Dear Twenty-Something-Woman-Who-Might-Want-Kids-But-Who-Might-Not
or just
Dear Twenty-Something-Woman,
How are you going to balance a family and your career?
Even if you’re nowhere near ready to have a child, even if you don’t have a partner to provide the necessary parts, even if you don’t have a career to balance:
How are you going to balance a family and your career?
That’s a question we are posed with constantly. Instances in media, literature, and society bring the issue to our attention and make it impossible to forget. I know! I’ve tried! Yet here I am, sitting with a cup of coffee, trying to articulate how this is an issue that the world refuses to let me take off my mind.
Take Grace Hopper, the world’s largest gathering of women in computing, as an example: “The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) is a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront” is its formal description [Wikipedia].
The first time I went (2010? 2011?), it felt to me that all the talks were divided into two categories: getting a job (for students) and balancing your job with your personal life (for older women). Talking to my friends who went last year, they had the same perception years later, and it made them less motivated to go this year. Why? Because there were very few talks relevant to just them — just twenty-something-females who want to be better at their jobs and find a successful career (NOT find a successful career while balancing a family).
There is a distinction but no one seems to see it.
So you can see why it is impossible to be a woman in your twenties and not be thinking about a family. Even conferences targeted for women in their field of choice end up spending half the time bringing this up as an issue that must be tackled in Keynotes, in special presentations, in the talks in between sessions!
And I’m not saying that it’s not a hot topic. Apple & Facebook wouldn’t be providing services to help its female employees freeze their eggs if this was an issue that could be swept under the rug (and I have some more strong opinions about that, which is a story for another day).
But there is a time to be thinking about it, and that’s not now for most of us.
I’m 24, and I have been in a stable relationship with my partner for almost five years. And I’m nowhere near ready to start planning for a family! I’m going to HBS next year and I want to have a job post graduate school for at least a couple years before shaking that situation up… so I, personally, am not planning to have kids for another 5 years, minimum. Then, why on earth is this question constantly being posed to me? Why do I find myself pondering the situation when I am so far from it?
Because, again, this question about “balancing family?” is everywhere!!!
In my opinion, if you’re in your twenties and not planning to have a child in the next year or so, stop spending time thinking about balancing your career and your family life and just focus on your career. You’ll never get back that time to 100% dedicate your life to your job. ALSO, there is no way that you thinking about it now is going to save you any hardship when you actually do need to start thinking about it. It’s just causing you unnecessary stress to figure out how to become an “ambitious mother” when (trust me!) there’s more than enough agony just trying to figure out how to be “ambitious”.
Don’t even bother asking the question how to balance being ambitious and being super-mom if you don’t have a future family that you’re explicitly planning for. There is no way your male counterpart is thinking about it, and while women do need to ponder it more, they don’t need to think about it that much more, especially when you have other priorities to be anxious about (like how much money is in your bank account, if your manager likes you, if you like your job, what you’re going to have for dinner this week, are you ever going to work out, etc.)
You can’t prepare for how you’re going to raise your hypothetical family five years from now because you have no idea how supportive your workplace is going to be for that or where you’ll be in your career at that time or even who you’ll be planning that family with. You can’t prepare for a kid and family you don’t have or are imminently planning to have. It’s impossible! So why agonize?!
So to end this short rant about how I don’t want to think about balancing my non-existent family with my very existent career even though everything around me is telling me I have to be thinking about it… I’ve made the following infographic: (a bit cheeky and haphazardly made, but you get the point)
I do want to emphasize it’s not bad to think about kids and a career but it would be nice to stop dwelling on “balancing family” if its not relevant to you (relevance defined in the infographic).
For soon-to-be-moms or family-planning females though, I really enjoyed the mother’s response to the original “Dear Mom” post, and I think it is very relevant to career women who are currently trying to have kids and families.
It’s nice to know that there are some amazing women out there who have already pioneered this path and made it a little easier for me if and when I do decide to start heading that way. I love reading about these women. Unfortunately, not so much love for those posts about girls like me who have no imminent plans to get a family started but are forced to be thinking about it. Mostly because I know that I am thinking about it and I really shouldn’t be either, but this article has more than plenty beaten the head over that particular nail.
Every time it does pop up in my mind, I just try to tell myself, there’s more than enough time to be contemplating that future so let’s not do it today.
Instead, let’s say thank you to all the moms out there who did balance their careers with having a family (my mom included — she worked really hard to make it work and I only hope that I can do it just as well)! I love reading about your experiences and I applaud you for your awe-inspiring efforts! You all are great role models for women like me, once we’re ready for it.
