How To Avoid Career Interruption When You Have Children

 *I wrote this article for a Canadian job search site. The editor refused to publish it. His response and my retorts are below the article.

Working in one company or field, from graduation till retirement, is almost unheard of these days. For many people, their career goals, life paths and interests alter over time, leading them to change direction at least once or twice, sometimes several times, over a lifetime. Organisations and companies, in fact, the world, is dynamic too and change is inevitable. Success relies on the ability to adapt to change.

At times, choices associated with career interruption are made consciously and thoughtfully, the benefits and risks taken into consideration carefully and the pros and cons weighed up, to help make the best possible decisions to suit financial position and desire. A hybrid career can sometimes only be realised after years in the workforce, through trial and error and can benefit both individuals and companies.

However, sometimes a career can veer away from its initial route unexpectedly, which may lead to uncertainty and even hardship. The most common reasons why people may face career interruption are life events such as starting a family, developing illness or becoming incapacitated by an accident. It is interesting that having a baby can seem like an unfortunate obstacle, particularly for women in the workplace, closely related to getting sick or being injured.

While there are checks and balances in place through employment legislation to prevent discrimination against women of child bearing age who become pregnant, the reality is vastly different and many women find that they are either overlooked for positions from the onset, at the interview stage; they are disregarded when it comes to career opportunities and promotions; or they are being forced to exit the workforce through involuntary resignation and redundancy, usually when flexible work arrangements or accessible and affordable childcare are unavailable.

For women who are embarking deliberately on motherhood, this should be a time of celebration and joy, but unlike men, the fact of their biology means that they will need to juggle child bearing with their career in one way or another. Furthermore, women are not only physically responsible for gestation and birth, often the bulk of domestic labour and child care commitments will fall on them also. In fact, recent Australian census data shows that women are still highly disadvantaged when it comes to unpaid domestic labour. In Canada, the statistics show a similar trend, with women doing 50% more domestic duties than men, and men doing 37% more paid work than women.

It is possible that for some women, embarking on intentional motherhood and facing the prospect of career interruption, may be an opportunity to explore new avenues and pathways to find a better balance between work and life, and perhaps even discover new interests and life goals along the way. Having a baby might be the ideal time to allow life to take on a new direction and to pursue alternative and innovative experiences in relation to work, without ending up unemployed for an extended period.

Career interruption can thus be either avoided altogether or used to one’s own advantage, allowing women to be prepared for the changes and to gain benefits from the disruption to what may have become a stagnant employment situation. Men too should be advocating for more flexible workplaces to allow for better work/life balance, not only when embarking on parenthood, but also in the unfortunate event of illness and injury, resulting in unanticipated career interruption or unemployment.

Here are some tips to avoid career interruption all together, or use an inevitable disruption, as an opportunity to enhance paid employment.

 

• Negotiate a contract and maternity leave policy, prior to recruitment

This is one of the biggest obstacles women face, because as soon as it becomes known that they are planning to start a family, the discrimination begins. It is wise to keep personal details private at the interview stage. In most instances, it is illegal to be questioned about your plans for child bearing in an interview. This information is irrelevant to your capacity to do a job and cannot be used as grounds for discrimination. It is also important to familiarise yourself with an organisation’s maternity leave and return to work policies. Finding a balance between contract negotiation and disclosure can be tricky, however doing some research early on can be beneficial. Don’t be intimidated about asking questions and reading company material. Also, know your rights. Understand workplace legislation, equip yourself with knowledge to not only protect yourself, but to give you the tools and language to negotiate your terms. Whenever possible, join an industry union.

• Participate in further training and education 

Being temporarily away from full-time employment can be a perfect time to update skills and training through further study. There are more options to do this remotely nowadays and this activity can improve your chances of not only returning to your old position or industry, but gaining new employment in circumstances where you find yourself unemployed. Retraining can seem daunting, but brushing up on new technology and innovations, by for example improving computer skills, obtaining an industry related certificate or building on already attained qualifications, will not only keep your mind active and motivated throughout early child rearing, it will ensure you are still “in the loop” so to speak and are not drifting further away from the workforce. It may also be a chance to do a course in something completely different to your current field. Changing career paths is always an option and taking that first step will put you in a better position for when you are ready to re-enter the workforce.

