I'm a hot mess and so are you...

Everyone you think has life really under control is probably a hot mess. When it comes to ‘work-life balance’, this has been my experience. It’s been sort of funny to find out that folks have the impression that I have it all figured out. Like I’m that lady in the Nicole Hollander cartoon from the ‘90s, “the woman who does everything more beautifully than you.” ?

Let’s be clear: I am definitely not that woman! Over the last 10 years, I’d describe my life as follows: I’m piloting a minivan going 80 mph down a freeway full of giant potholes, with doors and windows blown out, and my kids are hanging onto the frame by their fingernails whooping and throwing curve balls at my head. Work is a lot, home is a lot, and all together it’s barely under control. Miss one warning sign with a sick kid, misinterpret something at work or unexpectedly need to help your aging parent navigate a health situation and suddenly you’re falling down on all your jobs.??

My experience is not unique; many of you readers are right here in it with me. Many of us are having children later in life and our parents are living longer, which, according to Juliana Horowitz , means that more than half of us are “sandwiched” between an aging parent and our own children (Pew Research 2022 ). Add the fact that women still take on a disproportionate amount of domestic work and emotional labor – see What a purple marker taught me about quitting - and it’s no surprise that we are burned out and extremely stressed! In fact, women experience anxiety disorders about twice as often as men. The pandemic only exacerbated this as?women stepped up to become the primary caregiver and in-home teacher to children who were doing remote learning on top of working full time and running their households (Indiana University , 2021).?

And let’s talk specifically, for a minute, about childcare. Childcare has been the bane of my parenting existence for almost 20 years. It’s insanely expensive, there’s never enough of it, and the coverage hours don’t actually fit to any working parent’s work hours. ?

In the Twin Cities the average cost of daycare for a toddler is about $16,000 per year (Childcare MN ) and that’s if you can even get into a daycare center! We are in the middle of a childcare crisis in the United States with a shortage of 3.6 million daycare spots across the country (The 19th ). We’re feeling this very acutely in Minnesota where 1,253 daycares have closed since 2019 leading to a shortage of over 40,000 daycare seats across the state (KSTP ). Most daycares keep hours close to 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM so parents have very little flexibility on when they can arrive and leave for work. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to cut off a colleague trying to start a conversation at 4:50 PM as I’m on the way out the door. “Sorry, but if I don’t get to my kid’s daycare in the next 20 minutes it’s going to cost me $50 in late fees!”?

Luckily, my kids are out of the daycare phase, but that places us squarely in the ThunderDome known as summer camp registration. Summer camp programs are the second hottest ticket after Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. At 8 AM on the first Monday of January, I join thousands of other parents frantically signing up for summer camp. By 9 AM all the spots are filled, and latecomers are relegated to the dreaded waiting list. And I still have to cobble together additional childcare because day camps only go from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM. ?

I’m often approached by managers who have identified that they lose talented, diverse employees, particularly women, during the process of moving through the analyst/associate/director/managing director talent development pipeline. The question I ask the (usually) all male managing directors at these firms is: how many of you are divorced? The answer is generally closer to 80% versus 37% for the general population. The intensive hours in most of these programs coincide with the time of life when many folks choose to start a family and let’s be very clear: having kids is hard. It’s even harder and way more isolating when one parent shoulders the entire burden of daily care. Here we have high income earners with loads of privilege, opportunity, and support, yet this promotion process actually did not work all that well for anyone at the firm.

This phenomenon isn't unique to the finance sector, data from McKinsey’s 2012 survey of 60 major corporations showed that both the number and the percentage of women fall off dramatically in the higher ranks of organizations (HBR ).

So what are some solutions? One thing I tell everyone who works for me is this: anytime you need time, take it from work. We spend the majority of our waking time on the job, generally 8-10 hours on weekdays for most business-oriented careers. These hours are also generally the daytime hours during which all other services are available, like doctors, dentists, electricians, plumbers, etc.??

For the first 15 years of my career, I felt intensely guilty taking time from work to go to the dentist, attend a routine pregnancy exam, or be the kindergarten surprise reader of the day. In hindsight, I wasted a great deal of energy feeling bad for no good reason and I missed out on many meaningful kid events, while neglecting to take good care of myself both mentally and physically.??

