Originally posted 4-8-13
Um, what?!
Um, what?!
That title is a mishmash of all the titles of things I’ve been reading lately. I don’t know if there are always this many articles, books, blog posts, etc pertaining to the “working mother/woman conundrum” or if I am just only paying attention to this kind of reading material for the first time. However, it seems to me that I’m being inundated with advice, opinion and statistics on women in the workplace everywhere I turn. Between this article, this book, this op-ed piece and this article I feel like my head is spinning.
In my blog post “Big News,” I revealed that I had quit my job so I could take an extended maternity leave. I also mentioned that there was a job I might start this summer, but had some details to work out. Well, I was all ready to take on that new job but a couple weeks back I learned that some aspects of the job (another post doc) were not what I thought they were going to be. That discovery just got me thinking a lot about EVERYTHING in my life, and over-analyzing every detail as usual. Why am I taking this job? Is this how I want to be spending my days? What do I want for my future?
To answer some of these questions about my future, I had to start by thinking about my past. For me, graduate school was… ug. A struggle, to say the least. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the unhappiest moments in my life happened during grad school. In 2004, I started my PhD research in a lab with people I loved and an advisor I admired and respected. I then discovered I hated what I was studying. I switched to a lab where I loved the research but I had a horrible relationship with my advisor who, frankly, abused me. She moved that lab to another university (and there was a snowball’s chance in hell of me moving with her) so I essentially started my PhD over in my 5th year with yet a 3rd advisor. Then my brother died. Those were just the most major events that happened between the ages of 22 and 28.
Of course, I had some of my happiest days in grad school too. I married the love of my life, adopted my two lovable pups and bought my first house. It clearly wasn’t all bad. While my personal life couldn’t have been better, my professional life was mostly pathetic.
In the end, however, I completed my dissertation in a great lab with a supportive advisor and can make everyone call me Dr. Jenkins now. But if I could go back, would I do it again? I have thought about this a lot and honestly I think the answer is no. Even having been a success in the end, it was all too little, too late and I think I could have been more successful and happier had I done a number of other things.
Even during the best of times in my final PhD lab, I never loved what I was doing. I liked the idea of what I was doing, but hated my day-to-day in the lab. I like thinking about science, analyzing data, figuring out what it all means, writing about and discussing results but hate doing experiments. I remember my last experiment in the lab, I was 8 months pregnant and even though it was a successful experiment and I got a lot of data, I literally ended the day in tears even knowing it would be my last experiment before my maternity leave. Why? Because it sucked! It was a major struggle to get those data, and I was miserable and hormonal. I’m good at what I do in the lab, and can practically do it with my eyes closed at this point, but I literally hate every minute of it.
In a lot of ways, I think I like the idea of being a professor and running a lab. Like I said, I love the thinking and the writing and the analyzing and the discussing – everything that happens after the data are collected. I just hate the doing. Professors spend their time mostly thinking/writing/analyzing/discussing but very little of the “doing.” At least, the more advanced professors don’t spend a lot of time at the bench collecting data. But I would honestly be looking at about another 10 years before I’m at the point where my days are not consumed by experimentation. I originally thought this job this summer might be a “fast track” to a professorship, but in all likelihood, that is not the case. I just can’t face another 10 years of hating my day-to-day activities for the possibility of someday maybe getting a job that I might not hate.
So I decided not to take the job.
It has been a whirlwind making this decision. In one way, it was an easy decision to make. I can’t leave Tess to go do a job I hate when I don’t need the paycheck. Period, end of discussion, no doubt about it. It is hard enough for a new mom to return to work when she loves her job, let alone going to do a job that makes her miserable, that pays nothing and when she can afford not to.
But in another way, it's the hardest decision I’ve ever made. I have devoted 25 years of my life to my education that culminated in a degree that trained me to be a professor. I have toiled for almost 9 years, 7 of which as a student, to get really good at something that I no longer plan to do. I have more student loan debt than I would like to admit. And now I’m going to walk away from that to watch Elmo and change diapers? This seems equally as insane as leaving my baby to do a job I hate. Does this all come down to which decision is least crazy?
To try to help me make this decision, I read Lean In, the book by the COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg. A lot of my fellow feminists out there are probably familiar with this book, even if you haven’t read it – it is everywhere right now. The author has been on everything from The View to The Daily Show. There are articles and blogs galore about it. In fact, there are blog posts about the blog posts about the book. And EVERYONE has an opinion on it. She has been heralded as both a saint and a demon for her views on women in the workplace.
