To become a mother when she wants to if she wants to and to be supported by her family, her community and her job.
I happened upon this article earlier this morning about companies that offer to pay to have eggs frozen to forestall fertility until their employees are ready to take the time off that they need to become 'better' mothers. The object of concern is that it should be a career minded woman's choice to start or add to her family.
Actually my mother and my previous boss were considerably older women (when she had me, and my boss didn't have kids and unlike the boss in the show she lives with it, just less happy about it). My mother really didn't want to have me so my family pitched in. That didn't work out well at all. But a long while later on she had my brother. Again that didn't work out well at all either but it was shocking to have learned she didn't have the time to be my mother yet decided to have another child that she wasn't going to be able to raise properly.
I'm not here to judge anyone.
The article though isn't unbiased on this issue. It starts off laying the ground work about the who's why's but still due to the complexity of the issue they find it unbefitting a responsible employer to make this kind of offer which they could, but hopefully don't use against talented personnel that decide to take that time off earlier in their careers.
"A family-friendly workplace allows sufficient time off for childbirth and baby-bonding, flexibility regarding business travel, and other support. To be successful, it must include fathers. Unfortunately, all of the attention given to egg freezing may be diverting employers from making critical structural changes that would keep talented and highly educated women in the pipeline."
And oddly enough I'd downloaded an episode of the Scottish drama The Replacement several weeks ago and never watched it.
The show is pretty good and all if only a little transparent, and that's fine. The pace of the first episode is a little fast but it has a story to tell besides the main character becoming a mother while grappling with being replaced at her workplace.
But that's the reality of the modern industrially advanced world where women compete with each other to achieve a high enough rank in their careers before they enter career suicide mode, motherhood. Even if she's not working in a fast pace tech industry the example of an architectural firm is one where advancement comes from producing for the company. Better still for the example is that she won a contract for the company and so is very important to them and should have a stable career despite a few months off.
Personally the family drama aspect of the show doesn't interest me, but thankfully that's the core of the show and it isn't handled too badly. But they do try to cover all the bases of what could go wrong. Falling out with the co-workers, falling out with the client, falling out with your bosses.. there are all kinds of things that can go wrong when a woman chooses to suspend her career and go maternal.
I don't understand really because why should parental leave mean leaving? even the option to work from home should be encouraged and not be seen as pulling the ripcord.
But I think about the alternative of freezing eggs and hoping that waiting a couple of decades to have children while being a woman's choice.. isn't bad because she'll still have a career waiting otherwise.
So that's the replacement. She's coming back into the workforce but she's older. Having been off though means she's possibly behind.
Unfortunately architecture isn't one of those career paths that's too face paced that a couple of years off would mean you're unable to catch up. If it was a tech career being put on pause for parental leave that would be different. Competition and competence are too fierce and demanding for older people to just resume where they left off.
I mean heck I've been off and on in IT and every time I try to get back in.. it's entry level BS. At least for people that can't advance in the field to begin with, it is hard to re-enter the workforce and expect anything to be better than it was when they left. It should be expected to be worse.
Being a replacement though means that you can still work on what the last person was doing and take over.
Why isn't that the norm then? Being able to choose someone great to replace you and hope that in a few years when you're ready you can do the same? Well again competition and competence.
But instead the show keeps trying to reinforce the idea that women that take parental leave just don't care enough about their careers no matter how hard they worked for them, to 'give up' being mothers, and get back into the cut-throat industry she left.. just to get stressed out trying to resume a career they'd put on ice.
I mean I've always wondered.. with my mother as an example of a single mother that put work first. She worked with the government of her country for a long time. She had a great career going. It wasn't a thing for her to get back to work.. because she never gave it up. Work is her life.
Her sister had a strong military career and after two children she went back to work. Eventually she started her own business and is doing great for herself.
Her other sister had 4 daughters that she raised mostly on her own, and she took me in for a while too.. Her career, though at a hospital (so I'm assuming they have good policies in place for parental leave).
It is a woman's choice to give up a career and have kids and frankly she doesn't need to have a good partner to make that happen, kids and career. Having a good family helps.
It just bugs me the way some people think that starting a family (with a partner or not) early in life or later really matters versus making sure there's support. Companies that offer good leave, good child care and health plans and proper salaries.. those are the ones that care. It feels like the real argument is that there's little incentive for these places to pay well or to offer good health insurance when a young woman is more likely to bail on them or become an offsite liability (a mother).
If she meets the right person or just feels she's at that right place in her life, and career, then it's her choice isn't it?