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.
But there are a lot of non-high-end jobs that are still very demanding. Teachers and nurses both can easily have long and odd hours.
Don't get me wrong I get the general point but in practice its just not that simple.
Plus IRL I know of plenty of "career oriented" people who just simply decided to not pursue it. Or people who had to jump into a career when they had thought they'd be working just part time or whatever.
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."
And I think it then goes back to what you want in a marriage and what you want in a career.
There's been an ebb and flow for me and H wrt our careers. It's worked in the past allowing both of us time to change directions or make a professional push forward.
Right now, it's H's turn to move forward. He's about to make a career change and get some additional certifications for that. I'm sitting in a more secure, higher paying job to offset that (I don't like my job, but it was a stability move).
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.
I guess we'd have to see the numbers. Maybe my experience is not the norm.The women I know who have MDs, PhDs, MBAs, etc. have and would opt out for lower level jobs for their children because they want to.
Women like you definitely exist, but, the more education a woman has, the more rare that voluntarily "opting out" is.
I guess we'd have to see the numbers. Maybe my experience is not the norm.The women I know who have MDs, PhDs, MBAs, etc. have and would opt out for lower level jobs for their children because they want to.
But it's also hard to separate out the "want to" from the "have to." Are these women whose husbands have offered to SAH so they can continue in a demanding career and still decided they wanted to opt out? Or are these women whose husbands also have busy careers and they find themselves overwhelmed with the stress of it all and decide that if their options are the insanity of a two-demanding-career household or opting out/scaling back, they'll choose the latter?
I have no doubt that there are SOME women who could have all the options in the world available to them and would still choose to opt out or scale back when they have children. But when you start listening to women's stories, I think you see that very often, the spouse's career situation figures heavily into that equation.
Another thought I had on this is that most women that are successful and career driven are also attracted to men who are the same so "marrying down" is not as desired. You will probably only "luck out" on marrying down if you stay with your high school or college sweetheart. Or if you are a black woman, which is a whole different conversation that was had in another thread a few weeks ago.
Post by irishbride2 on Nov 21, 2014 10:40:43 GMT -5
I will say in some ways its true. In reality, it would be best for my career if I could move one more time and take an administration position else where....then come back to the school I'm at. H's job prohibits that. He has to live here. BUT, I don't really want to move either. I can still get an admin job at another school locally, it will just take more time.
BUT on the other hand, his job is so flexible that it has allowed me to not be. I can take on more roles (which I have this year) and he's able to do more with the kids and the house, which is great. So in some ways, his job as helped my career.
Education wise, we are relatively equal. We both have masters, but I have two masters.
I do have a friend in big law who flat out said to me that she made a big tactical error marrying a fellow lawyer because now she has no idea when or how they're going to have kids without going the live-in nanny route. (which is not inherently bad, but she's not enthused about it)
I do have a friend in big law who flat out said to me that she made a big tactical error marrying a fellow lawyer because now she has no idea when or how they're going to have kids without going the live-in nanny route. (which is not inherently bad, but she's not enthused about it)
I'm always amazed when both members are power people and they have kids. Its impressive. We have family friends where the husband is a doctor who runs a large hospital. The wife is a lawyer who is managing partner of a big law office in a large city. And they raised 2 kids. how the hell I will never know. I'm impressed.
I guess we'd have to see the numbers. Maybe my experience is not the norm.The women I know who have MDs, PhDs, MBAs, etc. have and would opt out for lower level jobs for their children because they want to.
But it's also hard to separate out the "want to" from the "have to." Are these women whose husbands have offered to SAH so they can continue in a demanding career and still decided they wanted to opt out? Or are these women whose husbands also have busy careers and they find themselves overwhelmed with the stress of it all and decide that if their options are the insanity of a two-demanding-career household or opting out/scaling back, they'll choose the latter?
I have no doubt that there are SOME women who could have all the options in the world available to them and would still choose to opt out or scale back when they have children. But when you start listening to women's stories, I think you see that very often, the spouse's career situation figures heavily into that equation.
MORE ANECDOTES! my doctor friend married a man she met in law school. His dream was to be a SUPER specialized pediatric cardiologist something or other that I can never remember. She's been working normal doctor jobs for a few years now and he's still doing various fellowships and shit. When she fell in love with this guy, she had to make the decision to 1. change her speciality to something that could work anywhere so that she could follow him to the small handful of places that his career could happen and 2. talk him out of his career choice 3. come to peace with always being the go-to parent and scale back her own career or hire a nanny. right now they have a nanny. Her kid not quite 2. But she also fully intends to scale back to part time as soon as he starts making actual doctor money and not resident money.
Her other choice way back then would have been to not marry him and find somebody with ambitions compatible with being a trailing spouse. She decided she loved him more than she loved the idea of specializing in her career. And that he was more passionate about his choice than she was about hers. So now she's a hospitalist. She still loves it, but it's not what she had in mind when she was a first year med student.
