were in childcare 3 days a week.

The women who 'have it all' almost universally have a supportive partner.

The thing is that almost always you will have one person earning more than the other. This being the case means that actually that persons career is more important for the well being of the family. I believe that the load of family life is very evenly split in my household. My DH does plenty of household chores and knows as much about the children’s needs and lives as I do. He takes to school and clubs etc… BUT he also out earns me by about a factor of 3. I will never earn what he does in my career, no matter what I do. It would make no sense in our family to have him work less etc or put his job at risk.
I strongly believe that in order to have a strong family unit, bringing up loved and well adjusted kids, sacrifices and compromises have to be made by both parents. We’re just not very good at accepting that nowadays.

We have to carry the child and give birth. Then our bodies have to heal, as well as nurture the baby. None of this is optional.

Men aren't physically affected by becoming a parent. So they can carry on with their job almost uninterrupted. That's not possible for us.

So having children will affect our careers.

We could insist that some adjustments should be made, some concessions to account for the time we are away from the office. But equally, why should someone who chooses to have a baby be given what might be perceived as an unfair advantage over another woman who hasn't had a baby?

We could think, well unless we make it easier for parents, there won't be as many children and consequently less tax payers in the future. Therefore we owe it to society to support new parents.

There’s two sides really.

I think women entering the workforce en mass was liberating, but at the same time we didn't anticipate the consequences. Rampant inflation and the difficulties of family dynamics when both parents were working.

Wealth comes in different forms. The one form of wealth many people focus on is money and riches. I think people ought to readjust how they think about wealth in order to pursue it. If you know what you want and have the means to chase after it, then life makes a lot more sense.

Children bring a lot of meaning to your life. Family is a form of wealth. A job is a job. Money is money. Being financially stable and solvent is another form of wealth. But that kind of wealth can be devalued, if not cut off entirely. It's a very volatile form of wealth. Your job can also be devalued and you can be replaced. The company can fall on hard times and decide they can't afford you anymore. Your children won't decide to get rid of you as their mum (unless you're a really terrible mum).

I've almost lost my job twice, both times through company restructures. The latest one was in 2023 as I was about to have an egg collection. Imagine putting down £4k of savings on egg harvesting while also knowing your job is on the chopping board. The stress and anxiety was intolerable. Fortunately I dodged the chop. All but one of the embryos was put back in btw, they all failed.

Children also grow up in the blink of an eye and you don't want to be that woman who put so much passion and energy into her career that she practically ignored and forgot about her children along the way, and now they're all grown up and disinterested in you. If you exist purely just to make money, and you're happy with that, then fine. Other people want to live and make the best of this short life granted to us.

It's possible to have a high-flying career and be a mum at the same time, but it is exhausting because you're not meant to have both. Many career women will never show it because admitting to that will inevitably shatter the glossy image of perfect harmony many have conjured in their minds.

Well we simply cannot be in two places at once. But I don't agree with being the children’s primary carer is some type of unfair punishment.

It is what it is. We carry them, birth them, feed them, and nurture them. Our role simply isn't the same as dad’s generally. I want to be my children’s primary carer.

I could not work full-time and raise my kids. So I work part-time from home and suffer the financial consequences of that because if you have to pick financial abundance OR attentive, present, not tired out parents then I believe the latter takes precedence.

Ideally you would have both and if I had my time again I would focus solely on becoming financially well off early on and then work part-time to raise my kids. Really though I'm having that without becoming financially well off early on so hay ho.

I'll go back to work when my youngest is older and I'm upskilling in preparation for this. I'm doing courses and learning skills and filling gaps in my work history and the job descriptions and person specs I'm looking at.

I'll be in my 50s when I go back into the workplace with my new skills and I'm not one iota worried about being pushed aside for younger people.

If I wanted to climb some corporate ladder I'd not have had kids because I wouldn't want to see my children for an hour a day most days and be totally knackered all the time and have kids who have little connection to me and don’t trust or listen to me because I spent their entire childhood in an office.