It’s Not Your Kids Holding Your Career Back. It’s Your Husba

[tres3]

It’s Not Your Kids Holding Your Career Back. It’s Your Husband.

www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/11/18/harvard_business_school_study_it_s_not_kids_but_husbands_that_hold_women.html?wpsrc=sh_all_mob_tw_top
By Jessica Grose
136752740-chairman-and-ceo-of-xerox-ursula-burns-speaks-durig-the
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns' secret to success: Marry someone who will take care of the kids.
Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Almost a decade ago, the writer Linda Hirshman exhorted ambitious women to marry men with less money or social capital than they had. In articles and her book, Get to Work, she told women that they should avoid ever taking on more than half of the housework or child care. How to do it? Either marry a man who is extremely committed to equality, or do what she says is the easier route and “marry down.” Hirshman explained in the American Prospect that such a choice is not “brutally strategic,” it’s just smart. “If you are devoted to your career goals and would like a man who will support that, you're just doing what men throughout the ages have done: placing a safe bet.”

Jessica Grose
JESSICA GROSE
Jessica Grose is a frequent Slate contributor and the author of the novel Sad Desk Salad. Follow her on Twitter.
This was a highly controversial piece of advice at the time, but Hirshman might have been right. A new study of Harvard Business School graduates from HBS’s Robin Ely and Colleen Ammerman and Hunter College sociologist Pamela Stone shows that high-achieving women are not meeting the career goals they set for themselves in their 20s. It’s not because they’re “opting out” of the workforce when they have kids, but because they’re allowing their partners’ careers to take precedence over their own.

The study’s authors interviewed 25,000 men and women who graduated from Harvard Business School over the past several decades. The male graduates were much more likely to be in senior management positions and have more responsibility and more direct reports than their female peers. But why? It’s not because women are leaving the workforce en masse. The authors found, definitively, that the “opt-out” explanation is a myth. Among Gen X and baby boomers they surveyed, only 11 percent of women left the workforce to be full-time moms. That figure is lower for women of color—only 7 percent stopped working. The vast majority (74 percent) of Gen Xers, women who are currently 32-48 and in the prime of their child-rearing years, work full time, an average of 52 hours a week.

But while these women are still working, they are also making more unexpected sacrifices than their male classmates are. When they graduated, more than half of male HBS grads said they expected their careers would take precedence over their partners’. Only 7 percent of Gen X women and 3 percent of baby boomer women said they expected their careers to take precedence. Here’s what they did expect: The majority of women said they assumed they would have egalitarian marriages in which both spouses’ careers were taken equally seriously.

A lot of those women were wrong. About 40 percent of Gen X and boomer women said their spouses’ careers took priority over theirs, while only about 20 percent of them had planned on their careers taking a back seat. Compare that with the men: More than 70 percent of Gen X and boomer men say their careers are more important than their wives’. When you look at child care responsibilities, the numbers are starker. A full 86 percent of Gen X and boomer men said their wives take primary responsibility for child care, and the women agree: 65 percent of Gen X women and 72 percent of boomer women—all HBS grads, most of whom work—say they’re the ones who do most of the child care in their relationships.

Of course, marital arrangements aren’t the only force holding women back. Part of the reason these women aren’t advancing at the same rate as their male counterparts is that after they have kids, they get “mommy-tracked.” In many ways, they’re not considered management candidates anymore. “They may have been stigmatized for taking advantage of flex options or reduced schedules, passed over for high-profile assignments, or removed from projects they once led,” the authors note. Other studies support these findings, as they have shown that there is a real, substantial motherhood penalty that involves lower pay and fewer promotions for women with kids, because employers assume they will be less dedicated to their jobs (as do, we now know, their husbands).

But the personal piece of the female achievement gap puzzle is important, and it’s something that’s very difficult to shift. The study’s authors note that while millennial HBS grads are a little more egalitarian than their older peers, half of the youngest men still assume that their careers will take precedence, and two-thirds of them assume their spouses will do the majority of child care.

Based on these numbers, Hirshman suddenly seems prescient. Take a look at the current crop of female CEOs: A lot of them have husbands who don’t work. Xerox CEO Ursula Burns took a page out of Hirshman’s book and joked at a 2013 conference, “The secret [to success] is to marry someone 20 years older.” Her husband retired as she was hitting her career stride, allowing him to take primary responsibility for their kids. If becoming a CEO and having a family is what you desire, you might want to take that advice.

