Being Mr Mum: Will my career suffer?
Thinking of putting your career on hold to be primary care giver of your kids? There is a lot to consider, but if you can, just do it!
Can I whole heartedly answer that right now? This story is the start of my journey, it’s the lead up to day zero, the first day of the 18 weeks leave from work to be primary care giver of my 2 boys. An 8 month old and a 4 and 1/2 year old that are just the best! (biased much?). So, what I am saying is that I can’t answer just yet, but what I can do is give you some of my perspective and thoughts that you might consider in your journey.
My story is also based on what I have observed in my wife’s career and how she feels about it, observations of friends, family and the world in general. I like to observe.
My wife and I are both career driven people, but not the kind where our kids are a burden (you know the type). Hence the decision for either of us to take long leave was not easy, I wrote about it in the decision journey story. For our first child, we were very stereotypical, as with most mums my wife just took as much leave as she could. No questions asked. That’s mums for you!
In our careers, we both strive to advance as much as we can, we try to enjoy our work (most of the time) and get fulfilment by contributing to something. And we both continuously undertake further studies when we can, and work to improve and better ourselves in many other ways. All in all, I think we are a bit of a power couple. Our careers are important to both of us and part of who we are. You can see then why there would be hesitation, even fear to take time off and look after the kids full time.
What is there to fear?
There were mixed emotions overall. I was optimistic that I would get to spend quality time with the little ones, but that was contrasted with the fear of the unknown impact to my career. I’m sure you will also have some of these thoughts swirl around in your head too.
- Will my work colleagues and bosses forget me?
- Will I be overlooked for future promotions or good projects?
- After months of cleaning dirty bottoms, will I forget how to do my job well… at all?
- After months of talking babyish, will I forget how to have serious interactions with adults? (on second thought, this might improve given some people in the workforce!)
My wife’s experience was very formative in my decision to just do it. She noticed subtle things that happened when she took a year off for the first boy, and then 8 months for the second. I can best summarise them as subtle but negative overall. Nothing overt, but just opportunities missed or delayed. And I think it comes from a subconscious bias that everyone has. Male, female or otherwise, we all have them, society has pre-programmed them in. Thanks for nothing society! The mum will expectantly be the one that stays home and look after the new born. Or she might even have more kids and take more time off later. These thoughts are prevalent and impact subconscious biases.
Unfortunately, it is not an unfounded fear, and a source of career angst that career-women face every day. It will probably continue to be so in the future. Arnold and the movie Junior notwithstanding, it’s a fact of nature which of the sexes gives birth after all, but it shouldn't have to translate into who takes the career hit. Scandinavian countries have made huge inroads into primary care giver leave. A recent chat with a colleague from Sweden, educated me quite a lot on this. After congratulating me, he asked, “How long are you taking off?”. His face said it all when he heard me say, “Everything I can, 18 weeks. Great huh?”. A mix of sadness and laughter, “Oh that’s ok, I took a year for my kids. And so did my wife”. Wow, is all I could think after that… how hard would it be to move to Sweden…? Where we live, Perth Western Australia, is making its own little baby steps into this area for the better. As I said, my company is allowing a generous 18 weeks leave at full pay, which is far better than most. I had the means and opportunity, what's there to fear, right?
I can’t recall if it was a slow, dawning realisation, like a sunrise, or fast like a tonne of bricks falling, but in my discussions with my wife, I realised that this bunch of fears about my career was not ones I nor 99% of dads out there think about when a kid is on the horizon. (don’t fact check me here, I made that figure up, but I'm sure it’s a lot!) It’s just assumed that as a bloke, you would work through it and the mum would stay at home. Perhaps she would even decide to give up her day job and stay at home full time. I have seen this more often than not, and sadly it is often financially driven. Day care is very expensive where we live, and it’s cheaper to just not work.