For anyone unfamiliar with the book, the over-arching theme is that women comprise a very small minority of leaders at all levels of professionalism (public and private sector) and this needs to be remedied. Sanderberg writes: “Women hold about 14% of executive officer positions, 17% of board seats and constitute 18% of our elected congressional officials.” We also make 77 cents for every dollar men make doing the same job. She discusses her theories on why this might be the case and presents advice on how women can, as she puts it, “lean in” to their career and become effective leaders.
Sandberg argues that girls are treated differently at an early age – from infancy even – and this leads to different behaviors and attitudes that eventually prevent them from becoming effective leaders. Parents talk to girl babies differently than boy babies, apparently. When girls call out in class, they are scolded for breaking the rules, and teachers naturally interact with and call on boys more frequently than girls. Girl leaders are called “bossy,” which clearly carries a negative connotation. She writes about “stereotype threat,” which says that being made aware of a stereotype (like “girls suck at math”) becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Girls – and women – want to hide their accomplishments and successes because they do not want to appear boastful or be disliked. Much of this I agree is endemic.
But from a personal perspective, I can’t say I necessarily agree that a lot of this applies to me and my decision to step away from my career. I was raised to be a feminist. A lot of people think the word itself, “feminist,” is an insult or dirty word. However, I was always proud to label myself as such. At a young age, I never even considered the possibility that being a female could hold me back from anything. I pursued academic success and leadership opportunities fervently throughout school and was proud of my achievements. Despite my family’s poor financial situation, I was able to go to prep school in Connecticut because I was awarded a “Leadership Scholarship.” I was “bossy” and proud of it. I have heard stories from my mom about how I used to play house with the neighbor kid, and would make him be the one to stay home and take care of the kids while I went to work.
When I was 13, I was fed up with the fact that our local ballpark had phenomenal facilities for the boy’s baseball teams but abysmal conditions for the girl’s softball teams. Boys had state-of-the-art scoreboards and dugouts and professional uniforms. The girls played in t-shirts and had rusty fences demarking a “dugout” that contained benches that gave us splinters on our ass. After years of complaint, I wrote a letter to the local newspaper to do something about it, and they even featured my story on the front page, including my photograph – in color! I bet you didn’t know you were dealing with a minor celebrity here!
Despite being a born leader and a proud feminist, not to mention the fact that I went to Smith – the home of Betty Freidan and Gloria Steinhem – a bona fide breeding ground for feminists, I am loving being a stay at home mom right now. For me, at least, my current choices have nothing to do with how I was treated as a child or preconceived notions about what a woman should be doing with her life and time. Some days while I’m listening to music and dancing with Tess or when I’m outside in the sunshine reading to her and listening to her laugh I honestly shudder when I think, “I could be patch clamping right now.” (Patch clamp is the technique in the lab I use).
Having said that, I won’t deny that societal norms affect girls and women in their behavior and choices. Obviously they do. But I’m just speaking to my own life and my own choices. Despite my fervent pursuit of higher education, a successful career and failure to believe women were anything but equals to men, I want to be home raising my daughter right now and honestly believe no one else could do a better job. I think I am doing what is best not only her but also for me. My choice has nothing to do with societal norms or pressure from anyone other than myself. In fact, the only pressure I feel is that I should be at work and not at home with Tess. But shouldn’t feminism be about making the choice based on what you want for your life rather than let society dictate what you should be doing?
In addition to her theories about why women fail to lead, Sandberg also advices that in order to have a successful career, a woman has to have a supportive partner, who admires your ambition and does 50% of the work at home – which includes child-rearing, house-making and financial planning. Well, on this front I think Andy could even compete with Sandberg’s super-husband – and win.
Andy could not be more supportive of me in every respect. He is more proud of even my smallest accomplishments than I could ever ask. He is not above doing housework. In fact, when I needed to step up my nursing to get my milk production back up, I found myself to be so exhausted I could do nothing but nurse for a couple of weeks. He did everything around here – other than nurse. And honestly, if he could have figured out how to do that, he probably would have. So, if the key to a successful work-life balance is marrying someone who can make that happen, I’ve already accomplished that and then some.
So, I’ve always been a proud feminist, who was never made to feel that women were anything but equal to men, and I have the necessary supportive partner - so what’s my excuse? Why am I not “leaning in?”