[katfco]

No, I'm pretty sure it's my kids (and a stupid mistake I made all on my own). The only reason DH's career takes priority over mine is because, right now, he's the only one with much of a career.

I do see the point they're making, though, in that many people see parenting and housekeeping still as the woman's job, so the sick days, the housework, cooking and shopping are all greater burdens on the women than the men.

[ringstrue]

I agree with them in general. BUT, what if you get laid off? There is a lot of blue collar work that is already being fought over. It's hard to tell someone in that situation to just go get more work.

[tacosforlife]

Nov 21, 2014 7:05:28 GMT -5 ringstrue said:

I agree with them in general. BUT, what if you get laid off? There is a lot of blue collar work that is already being fought over. It's hard to tell someone in that situation to just go get more work.

But I'm not sure that in this case, she's talking about marrying down in the sense of only marrying a blue collar worker. The study was about Harvard MBAs. So more like, marry someone with a bachelor's degree, not a professional degree. Marry a nurse, a teacher, an insurance broker - someone who's not also trying to get into the boardroom. 

[tacosforlife]

The majority of women said they assumed they would have egalitarian marriages in which both spouses’ careers were taken equally seriously.

This line is why I get what this article is saying. I think there has been a generation of women after the second wave of feminism who thought this was possible. And I think it was a noble goal. But I think we're also realizing that in many cases, that's not possible because of the way our society works (and I literally mean the way we work). Both parents can't be taking 8pm conference calls. Both parents can't be traveling frequently. It's damn near impossible to achieve this.

And I think the hard part is that smart, ambitious people tend to be drawn to other smart, ambitious people. But to make a family work, someone often is going to scale back the ambition and be ok with less when it comes to career.

[rupertpenny]

I think that my husband and I have a pretty egalitarian marriage. In theory at least. We both value our own careers and each others careers. But at the end of the day my H makes more money. He is a lawyer and I am a librarian. He will always make more money. We need the money, we have bills to pay. So in light of those simple financial facts his job does end up taking precedence. If our salaries were reversed I assume my job would take precedence, but it seems like there are myriad reasons why men have higher paying jobs than women, and it obviously isn't because women don't care about their careers.

[penguingrrl]

Nov 21, 2014 7:17:26 GMT -5 tacosforlife said:

The majority of women said they assumed they would have egalitarian marriages in which both spouses’ careers were taken equally seriously.

This line is why I get what this article is saying. I think there has been a generation of women after the second wave of feminism who thought this was possible. And I think it was a noble goal. But I think we're also realizing that in many cases, that's not possible because of the way our society works (and I literally mean the way we work). Both parents can't be taking 8pm conference calls. Both parents can't be traveling frequently. It's damn near impossible to achieve this.

And I think the hard part is that smart, ambitious people tend to be drawn to other smart, ambitious people. But to make a family work, someone often is going to scale back the ambition and be ok with less when it comes to career.

I think you hit the nail on the head. While both members of the couple may strive for absolute equality in terms of career, there are life truths that make it hard to practice even when both people want to make it work. Unless you can afford to have live-in help (and are willing to live that lifestyle) having kids does impact your ability to work all hours, to take calls whenever necessary. Kids need things like to eat and sleep and need your help doing them.

I also wonder how much taking time off to give birth (the medical side alone) impacts women's ability to move up in those careers. Of course officially it can not and should not, but we all know better. A man can have a baby, miss maybe a day and be back on and all but hide it from work if he chooses (not that I recommend that approach, but it's possible), but a woman can't do the same in the name of career advancement. 

It also says something to me that the expectation set for a professional is that you'll be hurt by needing to not take calls at 8 pm and take the occasional sick day (no matter who it's for).

[Deleted]

I married down--I have an MBA, DH has some college.

It does work out pretty well for my career and he is going to stay home with the baby.

I'm also lucky enough to work at a company with a good number of women executives and many at my level (middle management). My current and previous boss are both women with small children.

I doubt I'll have a VP title anytime soon, but I do not expect personal commitments to hold me back to much--the only way I may be challenged is if I opt not to take a job with a lot of travel because I don't want to. Not because it won't work.

