Are you better or worse?
Posted March 15th, 2010 by Katrina AlcornAre you better or worse at your job since you had kids?
I’ve been thinking about this question ever since someone named Jennifer left this comment in response to something I wrote last week about pay inequity:
It’s ironic that mothers make less in the corporate world … My ability to be an effective leader has grown exponentially from the experience of being a mother.
Sleep-deprived zombies or super efficient multi-taskers? You be the judge.(1)
I was so glad to hear someone say this. We often think of ourselves as being worse at our jobs when we have kids. Moms joke about having “mommy brain,” (which isn’t really that funny. It’s kind of scary, for example, to find yourself losing your train of thought in the middle of a presentation.). We talk about the crazed multitasking we do to survive, which can leave us with work notes in the diaper bag, and an extra diaper in the laptop bag.
Becoming a parent means there are new demands on our time and for many of us–moms and dads–we feel strangely disloyal to our jobs after we have kids. I certainly did. Although my co-workers rarely complained, I still felt like I was two-timing my job every time I helped out in my daughter’s classroom or stayed home because my son had (another!) fever, or skipped a client dinner so I could have mac n’ cheese at home and argue with the kids about whether they would get two stories or three at bedtime.
And yet, when I take stock of my work life, I think having kids made me so much better at my job. I became extremely efficient at getting things done, of course, but that was only part of the story. I also became more grounded, more humble, more serious, and more ambitious. Time became a precious commodity that I did not want to waste, whether it was in a meeting or in my career as a whole. My company benefited from this.
So why do mothers make only 68% of what men earn? [2] And forgetting about the disgraceful pay inequity for a moment, why is it that we feel so horribly guilty when we skulk out of the office at 4:30 (Egad! You leave so early?) to pick up our kids from daycare, or when we have to work from home because the school called and our daughter has head lice (again!). And could these two things (guilt and pay inequity) be related? Why can’t we feel proud of our contributions, despite the compromises on our time?
This is my experience. What about yours? Moms and dads. You can disagree. Just be honest. Has having kids made you better at your job or worse?
Original post from Working Moms Break.
[1] Photo of women working from Library of Congress
5 Comments
I definitely believe becoming a mother has made me a better more successful person. I do not have a job and did not have a job before I became a mother. I had just finished my AA when I found out I was pregnant. Instead of going straight into my bachelors, I spent my pregnancy preparing for natural childbirth (something in and of itself that has made me a stronger woman than any other single event in my life) and spent the first 15 months of my daughter’s life staying home with her. We really grew together. I learned more about personal development in those 15 months than in the 24 preceding years. When I did start my bachelors program, I started half time to slowly integrate the separation. I am in my second semester of my bachelors program and am attending full time. I feel extremely overwhelmed. I look forward to summer break so that I can focus on spending more time with my now 20 month old. I am so grateful to have a supportive husband that agrees with the importance of family in child upbringing. We arrange our schedules so that if possible, either my husband or I are still her primary caregivers. Some children spend 40+ hours in school, daycare, or a combination and mine spends at most 15 hours a week in care other than her parents’ care. I can’t imagine having to juggle work over my child. My child has taught me how to look at the world through a happier, cleaner lens. I see wonderment, the chance to learn something new, the ability to focus and ask “what” and “why”. I would have to say nothing has made me a better person than entering parenthood.
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March 15, 2010 at 5:12 pm by Katrina Alcorn@Laura: Great point. “We have to believe it ourselves first…” You’re absolutely right.
@Kat: Great question. What can employers do? I’m sure many people have answers for you. For me personally, having a flexible schedule was key, and then being in a work environment that RESPECTED my schedule was also key (but harder to achieve). This is something that doesn’t always go over easily with non-parents. (“Why does she get special treatment..?”) Which brings up a bigger point–flexibility in the workplace is an important issue for lots of people even when they don’t have kids.
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March 15, 2010 at 3:33 pm by tracey kHowever, I do agree that the employees I work with who are parents (men and women) typically get more done in a day. They have less time and realize that multitasking is required.
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March 15, 2010 at 2:21 pm by KatI’m a non-mom casting a vote for all of the parents that I manage as contracted employees.
If anything, the quality of my employees’ work increases when they become parents. We do health education, so growing families lead to more clinically relevant personal stories.
The only work/parenting related difficulty that I have had to do with a task that got dropped when someone returned from maternity leave. All of the details of a contract were negotiated when the mom was out on leave. Though she apparently had been back for two months, some details were left until the final hour which caused a lot of chaos for 140 students and my team of educators. This will also result in ~$900 of additional cost to the institution beyond the contracted amount.
From past experience with this person, I think her dropping the ball was directly related to her return from leave and the overwhelm that is a guaranteed part of having an infant at home. I am curious to hear other stories about return-to-work plans that have a happier ending.
What can we do as employers to support new parents?
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March 15, 2010 at 2:10 pm by Laura OrbanI could not agree more, being a Mom makes me better. I wrote about this very thing recently on my own blog (http://www.lauraorban.com/home/2010/3/10/little-mentors-for-creativity.html). Observing kids, learning from kids, and the act of parenting offers so many opportunities for growth that result in my being a better person and better at work.
I think working Moms have more to offer in the workplace *because* we are Moms, not in spite of it. But we have to believe it ourselves first, if we want others to see the value as well.
Laura
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