Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Recently I took the opportunity to ask some leading questions of women who have had to make some significant choices in their life respecting their careers and motherhood.  I believe my generation of girls / women were the first to really put some pressure on to take up a full time job after high school and many more to continue their education with university degrees.  Prior to this time it was generally those with money and with a really strong drive to choose a professional career such as medicine or law.  Even engineering was still considered a mainly “male” job and it was still another decade or two before you really saw women entering this field.

But once in the work force couples became dependent on that second pay cheque and when the “biological clock” started ticking (and this was earlier for most women simply working a regular type of job such as a secretary or clerk) there was considerable discussion as to how the family would handle not only the economy but the woman’s sense of empowerment in having a job or career.

Speaking with one professional she said she had to make the choice with being available to her daughter which took a hit on her career as a university professor working for tenure.  She had to slow down in working on her thesis but even so when she did work on it her daughter would ask her “is this a working on the thesis night?”  Another professional chose to leave the upbringing of her children to her husband since his career was somewhat less demanding than her high ambitions.  Curiously enough her sons felt that engineering was a “woman’s job” while their dad, a teacher and the cook in the house, were manly work.  Even in one generation the roles can flip, which is a good thing I believe.

My mother has said for years that the only one who has really benefited from working women is that tax man.  He now gets income tax from females as well as males.

But for families and especially women it is a really tough decision to know how to “have it all”, a career and motherhood, without feeling the guilt.  Interestingly, men still say that “they have to babysit the kids” if the mother is working late.  Moms never say they have to babysit their own kids, this is called raising the kids.  Not sure why men aren’t called out on this more often. 

One has to admire the resilience of Working Mothers everywhere, it cannot be easy, even when they make it look easy.  My hat goes off to you.

 

“At work you think of the children you have left at home.  At home you think of the work you’ve left unfinished.  Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself.  Your heart is rent”  Golda Meir