Millennial Parenting Paradox: Ready to Have Children Has Profession Draw back

Viviana’s journey to motherhood adopted an more and more widespread sample for millennial girls.

She knew she wished youngsters, however her early profession in her native Colombia took precedence. She met her husband when she was 29. Not lengthy after, she began a job at a pharmaceutical firm. The work was intense, however she loved it, which solidified her plan to not get pregnant till she was effectively into her 30s.

It wasn’t the one cause, although. “It sounds silly to say now, however I assumed my boss would get mad at me if I received pregnant,” she says. “I assumed I’d one way or the other be an issue for the corporate and that it was due to this fact ultimately my accountability to attend.”

By 36, she felt established sufficient at work to take time away. She gave start to her daughter, Amelia, in 2021. “I do not remorse ready,” Viviana tells me. “I believe it was the suitable factor to do.”

However when she and her household moved to New York Metropolis in 2023, the balancing act along with her profession and motherhood shifted. Although she may’ve transferred her job to the US, she determined to stop. “Beginning contemporary in a brand new nation, with a special language, new buddies, and all the pieces else, I actually wished to be there for my daughter throughout that adjustment interval,” she says.

Whereas she as soon as thought of having a couple of child, now she’s not so positive. “I actually wish to return to work, and with one other child — particularly in New York Metropolis — that is simply going to be a very arduous factor to do,” she says. “Particularly with no household round to assist us.”

“Having all of it” — elevating youngsters whereas constructing knowledgeable profession — has been the subject of books, films, TV reveals, and conversations ever since girls began making strides into the paid-labor market. Now, with extra girls working than ever earlier than, they’re additionally ready longer to have youngsters. In response to the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, the common age at which a girl first offers start is about 27. It isn’t a lot that ladies are selecting their careers over having youngsters, however as the price of elevating a toddler skyrockets, extra really feel like they should wait till their careers are established to begin a household. The difficulty is that high-paying jobs are sometimes probably the most demanding, and many individuals’s careers begin taking off of their 30s — the identical time many really feel able to have children.

I talked to greater than a dozen moms working in fields akin to finance, retail, and consulting — a lot of whom are referred to by simply their first title to keep away from skilled repercussions. Most of them waited to have children till they felt safe and financially steady sufficient of their careers to take action, solely to search out it troublesome to juggle motherhood with rising profession pressures. In lots of instances, they are saying, their employers did little to accommodate them, underscoring a easy reality: For a lot of moms, work shouldn’t be working.

For Anastasia Dedik, a 43-year-old skilled musician who got here to the US from Russia, beginning a household wasn’t even a consideration till she completed her training and established herself professionally. By that point, she was 32. Two and a half weeks after she had her daughter, she was again at work as a piano trainer and performer. “I simply wished to verify I nonetheless had work,” she says. Nonetheless, it was robust.

“When my daughter was 3 weeks previous, I needed to go to California for work,” she says, including, “That was the tip of breastfeeding.”

Different moms I talked to shared comparable tales about wanting to make sure profession stability earlier than having a child; many say the price of childcare was a giant cause they waited.

“It felt irresponsible to even begin occupied with having a child at a time after I was spending a variety of my life worrying about paying lease and paying off school debt,” says Molly, a mom of 1 in New York Metropolis who works in publishing. She had her daughter two years in the past, when she was 38.

She had calculated that paying for day care or a nanny would depart her and her husband — who works in tech — with little to no financial savings every month.

I felt like this is able to set me again on my profession trajectory, that it might trigger me to lose respectability and affect inside the business.

In a 2023 survey performed by the American Psychological Affiliation, 66% of fogeys reported feeling “consumed” by worries about cash, in contrast with 39% of adults who weren’t mother and father. A Pew survey from 2024, in the meantime, discovered that amongst adults below 50 who did not have youngsters, 36% stated a serious cause was that they did not suppose they might afford to boost a toddler.

Although the ladies I talked to who waited till their 30s to have youngsters largely stated they had been assured they made the suitable choice, many ladies additionally described feeling like the alternatives they made weren’t actually decisions — they had been pressured into the choice as a result of no different choice made sense.

“I simply wasn’t prepared to begin a household earlier,” June, a guide residing in London who had her first little one at 36, tells me. “I felt insecure in my work, did not have vital financial savings, and wished to spend a while residing with my companion earlier than actually deciding that we would like children.”

She and her companion additionally wished to purchase a home earlier than including on the price of youngsters. “You simply cannot rush that,” she says. They ended up shopping for the home and shifting in when she was a number of months pregnant.

By the point the ladies stated they felt financially safe, their careers had additionally ramped up. Many stated that after having a child they tried to return to work as quickly as doable, fearful that — regardless of widespread being pregnant antidiscrimination legal guidelines — they’d be handed over for promotions and pay raises.

“To me, it was a worry of turning into irrelevant if I stayed away too lengthy,” says Anita, a 39-year-old advertising and marketing government and mom of two who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She was significantly afraid that her relationships with purchasers would deteriorate whereas she was away. “I felt like this is able to set me again on my profession trajectory, that it might trigger me to lose respectability and affect inside the business and due to this fact change into much less precious to my employer.” That, she says, is what saved her from beginning a household in her 20s.

