Did having kids ruin my career?

This edition is brought to you by Workpants who provide tailored career counselling to help individuals and employers design work that fits for you and your teams.

Before I get into the topic of kids ruining my career or not, there’s a few things I want to clear up from the start to try and avoid too many crankies in my DMs:

• I love my kids more than anything
• I have written this only from a Father’s perspective in a, Mother’s have a much different and more challenging experience when it comes to children and careers. I don’t think it is fair for me to lump both together.
• For anyone wanting to have kids and not able to, I apologise if this comes across as inconsiderate or ungrateful. I have friends in this situation and it’s heartbreaking I know.

Again, I love my kids more than anything and wouldn’t swap them or any career for anything but I think it’s an interesting hypothetical for parents or people thinking about become parents to think through.

I came up with a few points on the things that are affected or you have to think about in your career when having kids:

Where you live

If you don’t have kids and you’ve looked at a property to rent or buy and saw one promoted as “walking distance to school” you probably didn’t give AF. Then 5-6 years after having your first child, you’ll start having to do school drop off and pick ups.

It’s then you realise no one really told you how much of a time suck this can be and how a short walk could literally save you hours on a short drive.

People wait in line for Taylor Swift tickets for shorter amounts of time then they wait in the school pickup line. If the kids finish school at 3pm and you want to be in the first 10 cars in line, you’ll have to be there way before 2:30 to be a chance at our school.

Optionality

You ever had a bad run at work and just felt like quitting and going backpacking for 3 months to re-find your love of spreadsheets? Totally fine if you’re rich or your partners income can sustain cost of living, but is your partner okay being a single parent for 3 months?

If you’re like me, you’re also not capable of not seeing your kids for 3 months.

3 nights away from my kids and I’ll get back to the hotel after work and do a bit of this:

Or what if you’ve risen up the corporate ladder and then decide you’d like to learn how to teach pottery for a living? Most of us will get into a position of having a certain cost of living based on what we have been earning.

Sure, you could sell everything and live in a van with the family to try this new life but what if 6 months later you regret everything?

Holidays

If you’re a couple and you’ve been on holidays together, basically what you need to do when thinking about having holidays as a family is double the cost.

Now you also have to think about how your kids are going to go on a flight? My kids are quite well behaved but the idea of keeping them entertained for 14 hours on a plane is not something I’m confident about. Mostly because I can’t keep myself entertained for 14 hours.

The additional mental load

Write down all the things you have to think about at work and for yourself. What projects are due? Is my boss happy with me? Do I have enough super? Am I eating enough Protein? Should I be vegan?

Now add all of those things PLUS some for your kids.

Are they learning enough? Are they getting bullied? Should I push them to play more sport? How am I going to help them with their homework after year 5? When are school fees due?

School holidays

This feels like a big secret that no one tells people before they have kids and I have no idea how people manage school holidays without one parent being able to work from home, if you don’t have access to free family baby sitting (we don’t).

Like your kids are just home half of the bloody year and you have 4 weeks leave. I guess the idea is for the other weeks that they just roam the streets on e scooters?

School vacation programs are common but can be $50-$100 a day per child and more if you’re looking at external things like soccer camps.

It gets to the point where you’re excited for the kids to go back to school just because there’s 6 hours a day that they are being supervised again.

Dinner

“What should we do for dinner?” is already a question people get over as a couple. Add kids into the mix and it’s even less fun.

I remember going to the pub on Wednesday’s because the local did $5 steaks (this was over 10 years ago so with inflation, that steak is probably $38 now) but now you have to figure out a healthy meal that everyone likes that doesn’t involve you yelling, anyone crying or bribery with ice cream.

Every damn night.

Sleep

I used to tell people that my super power was my ability to sleep well every night. When I was single, I could have half my bed covered in washing, bricks, 2 sheep and a llama and I’d wake up 8 hours later in the same position.

Let me give you an example of what it’s like now;

It was around midnight, I was asleep but I heard a footstep. Like Spiderman, I honed in on the sound and the location and weight of step was coming from my sons room.

More steps but they weren’t coming closer like they usually would if he decided he wanted to get into our bed after a bad dream

Then I heard the click of the door unlocking.

I called out to him and asked what he was doing. He said he wasn’t sure and went back to sleep.

I checked the security cameras, he had his pillow under his arm and was about to walk out the front door, sleepwalking. I hate thinking about where he might have ended up if I hadn’t called out to him.

So even when I’m sleeping, I’m worried about them.

So, did they ruin my career?

Not, not at all. In fact they may have actually kept my career on track. Because I want to provide for them, take them on holidays (although it’s been 5 years since we’ve been on one), give them something to help them start their adult lives, that’s kept me from having a tantrum after a bad day of work and booking 1 way tickets to the other side of the world to start a new life.

But it’s pretty hard to say that having kids doesn’t affect your career in some way. A lot of what I’ve written about are things outside of work but unless you’re in Severance, you can’t just forget about your life outside of work between 9-5.

Especially not the most important things in your life.

Don't forget to check out https://www.workpants.com.au/services/workplaces to see if their special workplace career counselling program for new parents or other services might be just what your people need right now.