• Impart industry knowledge

Sharing your expertise is also another way to maintain focus and experience, while you are on maternity leave or should you be facing redundancy. You may wish to do this through pathways such as writing or teaching within your field. Both these endeavours can be extremely flexible professions and can be performed on a part-time or casual basis, sometimes at excellent rates, and in the case of writing, may even be done from home. Finding ways to utilise your intellectual property can also help you to refine your interests and strengths and will lead you to more job satisfaction and prosperous endeavours.

• Start your own business

Finding yourself without work may be a signal that there is a better fit for you elsewhere, but it may also indicate that you are capable and prepared to forge your own way in your field of expertise. Running your own business is challenging and requires both an investment of time and finance, but if successful, the benefits are abundant. You may want to start something from scratch, or perhaps invest in an existing business or franchise, whether within your current field or in a new area of interest.

• Sound financial planning

It is always beneficial to live within your means. That is, spending according to your earnings and affordability, and ensuring that a financial safety net exists for when the unforeseen happens. This could mean setting up a high interest savings account as soon as you begin paid employment, that is only accessed in the event of an emergency. Minimising debt is another way to ensure that if career interruption occurs, you are not being burdened by superfluous financial commitments such as outstanding debts or credit cards. Participating in a high yield superannuation scheme, and one that may offer access to your money in the event of financial disruption is worth exploring early also. Having a financial safety net simply means you will have more options to explore new opportunities and avoid career interruption. It can allow you to pay for further study and childcare, while you re-establish yourself in the workforce.

• Advocate for affordable and sustainable healthcare, childcare and education

It is vital as a society that we support public services that are accessible and inexpensive. This means educating ourselves about our governments and choosing wisely when we vote. On a more practical level, we can utilise public health systems and educational institutions, including those that facilitate further and vocational study, and support the provision of community childcare services to enhance the demand for them and improve their quality and availability. When mothers are faced with the prospect of balancing family and work, it is these services that are going to determine how much support they can access to maintain employment choices and financial independence, even if their hours and income are reduced as a result of career interruption. 

**************************************************************

* The editor:

Hi Diane,
Thanks for your article. It's well-written, but the content is not there. Here's my feedback:
1) You spend 7 paragraphs introducing the topic. I'm not sure what I should take away from these 7 paragraphs. The topic is how to avoid career interruption when having children. It's mainly targeted at women, but you add a few sentences at the end of the intro for men. You also go into various tangents. Your intro should not be more than 1 paragraph or two. Women facing this issue know about the problem. They read your article looking for solutions, not for a lecture on how difficult or unfair life is.
2) You then go on with tips to avoid career interruption altogether. But the tips that you give don't make sense or are just plain obvious. i) Negotiate a contract or maternity leave policy prior to recruitment. That's not realistic for most people. ii) Training and education. After giving birth, most women struggle to just keep up with the newborn. iii) Same thing for sharing your knowledge while on maternity leave. iv) The rest of the tips are obvious. There aren't any insights.

After reading your article, although you have good grammar, I don't know what I should take away. Can you rework this article, do more research and take at least a week to think it through?
Sorry, this may sound brutal, but I'm just trying to give you my honest feedback.
Let me know your thoughts. 


* My response:

Oh dear. I’m afraid you’ve missed the point entirely and have inadvertently exposed your own male privilege and internalised gender bias. Sorry to be brutal. I don’t need a week to think on this, I thought about it over breakfast while we fed the kids.

I didn’t spend 7 paragraphs merely introducing the topic, I used those words to tease out the issues. Women are engaged and empowered by being empathised with and having their experiences validated. I used the statistics relating to domestic duties in two countries to back it up. I also included men in the scenario, to highlight how childbearing for women in the workforce is not dissimilar to a disadvantage like an illness or injury suffered by men. I also attempted to highlight how men are needed to support women to avoid career interruption, particularly when they often possess the structural power to do so, but also within their own households.

