Juggling Career and Home

By Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner
Issue 117, March - April 2003

For a long time it was assumed that professional success, power, and full-time motherhood were mutually exclusive, and women who took time out of their careers to parent were seen as leaving professional life forever. Fortunately, this is no longer the case. For the first time in 25 years, a growing number of women are choosing to take time out of the workforce to care for their children. The proportion of working mothers who also had infant children declined from a record high of 59 percent in 1998 to 55 percent in 2000 - the first significant decline since the Census Bureau began publishing this statistic, in 1976.1 According to a recent Census Bureau paper, "Older mothers (age 30 - 34) and more educated women are increasingly likely to not work after their first child's birth."2

Another new trend, known as "sequencing," follows closely. Mothers and More, a national organization with over 170 local chapters, defines sequencing mothers as those who have "altered their career paths in order to care for their children at home." Author Arlene Rossen Cardozo is widely credited with coining the term after she noticed that some women were "having it all, but not all at once" - spending years at work, then at home, then back at work again. Sequencing is gaining attention as more women choose to move in and out of professional careers to parent full-time. More than one in four female MBA graduates have had employment gaps, primarily to care for young children, says a recent study released by the nonprofit group Catalyst.3 And when women who are not mothers are factored out of the study results, the actual rate of sequencing professional mothers approaches 50 percent.

For those in the trenches of full-time motherhood, there are many inspirational success stories about women jumping back into careers after spending time at home. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright - the highest-ranking woman in the history of the US government - was a full-time mom with three daughters who didn't get started in her paid professional career until she was 39 years old. Our first female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, was also a stay-at-home mom with three young sons.

"The success of Former Secretary Albright and Justice O'Connor just goes to show that being a parent isn't an either/or choice. Sequencing in and out of the paid workforce is not only possible, but possible at very high levels," says Joanne Brundage, Executive Director of Mothers and More.

Mary Bond, a former Microsoft employee and mother of two, is getting ready to re-enter the workforce after seven years spent raising her children. Although she has some concerns about going back to paid work, sheâ€Ts generally confident. "I've been successful in a variety of different occupations in my career," Bond says. "Staying home is just one of many occupations I'll have in my lifetime - although it's probably the most important one." She isn't alone: In a country where the average person holds nine jobs between the ages of 18 and 34, people are no longer tied to just one job.4 The occupation of full-time parent is making a comeback as one of many jobs held in a lifetime.

"Things have changed in recent years," Brundage observes. "Back in the 1980s, when a woman left a paid occupation to take care of children, she was seen as 'retired' for life. Now many women expect to sequence in and out of paid labor." More women are taking time away from paid employment or working in unconventional settings, telecommuting, working part-time, or job-sharing in order to spend time with children. How did these modern heroines do it? What did it take for Madeline Albright to rise to the top after taking time out to parent? "I was never sure I'd have an opportunity to have a career because expectations were different in the late 1950s," says Albright. "Basically, I was at home, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. A lot of people thought I was an odd duck, because most people at that stage were at home full-time with children. To that extent, it is kind of upside-down from where mothers are today."