Becoming a parent and having a career should never be mutually exclusive ideas, but the reality is that we as humans only have a finite amount of time and concentration to give to anything, and some jobs demand such much attention and focus that it would seem to me an impossibility to also go through the physical and mental challenges (not to mention the obvious beneficial joys) of becoming a parent at the same time. Money is to an extent a factor here, of course, as someone who can afford good, substantial child care can manage to put their focus on their job when they need to. But an honest, impassioned career and the raising of a beloved child require b0th require an overwhelming amount of personal, meaningful involvement. And just how much does any one person have? And this isn’t even taking into account the judgments and prejudices of others, who may or may not have gone through similar experiences. We asked employees, “Do you think having children holds people back in their careers?”
This information comes courtesy of an ongoing study by Comparably. Over 1,000 employees responded to the question.
More than half of both male and female respondents said that they didn’t think having a child held people back in their careers.57% of men don’t think children are a career-killer, and 55% of women agree.
Nearly half of Asian/Pacific Islander respondents think children have a negative effect on career.Hispanic/Latinos were close behind, and also responded at an average level higher than overall male and female respodents. Caucasian responses came in right between male and feamle responses. And African-American respondents answered “yes” (that children could hold a career back) at the lowest rate for any ethnicity save for the “other” grouping.
Only one-third of executives say that having a child could hold back your career. Having ascended to the upper echelons of the corporate world, it makes sense that sector wouldn’t feel much of anything could have held them back. Half of respondents from the Design, Legal, Engineering, and Product departments felt children could hold back one’s career. Less concerned were employees from the IT, Sales, Business Development and HR departments.
Women in Communications were nearly twice as convinced as men in that department that having children could jeopardize career growth. Other major discrepanices exist in Admin (where men were 10% more likely to say that having children could hurt a career) and Engineering (women said ‘yes’ 15% more than men.) Both male and female executives are around 1/3rd convinced that having children could have a negative effect on careers.
The most striking graph today shows how this answer evolves with age. Before they hit 30, more than half of employees assume that a child would take their career off course. As age advances, respondents become less and less convinced that having a child is a roadblock to career success, hitting a low with the 51-55 age group – only 35% of whom think being a parent and having a b career momentum can’t go hand in hand. This may be a result of those repsondents having had children themselves: once this question moves from the abstract (“I’ll bet having a kid would mess up my career”) to the lived (“I did just fine in my career, and raised some great kids, too”), responses become far less harsh.
We see an almost opposite effect from the above age chart when we look at education level. Most respondents, no matter what level of education they complete, answered “yes” to the question in the mid-40s range. But for those with a Bachelor’s degree, that number spikes nearly to half of respondents.
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