Wow! We have reached a new high with 4 comments on one blog entry!!
Let's analyze the options:
1. Quit work completely to raise children. Maybe go back much later when the youngest child reaches an appropriate age.
2. Work full-time except for the few months after each birth.
3. Work a flexible schedule that allows for balance between work and children.
Now with those options stated, here are some of my observations:
*Each of us as sets of parents, need to decide what is best for our own children.
*A mother staying home with her children, while the father works, is an acceptable and good thing to do.
*A father staying home with his children, while the mother works, is an acceptable and good thing to do.
*My three children went to daycare. There are no evident scars. In fact, they seem like normal, talented, and kind people to me. The reason we did this is we felt it was necessary to both work in able to provide the lifestyle we wanted for our family.
*A person who stays home with children has to have a certain mentality. I couldn't have done it. I need the social interaction with adults.
*Today I am staring empty nest straight in the eyes and I do not like it. 2 of my children are gone and the 3rd turns 16 in 2 days. The time went wayyy too fast and as was said in one of comments, you can't rewind time.
Now, I will give my opinion of what I think I would do in the case presented to us. I think I would take the option in the middle that allows for good work a little more than half time. This keeps you active in your career, keeps you involved with your child(ren), and involved with real adults. When, the time comes to work full time again, you can then be a project manager and succeed at the high levels. You will still have 20-25 years left in your career.
This entry has led to another great topic emailed to me today for posting tomorrow.
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2 comments:
At my office, almost every woman engineer that goes on maternity leave for the first time never returns to the job. Most of them choose to be stay-at-home moms while a few go somewhere else where it's easier to work part-time. The only women that seem to come back after maternity leave are the ones that work in sales and marketing.
One interesting thing to note about the women that have done this is that they are all married to men that are engineers as well. I'm not really sure if that's significant other than they will continue to have one engineering salary for income.
I guess at some point they feel that family is more important than their career. Maybe child care plays a part in their decision too. The cost of child care and trusting other people to take care of your kids can be hard to do. I'd like to believe that like any good engineer that strives for success and reward, they see the challenge of raising their kids the best they can by doing it themselves and not stopping until they feel they've finished the task. There may not be the math and science side of engineering or the adult interaction but I suppose in some ways, there are plenty of problems to solve in the career of raising kids and I can't think of too many things in life that can be more rewarding than seeing your child happy and successful in a life that you provided a foundation for.
That said, I would have chosen option 2 because I'd go stir crazy being at home all the time, but I don't think any less of the women that don't decide to come back.
At my previous employer, many females never came back full time to work in the engineering environment. Many asked to be reassigned to either marketing, business development, or even communications.
My new employer has very tight rules on getting to work on time and leaving early. Basically, there isn't really flex time here. Many people have issues with daycare when we switch to summer hours and have to be to work by 7:30am, and they commute 90+ miles to work and cannot drop children off at daycare before 7am. This has caused 1 of the 4 females employed here to look for a new job and take a position elsewhere.
Jill
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