[tacosforlife]

Nov 21, 2014 8:20:50 GMT -5 susquehanna said:

Nov 21, 2014 7:11:24 GMT -5 tacosforlife said:

But I'm not sure that in this case, she's talking about marrying down in the sense of only marrying a blue collar worker. The study was about Harvard MBAs. So more like, marry someone with a bachelor's degree, not a professional degree. Marry a nurse, a teacher, an insurance broker - someone who's not also trying to get into the boardroom. 

I know a bunch of insurance brokers who put in extremely long hours and do extensive traveling and thus need their spouses to manage the household.

OK, so insert some other mid level professional job. Sheesh. The point is the same. If you want to be a powerful mucky muck in the business world, you will be better positioned to do that if you choose a spouse whose career is less demanding. Let's not miss the forest for the trees.

[ttt]

Funny the article mentioned this, because this really is an advantage of marrying someone 20 years older. He's already has his career and now he's in the mode of supporting me in whatever I want to do. There's no competition between us in that way, and he's now in a position where he can pick and choose when he wants to work and work around my schedule and needs. It's always understood that my career comes first. 

[5thofjuly]

DH and I made the choice after a few years of marriage that he would change careers in order to be able to prioritize mine. He was in business, but as I got closer to finishing my PhD (and it hit us that we'd need to move literally anywhere for my first job) he decided to go back to school to become a nurse so he could more easily be a trailing spouse. We likely aren't having children at this point, but we decided that if we did, he'd cut back to part time or move to weekends only.

I think one of the reasons this works is because I really love what I do, and DH really doesn't like to work. For me, it's a passion; for him, it's a means to an end. I also am intrinsically motivated to climb the ranks and he can't figure out why anyone would want that kind of responsibility. So, while I'd still say I got the better end of the deal in this marriage overall, this is what Stone means by "marrying down."

[tacosforlife]

I also think it is easier to have an egalitarian marriage when it comes to careers if neither one of you wants to have a particularly high-powered career. You can probably both be really good middle school science teachers. You can probably both be really good communications directors for mid-level companies. Insert other imperfect example here. But when you both want to be vice president at a Fortune 100 company, things are going to get harder.

[FloFTW]

My husband and I are both architects. We basically have the exact same careers. Both are equally important. Our kids don't get in the way of our jobs.

I am certain that the only reason that I make less than him is that I'm a woman.

[orangeblossom]

This hits too close to home, especially, after this morning. The resentment is very real and palpable.

On one hand, I feel like a witch, and should be happy for DHs accomplishment. I am, and I'm proud of him. On the other hand, I am uber-pissed at the sacrifices I've made, especially, because it wasn't something I was expecting. I've put myself in a really bad position of being reliant on him, and probably never making the money I was on track to making.

The reason, I'm so annoyed with it, is because, while he does make good money, with the bills we have (mostly his), it's not enough, IMO for me not to be working, but it's hard to work when I've started and stopped for moves for him, and to get the quality of work, or even a fraction of it.

I didn't start off this way, but when the salary gap between us widened, it becomes the default to make moves for his career vs. mine.

[tacosforlife]

This is also really interesting stuff for me to contemplate right now because I have always made more than H, but not by leaps and bounds. And since we're both still in the process of moving up, at any moment, one of us could come across an opportunity that is a game-changer.

[delawarejen]

My director married down, and she did it intentionally. They married young, adopted one child well into their marriage (and she was always the breadwinner), and her husband has been the primary parent. Their child has gone to the same school K-12, and the staff know the dad well but barely know the mom's name. They truly have reversed the traditional roles in their household.

When I look at the executives at my own company (and we have our first female CEO right now), they are generally men whose wives did all the work at home while the kids were young or they are women without children. The women are generally single or divorced. There are married mothers in management, but at lower levels like front-line supervisors.

[penguingrrl]

Nov 21, 2014 8:50:12 GMT -5 5thofjuly said:

DH and I made the choice after a few years of marriage that he would change careers in order to be able to prioritize mine. He was in business, but as I got closer to finishing my PhD (and it hit us that we'd need to move literally anywhere for my first job) he decided to go back to school to become a nurse so he could more easily be a trailing spouse. We likely aren't having children at this point, but we decided that if we did, he'd cut back to part time or move to weekends only.