I'm also an academic with a trailing spouse. Though we've been very lucky; he followed me for grad school and to my current tenure-track job so we didn't have to do the postdoc/VAP shuffle, thankfully. However, Mr. Smock was "freelancing" (functionally unemployed) for a total of over two years total between those two moves.
In our situation, Mr. Smock knew when we got married that he was agreeing to be the trailing spouse, and that we would prioritize my career. It has worked out so far, though we both feel stuck in a less-than-ideal geographical location at the moment. Still, we both love our jobs here.
Since we became parents, I have definitely been doing more of the childcare (b/c I'm breastfeeding, have a course reduction this semester, and daycare is walking distance from home and my work). But our goal is to split parenting responsibilities more equitably when she's older, so that neither of us has to step back from our careers. I'm even considering going up for tenure early.
In my case, I think we've had a more equal partnership because we spent a LOT of time talking about how we wanted to prioritize careers, kids, etc. For us, a big part of the equation was Mr. Smock's complete willingness to prioritize a career other than his own. I'm also currently the breadwinner (by a mere $4k a year), but my career will come first even if he makes more money, because of the nature of academia. At this stage, though, I have the luxury of only applying to jobs in desirable locations for both of us, which is so much better than the situation for most early career academics.
Women like you definitely exist, but, the more education a woman has, the more rare that voluntarily "opting out" is.
I guess we'd have to see the numbers. Maybe my experience is not the norm.The women I know who have MDs, PhDs, MBAs, etc. have and would opt out for lower level jobs for their children because they want to.
Pam Stone's book "Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home" is a good source for this. If you're interested I can also pull out some data on what percentage of moms are still in the workforce a year after giving birth by education. I know I've got it in a file around here somewhere.
Women like you definitely exist, but, the more education a woman has, the more rare that voluntarily "opting out" is.
I guess we'd have to see the numbers. Maybe my experience is not the norm.The women I know who have MDs, PhDs, MBAs, etc. have and would opt out for lower level jobs for their children because they want to.
I would be very interested in the statistics on this. My anecdotal experience is that I don't know of any tenure-track female academics who've opted out for kids. I'm sure it's partly because tenure-track jobs are rare and very valuable, and leaving a tt job for a few years will likely destroy your chances of returning at that level. Universities can often be more accommodating environments for parents than other industries, i.e. I have a reduced teaching load and won't be teaching full-time until DD is 7 months old; I can work from home with flexible hours; I can easily do daycare drop-off/pick-ups.
I guess we'd have to see the numbers. Maybe my experience is not the norm.The women I know who have MDs, PhDs, MBAs, etc. have and would opt out for lower level jobs for their children because they want to.
Pam Stone's book "Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home" is a good source for this. If you're interested I can also pull out some data on what percentage of moms are still in the workforce a year after giving birth by education. I know I've got it in a file around here somewhere.
I'd love to see that! I'm very curious about the PhDs, obviously.
Pam Stone's book "Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home" is a good source for this. If you're interested I can also pull out some data on what percentage of moms are still in the workforce a year after giving birth by education. I know I've got it in a file around here somewhere.
I'd love to see that! I'm very curious about the PhDs, obviously.
Ok- so this is only for women 25-45 and is from the 2007 American Community Survey. So, things may have changed since then, but my sense is that they haven't changed that much. Of women who have had a child in the past year, the percentage who are in the labor force by education:
Less than high school- 37%
HS/GED- 52%
Some college/Associates- 61%
BA- 65%
MA- 70%
Professional Degree-79%
PhD (calculated separately from professional degrees because we were curious, too)-84%
I agree with you. I wouldn't categorize academia as intentionally family friendly (our maternity leave policy here is essentially, "Welp, let's home you give birth in late May!") but it is far more flexible than a lot of jobs.
5thofjuly, thanks for posting. Do they compare that with the non-kid related percent of women in the labor force at each education level? The raw numbers don't necessarily indicate the "opt out" rate.
And you're right, academia can be family friendly if you're at the right school, in the right department, with the right department chair. It can definitely be unfriendly under a lot of circumstances. My university's official policy is 6 weeks paid leave, which is (depressingly) semi-generous in the US, but makes no sense for professors who cannot take 6 weeks off in the middle of the semester. I lucked out because I had my kid on June 1st, and my chair has young kids of her own and wanted to help me ease back in by lightening my teaching load this semester. And people doing lab work usually don't have as much flexibility or work-from-home time.
Oh, and I'm laughing a little at the idea of 25 year old PhDs who had a kid within the last year. Let me just guess that there were zero in that particular category.
5thofjuly, thanks for posting. Do they compare that with the non-kid related percent of women in the labor force at each education level? The raw numbers don't necessarily indicate the "opt out" rate.
And you're right, academia can be family friendly if you're at the right school, in the right department, with the right department chair. It can definitely be unfriendly under a lot of circumstances. My university's official policy is 6 weeks paid leave, which is (depressingly) semi-generous in the US, but makes no sense for professors who cannot take 6 weeks off in the middle of the semester. I lucked out because I had my kid on June 1st, and my chair has young kids of her own and wanted to help me ease back in by lightening my teaching load this semester. And people doing lab work usually don't have as much flexibility or work-from-home time.