Sandberg holds herself up as a beacon of light to other working mothers. She declares that she leaves work at 5:30 to be home with her family “whenever she can.” Of course, after her children go to sleep, she opens up her laptop and starts up again. I’m sure she still works 12 hour+ days, just not 12 hours in a row. She uses the fact that she tries to be home for dinner and tries to be at her kids’ soccer games as examples of how she sacrifices for her family, while still having a successful (the most successful) career. But again, she tries to be home for dinner, but admits she isn’t every night. Sandberg also barely took a maternity leave, she admits she was responding to emails the day after giving birth and continued to hold meetings at her home while she was nursing. Also, for a year after her first child was born her husband lived in L.A. while she lived in San Francisco. Excuse me? What kind of life is that?! If these are the kinds of choices one has to make to have the kind of career Sheryl Sandberg has, then I don’t want it. She might be much more of a family woman than your average female world power, but she lives a life I would never want. Not that I’m judging her – I wish I could be more like her! I just know that it’s not for me.
So I guess that’s “my excuse” for not leaning in. I am driven by my professional ambitions, yes, but they do not define me. Not at this point in my life at least, and not in the way that Sheryl Sandberg appears to be.
Finally one thing she says that really speaks to me in grappling with all of this is found on a poster at the Facebook offices, apparently. It reads:
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
This is an important question not just for a working mother or a woman leader but for anyone. The truth is, being a post-doc is the thing I would do out of being “afraid.” Afraid of going out on a limb and finding a career and a work life about which I am passionate. It’s scary to me to be unemployed. To be called a “stay at home mom.” These are things I never saw in my future. Doing this postdoc would be the “safe” choice. But I want something more for myself.
I don’t want a job. I want a career that I love. I want to love the place that I get up and leave my children for every day. I know that is out there for me, I just have to find it. So I am going to take some time to find that thing, and it just so happens that the timing is right for me to do that now. I can stay home with Tess, enjoy her infancy, watch her grow and develop, successfully nurse her, while also decompressing from the previous 9 years of stress from working in the lab, and working on finding a career that speaks to me.
I see this as a great choice and opportunity, but in Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg writes that even taking a temporary hiatus from work to start or raise a family is incredibly damaging to a woman’s career. She says that taking just one year out of the workforce decreases a woman’s average annual earnings by 20%. This is a pretty scary statistic for someone who is looking at taking a year out of the workforce.
Although, she describes her own decision to quit her job with the federal government to move to the Silicon Valley to pursue a career in the technology industry. She was unable to garner her dream tech job for an entire year. Finally, she took a position with a small company called Google. She helped build Google into the world power it is today and her work there led to her current position at Facebook.
I wonder if she realizes the paradox in reporting the 20% lost earnings for taking a year off work for family in light of her own decision to take a year off to find the perfect job. It clearly paid off for her. What is the difference between what she did and what I am doing? I’m just killing 2 birds with one stone – taking the year off to start my family while also finding the perfect job. Hey, in my mind I’m even more efficient than Sheryl Sandberg! I’m a multi-tasker.
The truth is, I’m just trying to live in the moment and think about what I want to be doing right now. And there is no doubt about what the answer to that question is. Of course, I wonder what I will think about this decision in 10 years. Will I look back and think “I should have taken that job, it was a great opportunity and here I am with school-age kids who don’t need me anymore and no career.” Maybe, but I also don’t want to be Erin Callan who devoted her whole life to her career at Lehman Brothers, even sacrificing her marriage for it, then was left high and dry when the company collapsed. She now regrets never having had children while she struggles to conceive at nearly 50 years old. I might be a far cry from that extreme, but I also think I’m far more likely to regret missing these formative years with my daughter for a job that made me miserable than the decision I have made.
I want a career, I know that I do. I want that for me and for Tess. I think it will be important for her to see her mom be successful and fulfilled in her life outside of the home. But if I do work, I want her to see that part of my life as something that brings me pride and joy not anger and resentment. I am taking the time to find that while having the added bonus of bonding with and raising my baby in the best way I can right now. While I sometimes question myself, ultimately… I couldn’t be happier right now. And that’s how I know I’ve made the right decision. Perhaps, in a few months I’ll miss sitting at the bench toiling with an experiment. Until then, I’m perfectly fulfilled working on this little experiment called Tess.
My most successful experiment to date!
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