Career/ baby/ balance
Becoming a parent can be a huge identity change. The impact of parenthood on day to day working patterns and overarching career plans is just one aspect of this. I caught up with Dr Annabelle Painter on all things career/ baby balance. Here are the highlights from our chat.
Priorities change…and will continue to evolve
Becoming a parent throws a whole new variable into the mix when it comes to juggling priorities. Time and energy spent childrearing will inevitably nudge other commitments down the list. However, how much bandwidth it takes up in relation to other aspects of life will differ person to person, and vary with time, as well as depending on what else is going on in life. Learning to reflect and reassess where everything fits in to a new balancing act is important in navigating the change that comes with being a new parent. Time spent thinking about where things are now, what’s working and what could be streamlined for the foreseeable future and longer term is time well spent. Making it work is an iterative process and what works now may not work six months down the line as the variables evolve.
Flexibility
While many of us spend time thinking about career flexibility in terms of opportunities for remote work, hybrid work, working less than full time or compressed hours, overarching career flexibility is another aspect to think about. In the context of having a baby, a career that allows someone to step out of the workplace for months at a time for parental leave, take blocks of annual leave during the school holidays or even take a sabbatical for an extended break will provide more opportunities to dial down work for longer periods and be there for childrearing. Not every career accommodates this and having a baby can make it clear what is and is not sustainable longer term, according to an individual’s priorities.
Thinking about childrearing alongside career trajectory is important. Will initially getting some childcare to get to a few work meetings in the weeks after delivery dial up to nursery from a few months in, someone else doing pick ups and drop offs and sending children to summer camps during the holidays? If it does, is this an issue? What is important is thinking about where things are at now and where things will get to, to give the insight necessary to control the trajectory. We know that career pace can change during child rearing years, but it can be important to consider upfront that career end goals can change too.
Finances
Maternity and paternity pay varies greatly between employers. Though statutory maternity pay which tapers to £172.48 after the first six weeks is often considered the lowest common denominator, people in insecure employment may not have any parental pay at all. Maternity allowance does catch some of these individuals but others struggle to get any financial support altogether.
Childcare is costly and it is not uncommon for parents to find it is more economical to do childcare themselves than return to work, particularly with multiple children. Lots of people rely on unpaid help from family to support with childcare, but for others ‘can you afford to return to work?’ is a legitimate question. The cost of childcare can outweigh a junior doctor’s full time take home salary, for example. Some people move to less than full time work as it is more economical to be able to do some of the childcare themselves.
Division of labour
For people raising a baby in a household with two parents, or coparenting, depending on the arrangement there can be a significant shift in career and financial dynamics. Unless both parents have good parental leave options, or take shared parental leave there will be a new division of labour to some extent. This may look like one parent working at or close to previous capacity and the other doing most of the childrearing while on paid parental leave. This can be a real shift in roles where both parties were previously working full time. Once paid parental leave tapers off, there may be a new layer to this change in dynamic around the financial implications of one parent continuing to lead on childrearing instead of working, for an interim period or longer term. This is a legitimate division of labour! But it can be a real mindset shift around financial independence amongst other things.
Everyone does it differently
It is easy to look at people who have taken long periods of time out of their career to focus on childrearing AND people who have returned to full time work at pace and feel regret not to be in BOTH positions at the SAME time! While it is impossible to do it all at all times (this realisation can take some time to sink in) finding the right balance is possible. Some people find they can give more to childrearing when they step away to work and come back, others find work depletes the physical and mental energy they could be giving to childrearing. And both of these things could be true at different times.