For much of my career I got paid less than many of my peers because 1) I’m female and 2) I have kids. In hindsight, I could have chaperoned every field trip I ever wanted, and it would not have changed my outcomes. My hours in the office and level of productivity have, in most cases, never be able to counter the thoroughly idiotic ingrained assumptions about a working woman with children. Working from home because the crew I needed to fix my dryer gave itself a 9-hour window in which to show up was never going to make or break my job prospects. Side note: did you all know that it is possible to run so many loads of laundry that your dryer drum becomes oblong instead of round? ?

Modeling good “take it from work” behavior is critical, but not penalizing employees during annual reviews or in job reference calls is just as important. Nearly every woman for whom I have had the privilege to conduct a reference call has been hit by the criticism of seeming to “prioritize” non-work activities, or being “on the baby train”, or some other version of spending time with family, regardless of the reference’s gender. Exactly zero men in my reference queues have been penalized for family time. In my experience, references for male job candidates have used time with family as a positive attribute for each job candidate. It’s a classic example of “The motherhood penalty vs the fatherhood bonus. ” Several of this newsletter’s subscribers have been references for folks in my candidate pools. Let me know if you’d like a refresher on your comments. ?

Another thing I tell my team is that investing in help at home is an investment in your career. Most working parents are cobbling together childcare, meal prep, appointments, camps, sports, and overwhelming expectations for playdates, birthdays, and endless events at school. And let’s not forget the many parents, in-laws, siblings, old friends and other humans with whom you are somehow still trying to spend time. To be clear, you cannot do all these things and work and parent and live to see another day well. You can try and flail, and then you can decide to get some help. ?

I’ve been paying for childcare for nearly 20 years. For the first 12 years, I couldn’t afford it and spent the money anyway – what else was I going to do? I needed the resources around me to be sufficient such that I could be present at work. And it was worth every penny. I know the stats on help around the house are terrible – see above section on childcare. But please get the help you need in any way you can, and don’t be ashamed to ask for help or feel like you have to do it all yourself. Got bored snowbird in-laws? Sign them up for one or two days a week during the summer. If your kids are in grade school, there is a good possibility your school, or one near you, offers an after-school care option or summer program that’s significantly cheaper than a full-time nanny.?

If you can afford it, don’t hesitate to bring in professional help. If you work 40-80 hours a week, having someone to grocery shop, flip a laundry load, wrangle drop offs and pickups, remember to get ready for swim lessons or prep dinner in a pinch is worth the massive hole in your budget. When you get to experience the joys of “working from the hospital” while dealing with your aging parents, or your marriage falls apart, or one kid requires a lot of extra attention, this level of household assistance can be the thing that keeps you on your career path. ?

One of my direct reports recently hired a part-time housekeeper who cooks, cleans, does laundry, and watches her kids in that final hour between 4PM daycare pickup and her 5PM end of workday. Trust me, she needs this help as she is the poster child for the “sandwich” generation. She didn’t search for help earlier because she just didn’t know that this kind of help existed! It wasn’t until a friend of hers hired for similar household position that she even knew that she could post a cry for help on Nextdoor and a Mrs. Doubtfire would magically appear to do the tasks that were keeping her from enjoying evenings with her family. (DM me if you’d like a copy of the job description she posted).?

I fully recognize that my colleagues and I are lucky to have the time and resources to use money to solve these problems. Unfortunately, most families in the United States don’t have the same privilege we do. Without systemic change and public investment in programs like universal daycare, after-school programs, and summer programs the income gap is only going to get wider as more women are forced out of the workforce by competing priorities or a lack of support at home.?

So, yeah, I’m a hot mess. So are you. And we’re going to be okay, especially if we’re willing to talk about it, and share what’s working and what’s not. We may not be able to fix all our systemic issues at once (wouldn’t that be nice?) but we can advocate for each other. If you know someone caught in a cycle of work vs health/kids/aging parents/household management, cut them some slack. Acknowledge that what goes on outside of work has a direct impact on what happens when each of us shows up to work each morning. And if you have a partner who is shouldering most of the work at home, stop reading this and go make the next 2 years worth of pediatrician and orthodontia appointments!?