I think it is patronising and quite incorrect to suggest that women are not capable of participating in paid work, study or training whilst caring for a newborn. That is entirely the attitude of discrimination creating these barriers in the first place. Two points here. Firstly, where are their partners? Shouldn’t they be doing 50% of the work and negotiating flexibility in their own careers to make space for women to preserve theirs? That is why I mentioned them in the beginning. Not only to include men and make a comparison to their own possible career disruptions through illness/injury, but also to make them accountable. The fact is most men won’t participate equally in domestic duties and child rearing specifically because it is difficult, tedious and UNPAID work and to preserve their own careers and sanity. Secondly, this statement is blatantly untrue. I can tell you I wrote and self-published a novel with TWO newborns and a toddler and recently Senator Larissa Waters breastfed her baby whilst putting forward a motion in the Australian Federal Parliament. Google it. 

The other tips I mentioned such as maintaining financial independence and having a monetary safety net are not obvious to women, within a patriarchal system that largely expects them to abandon their careers and financial independence, instead becoming dependent on their partners (often male/husbands – but not always), when they have children. That is the central point of the whole topic. It is impossible to find 800-1000 words describing ways in which women can preserve their careers, outside the tips I have given, within an inherently sexist system, which you have very clearly demonstrated. This is yours, many men’s and society’s views:

• Women are solely responsible for looking after newborns and can barely cope, so can’t retrain, work part-time or work from home 
• Women already know to have a financial safety net, that’s why they get married and let the man work so they can stay home and do the housework and look after the baby
  

I could have written a three-word article to help women avoid career interruption: don’t have kids!

You also suggest that it is unrealistic to negotiate maternity leave. Rubbish. This is exactly the type of empowerment women need and the kind of resistance men need to stop creating in relation to career interruption. It is absolutely realistic, in fact necessary, for both men and women to start demanding flexible workplaces in regard to family/life/work balance. It is not only a woman’s obligation to surrender her financial independence and her career aspirations to build a family, it should be everybody’s responsibility to participate in child rearing equally. Including society in general, which is why I mentioned how we should educate ourselves about our governments and the structural systems they maintain that for the most part, disadvantage women. The most progressive nations in the world already do this. They provide free or at least affordable childcare, they have school drop off/pick up compatible work hours and don’t depend on the false economy of working 9am-5pm, focusing instead on productivity not hours sitting at your desk, and they encourage equality in parenting by both men and women.

I anticipated that you may not be brave enough to include a feminist perspective on your website. You said you didn’t want me to write fluff, but I think that is exactly what you wanted. Not an article that actually empowers women by validating and articulating their lived experiences and provides them with tools to empower them to maintain an intellectual and financial pursuit whilst raising children, and demanding that there is someone to pick up the slack when they surrender some of the burdens associated with child rearing. By not using articles like this, you are simply alienating 50% of your market. Don’t underestimate women’s, especially mother’s, capacity to engage with an academic level, politically rich article. Who knows, it may take your site to the next level. I know how women think and feel. I am a woman who writes for and about women. And not women with internalised misogyny and a sad case of Stockholm Syndrome. Google it.

I’m not surprised you didn’t take anything away from this article. I didn’t write it for you. I wrote it for your female readers. This is how I write. It won’t change. If you don’t think it’s a good fit for your site, we can terminate the relationship here.

PS – I wrote this response in between clearing the breakfast dishes, changing one nappy, wiping one bum, brushing four sets of teeth including my own, putting on three sets of fairy wings and preparing morning tea for three children under four. Women can multi-task, we just need to start getting paid for it!

 Thanks for your article. It's well-written, but the content is not there. Here's my feedback:

1) You spend 7 paragraphs introducing the topic. I'm not sure what I should take away from these 7 paragraphs. The topic is how to avoid career interruption when having children. It's mainly targeted at women, but you add a few sentences at the end of the intro for men. You also go into various tangents. Your intro should not be more than 1 paragraph or two. Women facing this issue know about the problem. They read your article looking for solutions, not for a lecture on how difficult or unfair life is.