She had her first child at 33. The timing gave her extra monetary stability and confidence in her profession, however coming back from her three-month maternity depart was removed from straightforward.

“One sacrifice I needed to make nearly instantly was nursing my child,” she remembers. “It was actually arduous to nurse or categorical milk after I was going again into the workplace, so we switched to components. It broke my coronary heart that this was a choice I used to be making explicitly due to my work necessities.”

Most of us cannot simply choose out of parenting when it is inconvenient — when it’d power us to overlook a piece deadline.

Extra girls than ever earlier than maintain what the Harvard financial historian and labor economist Claudia Goldin calls “grasping” jobs: roles that promise status, seniority, and a beneficiant wage however that additionally require a variety of hours at unpredictable occasions of the day. Pursuing these jobs could make it simpler to have the ability to afford a household, however balancing them with motherhood is usually inconceivable.

“I used to be truly contacted by a recruiter whereas I used to be on maternity depart,” Anita says. The job “was extra prestigious and higher paid, however it might’ve concerned an enormous quantity of journey, so I did not even apply.” Different girls stated that after having youngsters they felt pressured to forgo sure skilled alternatives, akin to taking up high-profile initiatives or pursuing new roles, due to their caring duties. In a Gallup survey final yr, 59% of girls stated they’d flip down a promotion that required them to work 60 hours every week — a larger share than the boys who stated the identical.

“Most of us cannot simply choose out of parenting when it is inconvenient — when it’d power us to overlook a piece deadline,” says Nadia, a 37-year-old guide and mom of two from Canada. Parenting is a full-time job, she provides, even you probably have one other full-time job.

One examine performed in Sweden a decade in the past discovered that feminine executives had been much less probably than their male counterparts to be married, had been extra more likely to be divorced, and, on common, had fewer youngsters. “This isn’t stunning in any respect,” Nadia tells me. “It is simply proof of the truth that girls merely cannot have all of it.”

Anita blames social norms. “Who does the day care name when a toddler will get sick? Mother. Who tends to take care of all the admin related to children? Mother. After all, there are exceptions,” she says, “however in so many heterosexual {couples}, if no specific effort is made to redress the steadiness of duties, Mother remains to be the first mother or father.”

There’s rather a lot employers may do to even the scales. Some moms instructed me that their requests to work remotely had been largely denied other than emergency conditions. Others stated they had been made to really feel responsible for having to take outing to pump breast milk or depart work at a set time to accommodate childcare.

Although extra firms are providing advantages like paying for fertility therapies, a number of girls argued that employers ought to first give attention to creating work environments that actually accommodate being pregnant and parenthood.

“There is a sure irony to an employer serving to somebody get pregnant however then not offering the assist she wanted as soon as the child’s been born,” Anita says. For example, many firms do not supply issues like beneficiant parental depart, lodging for returning to work, sponsored childcare, and services for pumping breast milk. “It looks like some firms are paying lip service right here however probably not placing themselves in mother and father’ sneakers,” she says.

Between work and parenting, millennials are realizing that one thing has to offer. And it might probably’t be the parenting.

June, the guide in London, says she’d prefer to see her bosses main by instance extra by taking all of the parental depart they’re entitled to. “That additionally consists of senior girls who’ve youngsters being extra open about how they’ve navigated all the pieces,” she says. “It generally looks like I am fully alone in making an attempt to determine all the pieces out, like nobody has ever carried out this earlier than me. And that is actually robust.”

The concept high-ranking girls aren’t taking all of the depart they’re entitled to underscores the issue: Even girls in energy really feel afraid of falling behind.

One silver lining is that some millennial mother and father are getting in a special route.

“Plenty of millennials now — each women and men — say that they’ll take a profession break,” says Neha Ruch, a mom of two who wrote “The Energy Pause,” a e-book about taking a profession break after having children. “Hiring managers are getting used to that and are more and more saying that they’d overlook a profession break if it was strategically packaged.”

In 2021, LinkedIn added “Keep at House Mum or dad” as an choice in its drop-down menu of job titles. In 2022, it added a “Profession Break” label. A survey performed in Australia in 2024 prompt that staff had been extra keen to take an prolonged profession break than they had been earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re seeing a major shift in attitudes towards profession breaks,” Nicole Gorton, a director at Robert Half, which performed the survey, stated on the time.

Many workplaces nonetheless supply staff the choice to work remotely, have a hybrid schedule, or compress their hours — an enormous assist for folks. Ana Kent, a mom of three in St. Louis, says that having a toddler at 27 was manageable as a result of her boss agreed to let her work a four-day week.

However that is just the start of what is mandatory to actually ease the steadiness. Between work and parenting, millennials are realizing that one thing has to offer. And it might probably’t be the parenting.

Josie Cox is a journalist who has labored for publications like Reuters, The Impartial, and The Wall Road Journal. She is the creator of the e-book, “Ladies Cash Energy: The Rise and Fall of Financial Equality.”