I think one of the reasons this works is because I really love what I do, and DH really doesn't like to work. For me, it's a passion; for him, it's a means to an end. I also am intrinsically motivated to climb the ranks and he can't figure out why anyone would want that kind of responsibility. So, while I'd still say I got the better end of the deal in this marriage overall, this is what Stone means by "marrying down."

As the wife of an academic I know firsthand how hard it is to have a career with an academic spouse. So far we've lived in 3 states over the past few years (5 years in NY for grad school, 2 years in NJ for post doc, now we're in PA for a 1 year Visiting Asst. Prof term) and there's like a 90% chance we'll move again this coming summer. There is no way to build a career around that and I'm finding every academic I know either is single, has a SAH spouse or has had to live away from their partner and/or children for an extended period. It's amazing that your husband was able to find a career amenable to trailing an academic, but nursing was a good call for that. It's a really long road.

[jeaniebueller]

Anyone else turned off by the phrasing "marrying down"? Just me?

And: A full 86 percent of Gen X and boomer men said their wives take primary responsibility for child care, and the women agree: 65 percent of Gen X women and 72 percent of boomer women—all HBS grads, most of whom work—say they’re the ones who do most of the child care in their relationships.


I think that these percentages will continue to go down. There are huge generation differences between the Boomers and Gen X, and even the older Gen Xers and the Gen Y'ers. In short, I don't think that looking at how the Boomers handled these things is indicative as to how my generation or future generations will.

[orangeblossom]

Nov 21, 2014 8:50:12 GMT -5 5thofjuly said:

DH and I made the choice after a few years of marriage that he would change careers in order to be able to prioritize mine. He was in business, but as I got closer to finishing my PhD (and it hit us that we'd need to move literally anywhere for my first job) he decided to go back to school to become a nurse so he could more easily be a trailing spouse. We likely aren't having children at this point, but we decided that if we did, he'd cut back to part time or move to weekends only.

I think one of the reasons this works is because I really love what I do, and DH really doesn't like to work. For me, it's a passion; for him, it's a means to an end. I also am intrinsically motivated to climb the ranks and he can't figure out why anyone would want that kind of responsibility. So, while I'd still say I got the better end of the deal in this marriage overall, this is what Stone means by "marrying down."

I am attempting to go back to school for nursing, for the very same reasons your husband did.  Also, it goes in line with what I already do, and I've always had an interest in clinical work.

I should have done it after our very first move, but I attempted to look for a job, and by the time I was getting to the point of can't find a job vs. school, I got a job, and abandoned the idea of nursing at that time.

[overture]

I used to have a lot of anxiety about my husband's job. He's not ambitious at all when it comes to work. He's not lazy by any means, he's just not one to pursue more than the quarterly raise he gets. As I've gotten closer to graduation and job prospects are becoming more real and I see how long the hours can be (and how obsessed I am), I've come to really value that part of his personality. He's incredibly supportive and I'm grateful that I can be virtually limitless in my job search with regard to location. He's down for anything, and has a job that makes it easy for people to transfer cities. He's a work-to-live person, I'm a live-to-work person. Maybe you just can't have two live-to-work type of people in a marriage that includes children and expect it to be totally successful.

[heliocentric]

Nov 21, 2014 9:21:31 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Anyone else turned off by the phrasing "marrying down"? Just me?

It's not just you. I think it should be "marrying differently." Or "marrying complementary" or something. I guess those don't roll off the tongue, though.

[msmerymac]

It's been pretty well known for a while that a top executive really needs a spouse who picks up the slack. Often a SAHS for, like, Fortune 500 CEOs. Fewer men are willing to do that. Then there's the other factors, like women choosing lower-paying careers. Women being groomed from childhood to focus on lower-paying careers. Women assuming they will have kids someday and not doing the Lean In thing, etc.

But yes, assuming you are a woman who graduates from Harvard Business School, it's probably not to your career advantage to marry a man you meet in class. That seems somewhat obvious when you think it through.

[Deleted]

I married "down"...if that's what people want to call it. I suppose I married down in terms of education and earning potential, but I married up in plenty of other categories. So I'm still winning. lol

It's very convenient.

But I do see a lot of judgement from people who follow the traditional sort of thinking, that I should be home having kids and he should be the provider. I see it everywhere. Especially when he goes with me to work functions. It's kind of gross.