2) You then go on with tips to avoid career interruption altogether. But the tips that you give don't make sense or are just plain obvious. i) Negotiate a contract or maternity leave policy prior to recruitment. That's not realistic for most people. ii) Training and education. After giving birth, most women struggle to just keep up with the newborn. iii) Same thing for sharing your knowledge while on maternity leave. iv) The rest of the tips are obvious. There aren't any insights.
* Editor:

I won't be publishing your article, but I will still pay you for it. I didn't appreciate your reply and the assumptions that you made. You talk about discrimination, but do you realize that I probably suffered more discrimination than you, as a visible minority? The feedback I gave you was as an editor of a site for over 10 years. And I am a father and took one year off as paternity leave. I know how hard it is to raise kids. Maybe you and some women can do it as well as advance your career, but it is a real struggle. My suggestions were from real life experience. When a new baby is born, the parents want to spend time with them, not think about career. There's more to life than career. Btw, my wife is a lawyer and is an accomplished woman who worked hard her whole life. Even she struggled. I'm glad you can do all that you claim, but I regret to inform you can most people can't live up to your standards...you should really reconsider how you deal with people.

 
* My final word:

It's not about living up to standards. It's about removing obstacles to allow people to struggle less. With all yours and your wife's experiences, I'm baffled you don't agree that we should have more balance. Of course people want to spend time with their children, but not at the expense of their lives and careers outside parenthood. And it's often mothers who are expected to give up more. 

It's interesting that you interpret my assertive response as aggressive. Very telling too. 

  It seems you are entitled to be brutal in your criticism and I am not. I suggest asking your wife and other women in your life to read the article and see what they think about it.

I won't be publishing your article, but I will still pay you for it. I didn't appreciate your reply and the assumptions that you made. You talk about discrimination, but do you realize that I probably suffered more discrimination than you, as a visible minority? The feedback I gave you was as an editor of a site for over 10 years. And I am a father and took one year off as paternity leave. I know how hard it is to raise kids. Maybe you and some women can do it as well as advance your career, but it is a real struggle. My suggestions were from real life experience. When a new baby is born, the parents want to spend time with them, not think about career. There's more to life than career. Btw, my wife is a lawyer and is an accomplished woman who worked hard her whole life. Even she struggled. I'm glad you can do all that you claim, but I regret to inform you can most people can't live up to your standards.
Hi Diane,

Thanks for your article. It's well-written, but the content is not there. Here's my feedback:

1) You spend 7 paragraphs introducing the topic. I'm not sure what I should take away from these 7 paragraphs. The topic is how to avoid career interruption when having children. It's mainly targeted at women, but you add a few sentences at the end of the intro for men. You also go into various tangents. Your intro should not be more than 1 paragraph or two. Women facing this issue know about the problem. They read your article looking for solutions, not for a lecture on how difficult or unfair life is.

2) You then go on with tips to avoid career interruption altogether. But the tips that you give don't make sense or are just plain obvious. i) Negotiate a contract or maternity leave policy prior to recruitment. That's not realistic for most people. ii) Training and education. After giving birth, most women struggle to just keep up with the newborn. iii) Same thing for sharing your knowledge while on maternity leave. iv) The rest of the tips are obvious. There aren't any insights.

IQ2 2017 - Political Correctness Has Failed Itself

The first debate in the IQ2 series was entertaining and thought provoking. Upon entering, we were asked to vote on whether we were For the statement that political correctness (PC) has failed, Against or Undecided. I chose Undecided. While I was leaning towards being Against the statement, (I believe PC hasn't failed and we still need it, now more than ever), I wanted to hear both sides of the argument and make a better choice at the end.

31% were Undecided at the start, 22% were Against and the remaining 47% were For. This means that at the beginning of the debate, most people felt that political correctness was failing, but many weren't sure and perhaps, like myself, hoped it wasn't and wanted to hear an informed discussion that confirmed its necessity or obsoleteness.

There were two speakers on each team who took turns presenting their arguments. At the end, we were asked to vote again and while the votes were tallied, the floor was opened to questions or statements from the audience. I'll disclose the result at the end.

Here are the speakers:

Image via: The Ethics Centre website

Simon Longstaff hosted the debate and immediately summarised the crux of the argument. Is there a conservative backlash against political correctness or is it a failed movement in itself?

