Children Don’t have to Kill Your Career (or Vice Versa)

Why should your job dictate your life? I saw a recent study which said that nearly half of all women scientists found their career kept them from having as many children as they had wanted. That is one bad decision.

I polled around 100 working women and asked them about the impact of more than one child on their work. Here’s what I asked: “For those working women who have more than one child, was the additional child a much bigger burden to manage (after just one)? If yes, rate it on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being much more work and 1 being not much more."

The answers were all over the board. Here are some of the ratings and related comments I received:

(2)-"The more the merrier (with three kids)."

(2)-"Sure, the schedules had to be a little less flexible (meals, bedtime, child care), but there was less that was new to us as parents. We already had the "stuff" and had figured out a thing or two. As the second child got older and more communicative and mobile, the two could play together and learn important concepts like sharing, being nice, etc.(with two kids)."

Another rated it (2)- "If you are organized and detail-oriented, it is not a big burden(with two kids)."

Certainly more children bring more challenges. One woman with four kids said, “I would say it was a (2) with one (3) with three and an 11 with four.”  

The kids spacing impacts the burden. One women recognized this and replied, “I had the babysitter, I tell people laughingly, and then I had the baby. My two children were 9 years apart.”

The burden changes over time.  One woman answered, “I think the score changes along the journey. When my second baby was born I would have given it an (8) for about the first four months. I had moved cities and had no support structures around me and my two year old struggled for the first two months with the adjustment. But now we are nine months down the track and I would only score it a (2) now.”

What concerns me about the study is that talented professional women are making choices about limiting their families by relying on bad data. You may have heard the saying, “When you  need something done, give it to a busy person.” It’s the same thing with working women, whether you’re in science or not, and have a family.  Busy women get their husbands to help, hire some tasks out, ignore some tasks and just figure it out and get more done.

Are kids more work? Yes. They are also well worth it. (Maybe not financially!) What they bring to your life is something that work can’t replace.

I challenge all women professionals to think about your life without your children. I’ll bet your life is much richer because of your children. I could not imagine the void without my daughter.

Don’t limit your family because of work. Kids will make you more organized, more empathetic, and more grounded. Isn’t that good for work? Then when your kids are old enough to tell you how proud they are of you and your work, you’ll know that you made the right decision.

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Maura Schreier-Fleming is a sales strategist and founder of Best@Selling, a sales training and consulting company. She wrote Monday Morning Sales Tips and works with sales professionals who want to sell more and get more business