We made the decision together that we would no longer let my wife’s career suffer. She would go back to continue building her empire and I would take up my company on their super generous (well this side of Scandinavia anyway) daddy leave package. After all sharing is caring and with the second boy it was time for me to take a small hit.
Can I actually do it?
The comparisons between full time work and care-giver to children is not straight forward. Mainly due to the fact that child care is much easier. NOT! (do I even have to say that was sarcasm?) Don't be fooled, my greatest fear outside of career stuff is whether I have what it takes to do this, the patience, the care, the lack of selfishness. You know, all the stuff that is part and parcel of being a mum.
In comparing the two, I would say that work is more about strategic longer term stress, the kind that wakes you in the middle of the night with thoughts like, “have I resolved that issue”, “have I planned that bit of work properly”, “how will that difficult discussion with the vendor need to be handled?”. Your mind just has to solve those problems at 3 am, right?
The care giver role has more immediate stress. At home, the baby is what keeps you awake at night, the issues needing resolving is whether you have enough diapers in the drawer to tie you over until the next shopping excursion, or can you do the required research (googling) on parenting while they nap. The issues are probably much dearer to your heart but are usually short term and immediate. You are kept busy minute by minute. Work is slower paced but the long-term thinking eats away at you. Oh, and depending on where you work, there is no office politics and career planning related stress. Don't get me wrong, caring for kids has long term stress too. Lots of second-guessing your own choices and stressing if your kids will turn out ok based on those choices. It comes with the territory of having kids regardless of being primary care giver or the bread earner. Hence, I haven't really talked about that.
Time will no longer be yours
Remember at work all the times when you just arrange a coffee catch up that suited you? Simply check your calendar… no meetings… schedule it in… done… just do it.
This will become a different ball game. You will need to check the sleeping schedule… can we fit it in between naps… can we travel there and back in the time… is all the stuff packed… did they sleep well the night before… and finally if they wake from a nap at the right time… done… just do it, but also GO, GO, GO! The window of opportunity is small. And give lots and lots of caveats to whoever you are catching up with about being late or not arriving at all. It can all turn pear shaped at a moment’s notice. Your kids don’t give two hoots about your schedule and planning. Remember what I said about time not being yours? During the naps you are preparing the outing backpack full of food, snacks, spare clothes, diapers, water, toys, and the magic fix all tool, baby wipes!
Hmm, staying at work is sounding more attractive…
What to consider at work?
Everyone’s work situation is different and leave packages vary from company to company. In preparing I sought out and chatted to as many colleagues as I could that had either done the same thing, were thinking about it, or were not even interested. I wanted to know the why and why not for all of them. What I discovered is that although some people had issues with hard line and old school bosses that made it difficult, most of the road blocks were self-imposed. Ranging from, “It’s not a good time now, it’s way too busy”. Guess what, it’s always going to be busy, that’s why they employ you! To work. All the way to fear driven ones as I mention before. In my case, my bosses were good throughout the process, but I also made it so they couldn’t say no. I gave practically 9 months’ notice and I was very proactive in finding a clone that would fill my role while I was on leave. Obviously not a real clone, that’s illegal at the time of writing… and not possible this side of sci-fi.
Also, make sure you plan for the return while you are away. I learned this from my wife. Keep in touch with your colleagues, the boss and the politics if need be. It will make it seem like you never left and should alleviate many of the career fears too.
Just do it
I honestly think that even though there are fears that may materialise, I started to see only an upside. In the long run it will make you better, and I think it is already making me better. Better at skills that will be useful at work, like time management and forethought, like being able to juggle multiple tasks while under huge stress, like being adaptable to unpredictable change. Most importantly, being better emotionally satisfied to have had a front row seat to watch your kids grow up. These skills should be sought after, and I hope society will come around to this understanding. More precisely, that more working dads will get onto this way of thinking and take a career hit for their wives/partners. Its free on the job training on transferable skills and a truckload of priceless bonding with the kids to boot! How can you not, just do it!