Chris Kenny was the first speaker. He suggested that political correctness was a way in which our thoughts are controlled and shaped. He described this as some sort of dystopian or Orwellian nightmare whereby we are brainwashed into thinking a certain way to police our thoughts and words. You know, like how advertising, education, popular culture, television, movies etc. are dominated by a mostly white, male, hetero/cisgender ideal and shape our identities. He remarked that the Left of the political discourse aims to promote a Utopian ideal. So far, Chris was convincing me to vote for the other team. Perhaps PC works to undo the stereotypes and negative representations that all those other bias mediums communicate in order to condition us, and perhaps PC is a way in which we can achieve a balance. Chris suggested that PC as a tool to achieve this balance had gone too far and in its extremity has instead caused the mainstream to resist. PC has become a buzz word whereby its original intent and meaning has been distorted and has thus failed, becoming a "springboard to all it despises". I can see how anything in its extreme can do that. How over policing language can water down the intention, making it seem absurd and how "political posturing" and "virtue signalling" can become antithetical to common sense. But did that mean that we could or should do away with it all together? Chris' main argument was that political correctness had become alarmist and so prevalent that it was now irrelevant and counter productive. He gave examples of how people and governments can opt for preventative responses to serious events and ideas instead of making a commitment to practical action. Some of the examples he gave were the way in which the Lindt Cafe siege was handled. He suggested that in an effort to protect the feelings of Muslim Australians, police and the public responded in a hypersensitive manner (with hashtags such as #illridewithyou), effectively abandoning the actual victims of the crime. He also mentioned the way in which environmental science is often exaggerated, causing excessive preventative expenditure that doesn't address scientific reality, like responding to droughts by increasing expenditure into ventures like desalination, that were then prevented from going ahead due to flooding. 

Mikey Robbins spoke next for the Negative side, arguing that political correctness was not only succeeding, but was necessary and desirable. He asked if PC was such a failure, then why is it still so prominent in our media? Why do we discuss it so often? Surely if it was failing it would have disappeared, like Trotskyism? If there is such a prevalent need to decry political correctness, doesn't that prove that it's working? It provokes debate and shifts apathy. Mikey talked about how the phrase political correctness originally came about. He said it was a tongue-in-cheek description given to the Left, by and to themselves, to make fun of the way in which language was modified in a changing world to reflect contemporary values and agreed upon phrases and labels that respect marginalised groups in particular. Mikey said he was an advocate and regular participant in exercising free speech, even if it caused offense sometimes, but that didn't mean that PC was unnecessary or failing. He was suggesting that the context and intention of our words can make all the difference. For example, being critical of someone's actions is different to criticising their condition. Saying someone is behaving unjustly is not the same as suggesting the colour of their skin is inferior. PC is simply the term we use to describe something that has always existed; a discourse around what is socially acceptable and known and how we progress these ideas with sensitivity, respect and inclusivity. 