Oh, and I'm laughing a little at the idea of 25 year old PhDs who had a kid within the last year. Let me just guess that there were zero in that particular category.
We didn't compare that. We were just running the numbers quickly as a background slide for a presentation. But, yes, they don't tell us WHY those who left did. Most of that still stems from the qualitative data, and for that, Pam Stone (from the article) is the person most frequently cited.
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.
I work for a developer so my stuff actually does get built.
This definitely hits home. H is in a pretty specialized career and he can't just get a job anywhere so I make a lot of concessions for his career. It didn't used to bother me because I hated my job, but I got a new job a couple years ago with a lot of potential (and I generally make more) and it bothers me now. It's really hard to have a spouse that travels and works odd hours and have a job and kids. It sucks a lot of the time and I'm fortunate enough that we can outsource a lot of things.
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.
I feel like i am in a similar boat. I technically "married down", and we have an incredibly egalitarian marriage. But I often get the sense that people look down on it, or at the least, think we're weird. In a pretty small circle of some friends, I am pretty sure that people's eyes would pop if they knew the exact discrepancy between our careers/income. But I keep my head up and feel good about the way things work, because hey, at least I'm not the one complaining that my husband doesn't know how to do laundry or grocery shop.
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.
But there are a lot of non-high-end jobs that are still very demanding. Teachers and nurses both can easily have long and odd hours.
Don't get me wrong I get the general point but in practice its just not that simple.
Plus IRL I know of plenty of "career oriented" people who just simply decided to not pursue it. Or people who had to jump into a career when they had thought they'd be working just part time or whatever.
I don't know. I don't think people who are genuinely "career-oriented" decide to not pursue opportunities. That is kind of the opposite of what I consider a career oriented person, actually.
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.
I am definitely not a fan of the phrase.
I married someone who is perfectly content to have a job, rather than a career. He is a very hard worker, very, and always strives to do the best he can and move up when possible, but he works to live. This has allowed us to move cross-country twice, so far, for my career.
If we ever had kids, he would be the primary caregiver and probably stay at home.
In fact, our goal is for him to be able to retire early (50 or less) and stay home to be a house husband (he makes a glorious house husband, as we discovered after he was unemployed for a bit - and he likes it!).
I would never in a million years say that I "married down". He is, hands down, a better human being than I am in a number of ways.
It just so happens that I am a live-to-work person and can only tolerate doing certain things, which has driven me to a certain career path.
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.
I'm just now coming back from maternity leave but I've been given more responsibility and indications that my career is on the rise. If I had a partner on a similar track I'd be hard pressed to work as late or as hard as I do.
I wonder if employers who (however quietly) take parenting status into account when they're hiring or promoting women think differently about women who have husbands who are SAHDs or who work only part-time.
Post by pinkdutchtulips on Nov 21, 2014 14:10:29 GMT -5
I married down ... he had a GED vs my BA but he also owned his own logistics company. He relied on my career to support us once he couldn't do his anymore. He worked 12-14 hr days and I picked up a lot of the slack including lowering paying closer in positions.
People said I made a colossal mistake in marrying down. People told him he hit the jackpot by marrying up :/
I'd love to see that! I'm very curious about the PhDs, obviously.
Ok- so this is only for women 25-45 and is from the 2007 American Community Survey. So, things may have changed since then, but my sense is that they haven't changed that much. Of women who have had a child in the past year, the percentage who are in the labor force by education:
Less than high school- 37%
HS/GED- 52%
Some college/Associates- 61%
BA- 65%
MA- 70%
Professional Degree-79%
PhD (calculated separately from professional degrees because we were curious, too)-84%
I agree with you. I wouldn't categorize academia as intentionally family friendly (our maternity leave policy here is essentially, "Welp, let's home you give birth in late May!") but it is far more flexible than a lot of jobs.
That's really interesting - thanks for sharing!
I think that first year or two with young children as an academic can be brutal (depending on your university's attitude), but I do think that academia can be more family-friendly in the long term. I don't have children, and I work a lot of hours every week, which would be hard with kids, but on the other hand I really do get to set my own schedule. If I wanted to pick up my kids from day care at 3:30 every day, I could arrange my schedule to do so (most days), then work from home in the evening from 7-11, for example. If I had to cancel a class because my child was ill, I could do so, and unless I was doing it all the time I wouldn't be penalized. This is totally different from a service worker who has no say in her schedule and who can be fired for missing a day of work.
I may have a different perspective on this side of tenure than pre-tenure, but I also recognize this is why a lot of female academics wait until they submit their tenure packages before having children. (Not saying that's right at all, just that I can understand why they do so in today's reality.)
I believe this is true. I married down and my career has really taken off since DD was born 3 years ago. She is not holding me back because DH picks up the slack. There's no way I would be where I am if DH were trying to advance his career, too.