[busybodyk]

It’s not because they’re “opting out” of the workforce when they have kids, but because they’re allowing their partners’ careers to take precedence over their own.

What about the the women who are career focused before they have children but change that after they have them because that's what they wan? Maybe some of us don't want to focus on their career anymore and want to be the primary caregiver for the child(ren). So what's the percentage of us that are intentionally "opting out"? Maybe we still like to work but don't want to be in charge because we want work life balance. We exist.

[pt716]

We try to value our careers equally, but often we have to choose one over the other at a given moment. Somehow this has worked better for DH than me. He quit his job and moved with me when I had to move during grad school, and he ended up with a better job in the field he wanted to work. We then decided to stay in CO so he could get more work experience and get an MBA. But that has really limited my job search.

This is the kind of stuff that frustrates me when talking to my parents. They like to throw out the line that if you don't have a job you should just move. That's a lot easier said than done for most people, especially when you are talking about dual careers.

[Deleted]

My marriage is about about as egalitarian as it gets.

[5thofjuly]

Nov 21, 2014 9:33:19 GMT -5 heliocentric said:

Nov 21, 2014 9:21:31 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Anyone else turned off by the phrasing "marrying down"? Just me?

It's not just you. I think it should be "marrying differently." Or "marrying complementary" or something. I guess those don't roll off the tongue, though.

The sociological term is "hypogamy" (for the person who "married down") and "hypergamy" (for the spouse who "married up.") They sound much better, I think, because there's not that negative connotation there.

[5thofjuly]

Nov 21, 2014 9:45:18 GMT -5 busybodyk said:

It’s not because they’re “opting out” of the workforce when they have kids, but because they’re allowing their partners’ careers to take precedence over their own.

What about the the women who are career focused before they have children but change that after they have them because that's what they wan? Maybe some of us don't want to focus on their career anymore and want to be the primary caregiver for the child(ren). So what's the percentage of us that are intentionally "opting out"? Maybe we still like to work but don't want to be in charge because we want work life balance. We exist.

Women like you definitely exist, but, the more education a woman has, the more rare that voluntarily "opting out" is.

[wawa]

Nov 21, 2014 8:57:47 GMT -5 FloFTW said:

My husband and I are both architects. We basically have the exact same careers. Both are equally important. Our kids don't get in the way of our jobs.

I am certain that the only reason that I make less than him is that I'm a woman.

Same here.  Except that we're both civil engineers.  So you know...same thing, except our stuff is actually feasible to build. 

But I make more than he does.  We've leapfrogged each other a couple of times, but I've made more strategic career moves than he has - moving twice in the last 5 years.  He has stayed in the same place for the last 6 years.  As a result I make more than he does, and he has substantially more PTO than I do.  So he does almost all the doctor's visits, most of the sick kid days, etc. 

Our jobs are so far from somebody with an eye on the corporate boardroom though that it's barely worth sharing the anecdotes.

[5thofjuly]

Nov 21, 2014 9:31:38 GMT -5 overture said:

I used to have a lot of anxiety about my husband's job. He's not ambitious at all when it comes to work. He's not lazy by any means, he's just not one to pursue more than the quarterly raise he gets. As I've gotten closer to graduation and job prospects are becoming more real and I see how long the hours can be (and how obsessed I am), I've come to really value that part of his personality. He's incredibly supportive and I'm grateful that I can be virtually limitless in my job search with regard to location. He's down for anything, and has a job that makes it easy for people to transfer cities. He's a work-to-live person, I'm a live-to-work person. Maybe you just can't have two live-to-work type of people in a marriage that includes children and expect it to be totally successful.

This was me (and, occasionally, I catch myself still doing it.) "What do you mean you didn't put in for the promotion?" "They offered you free tuition to get your masters and you don't want to do it?" "Wait- they offered to let you sit in on the training for this new opportunity and you said 'no?""

It's hard for me to realize that as foreign as the idea that he WOULDN'T do those things is to me, he's also thinking, "You didn't get paid for that training- why did you sit through it?" or "Why on earth did you agree to be on XYZ committee?"

It was weird, and, it's been very difficult to explain to our families over the years (because I come from a family where everyone is career-ambitious and he comes from a family where everyone is work-to-live,) but if it weren't for our difference in attitudes about work, I'm not sure I'd be able to be in the position I am.