Jacinta Price was the next speaker for the Affirmative and claimed that political correctness distracts us from the real issues, preventing real solutions, particularly for Aboriginal people. She talked about the way her people spoke to one another and while in the mainstream, it can be considered politically incorrect, like referring to herself as a blackfulla, it was a cultural way of communicating that wasn't hurting anyone. Again, like Mikey, she was alluding to the idea that context and intention are very important when we consider how we use language and when it is appropriate to call it out as not being PC. She gave the example of how her mother, a respected Aboriginal Elder who participated extensively in elevating the status and well-being of her people, was denied the right to speak at a prominent Queensland university. Apparently she had been on the SBS program Insight and had said to a young person that she didn't think she looked like a blackfulla, inadvertently suggesting she was too white. People were offended and accused her of being politically incorrect and as a result she was denied the platform to speak publicly, effectively silencing her. Jacinta argued that her mother didn't have any ill intent, it was just the way she spoke. She didn't mean to cause offense and wasn't being "racist", it was benign language and its criticism deflected from the real issues that her mother wanted to address. It got me thinking about context again. Surely, most people in that room understood that Jacinta's mother wasn't being abusive and had ownership over that language as a cultural way of communicating. However, flagging those words as politically incorrect, don't necessarily condemn her or her ideas, they simply point out that better words can be chosen in another context. It prevents giving license to people who would use those words to denigrate or abuse people by suggesting the darkness of your skin determines how Aboriginal you are. I think they should have let her speak at the university, but I'm glad the discussion about her words happened. Of course she isn't racist, but it's necessary to talk about how her words can impact on others and what the consequences may be. Jacinta, like Mikey, talked about the place that humour and offense has in delivering often heavy and serious messages and how if we police our language too closely, we risk silencing vital voices. She suggested that in denying fundamental truths because we are afraid to speak about them and saying the wrong thing, we further enforce incorrect stereotypes. So do we say whatever we want to get our facts straight, or do we say what we want in a way that allows us to examine the facts sensitively? Jacinta mentioned the Bill Leak fiasco and how his cartoon about Aboriginal fathers was perhaps taken out of context and blown out of proportion. She said many Aboriginal fathers who did not identify with the derogatory portrayal, still understood its meaning and that the fact is those fathers do actually exist. She noted that nobody suggested that the cartoon was portraying all Aboriginal men as policemen, as the policeman in the picture was indeed Aboriginal. Both Chris and Jacinta suggested that Bill Leak was being unfairly targeted for his controversial cartoons and it was an example of PC being used in its extreme. She didn't talk about the unequal platform that white journalists and cartoonists have in society generally, compared to Aboriginal fathers who are still experiencing the effects of colonisation, poverty, unemployment and attempted genocide. Jacinta also talked about how Aboriginal women in remote areas are being threatened by their own people, with violence, if they dare to break traditional lore. She said nobody wants to talk about it out of fear of being politically incorrect. It seems that in order to be PC, people refuse to acknowledge that black on black violence has taken more lives that white on black violence and this is hypocritical in the face of the #blacklivesmatter campaign. Again, I thought about the context of privilege and discrimination in which violence happens generally. Shouldn't we be asking why and in what circumstances black people are dying compared to white people? Jacinta stated that she believes that racism and political correctness were two sides of the same coin. That's when she lost me.


Tasneem Chopra was the final speaker and argued for the Negative. Her concerns centred around the notion that when the conversation is dominated by a certain group of people and when those whose lives the issues impact are excluded from the debate, PC is a way in which we address imbalances of entitlement, privilege and representation. Political correctness provides boundaries. It defines the checks and balances that keeps the discourse honest and ensures a level playing field. When there is a lack of representation and when marginalised groups are spoken about instead of being allowed to speak, bigotry and misinformation becomes casualised and eventually becomes acceptable and mainstream; sometimes those who hold those bigoted beliefs can even become POTUS or PM (who in the case of Tony Abbott, a white, male, conservative, suddenly and inexplicably to many, declared himself Minister for Women and Minister for Indigenous Affairs). Tasneem pointed out that PC helps us to identify the issues that divide us and eliminates the Us vs Them mentality that often causes bigotry to escalate, as it is currently, despite the influence and prevalence of political correctness. PC is a siren of the non acceptance of hatred and it helps us to ensure respectful discourse. 

The debate was then handed over to the audience. A few people brought up some excellent points. One man argued that PC is a form of self-censorship that occurs when we have freedom of information. It is a way in which we can police our own thoughts as opposed to censorship being imposed on us by the state. Another person talked about stereotyping and how accurate stereotypes are a way in which we make sense of the world around us. It is when stereotypes become inaccurate assumptions that can cause harm, that PC can help us to keep these inaccuracies in check. Another woman reminded us of when words like kaffir, nigger, wog, faggot and other derogatory terms were an acceptable part of the lexicon and how those insults have been eliminated due to political correctness. It made me wonder if political correctness has gone too far, or if in fact it has forced the scum to the surface. When people get defensive about being PC, are they just showing their true colours, indulging in their cognitive dissonance and refusing to admit that they are out of line and learning from it? Is it PC that is stifling debate or privileged people using it to deflect from the real issues? Which is the argument that is twisted around to minimise political correctness. As Mikey said, surely political correctness has done more good than harm. That quote kept coming to my mind. "When you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression". I'd made my decision. I voted Against the statement and went with my initial thoughts. Political correctness hasn't failed. It's working, it's agitating and it's changing the way we see the world, for the better.

The final vote was counted and the results spoke for themselves. It was one of the biggest swings seen in IQ debate history.

Undecided - 13%
For - 18%
Against - 69%