Can we have it all?
We’re on a mission to find out.
My husband Tyler and I share a desk at work, but we’re never there at the same time. On any given weekday, one of us is working at Medium. The other person is at home, taking care of Alina, our 10-week-old baby girl.
Let me say this right off the bat: working while you have a young child at home is a personal choice and—though I’m back at work—I respect those who provide full-time childcare. My first few days back at work were like a vacation from the demands of an infant—stay-at-home parents deserve six-figure salaries, a backrub, and a freaking medal.
For many years, I assumed that I would need to take an extended career hiatus when I became a mom. People like to tell you what you can or can’t do after having a baby, causing anxiety and stress in women of child-bearing age: “You can have it all, just not at the same time,” and “You can go back to work after the kids are in school,” or “You don’t really know how you’ll feel when your hormones kick in.”
There seems to be an enormous amount of judging and guilt when it comes to staying at home or going back to work. Parents who work feel guilty that they don’t spend enough time with their kids, and those who don’t work feel guilty that they aren’t contributing financially or worry that others will think they are lazy.
People often ask if women can have it all—family and career—but much less frequently consider that question about men. The underlying assumption is that men can have it all, and women are the ones who have to choose. At a glance, that seems unfair to women, but if you take a deeper look, men in their conventional roles don’t have it easy either: a traditional provider role can bring a lot of financial anxiety. They may also yearn to be a more involved and present parent, but feel the necessity to work all the time to ensure career stability.
Something Tyler and I ignored outright is the conventional notion that women are instinctually better at taking care of babies. Neither of us had changed diapers before, or really held an infant at all. Aside from the magical ability to produce milk, as far as we are concerned, we are equally capable parents. Society is unfair to fathers in their depiction of them as bumbling idiots, a depiction that probably makes men question themselves and defer to the mother as the “expert.” These are intelligent grown men. Like anyone learning something new—including new mothers!—they just need the time to make some mistakes without someone constantly pointing out what they’ve done wrong. And anyways, if you don’t know how to do something related to baby care, I guarantee you can find it on YouTube.
When Sheryl Sandberg or Marissa Mayer talk about work/life balance, everyone rolls their eyes because those women can afford to hire all the help they need. It all seemed so hard until I read this book, Getting to 50/50, which showed me normal everyday couples who have found non-traditional arrangements and feel fulfilled in their work and family lives. When I excitedly told Tyler about this novel idea, he seemed genuinely surprised. Of course both our careers are equally important, he said. I am grateful to have a partner like him in life. At the same time, what does it say about our society when a man like that is an exception to be grateful for?
Neither of us is a Sandberg or Mayer-level executive, but we know that we’re privileged. When I found out I was pregnant, someone I respect advised me to keep the news a secret at work for as long as possible—until I was showing and couldn’t hide it any longer. Her advice was well-intentioned; in many corporate environments, announcing a pregnancy means not only that you get the shitty projects but also that you lose value as an employee. I ignored her advice and told everyone at Medium when I was twelve weeks along. As I suspected, I encountered nothing but overwhelming support to facilitate a seamless transition into parenthood and then back into the workplace.
Medium has a generous maternity leave policy (4 weeks before delivery, 14 weeks after). With a bit of creative flexibility, that policy has allowed us to both work and provide full-time care for Alina for the first few months of her life. We were both home together for the first six weeks before we settled into our current schedule of tag-teaming childcare and work. I work three days a week in the office and take maternity leave the other two days; Tyler is in the office the two days I am not and works one additional day spread out over his at-home days.
When we’re both home, we always have someone who’s on duty to take care of Alina. This has saved us a lot of tension around who-did-more and I-woke-up-last-time. In the evenings, whoever isn’t working the next day is on duty, allowing the person going to work to enjoy a good night’s rest. We’re tired, but it’s been more manageable than I initially expected.
I know things will change as we figure out what works for us and what doesn’t. We’re on a mission to find out if we can both have it all, where “it all” is something we—not society—define. People say that women can’t have it all, but maybe as a team, Tyler and I can.
