Fail your family or quit your job.
It’s 2024. Are these really the two choices?
Last week I was on LinkedIn and saw a post in my feed from someone not in my network. (It is a total side note and digression that I continue to wonder why LinkedIn thinks I would rather see updates from the people I don’t know instead of the people I do, but I’ll let that go for the moment.)
It was a picture of her and her daughter smiling together, and her update was about how a few years ago, this picture wouldn’t have been possible because they had a very contentious relationship. The cause? Her demanding job. And lest you think it was just a time management issue, i.e., she was working too much, never home, traveling too much, etc., it was not just that.
It was also an energy management issue. She was not just less physically present than she wanted to be, even when she was present she felt drained. And unfulfilled and joyless. So, no surprise, her daughter (and probably everyone else) wasn’t loving their interactions or relationship.
She realized that she was staying in her job to deliver the kind of life she thought her daughter would want (i.e., with the money), but she wasn’t giving her daughter the kind of life she needed.
So she quit her job. The problem job. She prioritized her family over success or money and quit.
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When this post was fed to me, the comments were full of people congratulating her on having the right priorities. On doing the right thing. On knowing what was really important. This was meant to be a feel-good post, and the comments indeed served to make the original poster feel good about their choice. She was a good person who did the right thing.
I felt something different reading this post. Which only got reinforced as I scanned the laudatory comments. I felt like this was the same “can she have it all?” discussion that’s been going on since women entered the workforce en masse. And that the consensus was the “yes, but not at the same time” response that has become somewhat cliched in the past couple of decades.
I also felt disbelief that not one person in the comments I saw asked, Why was this the choice? How are we here in 2024 and this is still the choice? Do a good job (maybe even have a good job) OR be a good parent?
Why was no one asking about the company’s role in this dilemma? And the system’s role? Why was the work so draining and unfulfilling? Why was it just expected that she would fit into a 50-year-old model of how and when to work vs. a more modern framework of how to know the work is getting done?
(By the way, this isn’t gendered. I see men share similar stories and get similarly lauded…perhaps even more so.)
When we laud these stories, what we’re really doing is reinforcing the inevitability of a system that demands that unless you are willing to be 24/7/365 available and hard-charging, you won’t be able to truly advance or rise or lead. We’re reinforcing and tacitly supporting claims of certain CEOs that if you won’t return to office how and when they like, you aren’t by definition performing as highly and, therefore, again, won’t be able to advance or rise or lead.
This leads to many people deciding they will sacrifice advancement or rising in service of a better life. And we congratulate them on their priorities. But I’d rather we were asking a different set of questions, like:
Is it actually beneficial to an organization (or society) if leaders are only people who have sacrificed that “better” life?
Does anyone really think we live in a world like the show Severance, where being drained, exhausted, and unfulfilled is something we can leave outside when we step into the office and still do our best possible work?
Our February webinar speaker Sheila Dowd from ServiceNow talked about how she’d rather work with someone feeling pressed by responsibilities outside work to solve for it, maybe curtail their work days or work hours, and keep their expertise and institutional knowledge than lose them altogether…does that not make sense to most of us too?
Why do we treat every business moment like it’s a matter of life and death? And can we just stop? What would happen if we stopped? [Side note: My experience, over the past few years, having become more committed to not working on anything except personal endeavors after 6 PM or on the weekends is…nothing happens. I handle things a little later, and the world keeps spinning…would it have always been like that had I just tried it????]
I felt sad reading that post. not just for the poster who had to make what she thought was the only choice between quitting her job and failing her family. I felt sad for how many of us think that’s a choice to be congratulated at the individual level, not challenged at the systemic level.
Have you ever been in a position where you thought you faced that same choice but instead worked with your employer or clients to find something else that worked for you all? I need some happy stories like that!
Feeling a sense of relief reading this post! I have felt this issue in other ways, having chosen to take the demanding, soul-sucking role that forced me to hire more outside support (and feeling guilty for it); and negotiating time with an employer to handle family care issues (and feeling guilty for it). Like you, Elisa, I survived. I wasn't struck by lightning. The kids don't hate me. The other party said, "Sure." This binary structure is very real, but more so in our minds. Perhaps if we poked holes in the system through reasonable, confident requests we woudn't have to sacrifice one thing for the the other.
I applaud you Elisa! The only way to impact a generic seemingly uncontrollable river flow is by throwing some rocks/logs in it....or thought provoking questions. I know for a fact that women who stopped their careers to spend more time caregiving for an elderly parent (and or children) are some of the most talented people I have had the privilege of working/talking/interacting with. They were significant losses to the organization (some of the employers were trying to get them back when it was of course too late).
I'm with you. I get the lauding of someone's choice....but that's a river going in the same direction same day every day. Nothing changes in society. Let's throw some rocks/logs in the river and ask questions like you are of our employers and government.