Get the balance right

Ultimately the challenge of the working parent is the juggle is that we end up doing poorly in both areas, and become as a result grumpy irascible parents and tired unreliable staff

“I just don’t understand how you do it,” commented a friend one afternoon as I regaled her with intricacies of the school drop off and pick up timetable, which involves three sets of parents, four sets of after-school activities, a day care mum and the odd scooter crash.

In this case the feeling’s entirely mutual. In less than a decade this friend has managed to bring four beautiful children into the world and keep them clothed, fed, stimulated and physically fit, while more or less maintaining control of her own sanity.

In the same time I’ve had two kids, and to be entirely honest, lose that precious grip on reality on a semi-regular basis.

The difference is that while one of us is dedicating our lives to our home and family, the other, namely me, is juggling kids and career, and more often than not dropping the balls.

Ultimately, the peril of this juggle is that we end up doing poorly in both areas and become grumpy, irascible parents and tired, unreliable staff.

For 22 years the Macquarie University’s Women, Management and Work Conference has gathered the most successful female academics, government and business leaders to tackle the ongoing and apparently worsening challenge of gender inequality in the upper echelons of business.

When they again gather later in July the debate not doubt will get back around to the glass ceiling, and whether or not it’s being perforated, or double glazed in recent years.

Almost invariably, the focus will fall on whether it’s possible for industry to change its expectations to enable a more balanced approach to career progression, or realistic for vast tracks of the population to simply forgo having a family so as to ensure they have the time to dedicate to progression up the corporate ladder.

I’d like to suggest that the debate will shift in coming years as my generation X counterparts begin to make their way into upper management and c-level positions. The reason is simply that we are the first generation that has been actively encouraged to make the choice of career or family, or both. We are the first generation in which the active participation of fathers in the upbringing of their children has been enthusiastically encouraged, at the same time as mothers have been encouraged to remain in the workforce throughout the early years of their children’s lives.

I’m already seeing the results in the work patterns of the people I interview and in the way working practices are changing for the better. Without exception, the companies that achieved impressive results on BRW’s recent Best Places To Work list provided flexible working arrangements to both men and women as they progressed through their careers, and in almost all cases senior management had cottoned on to the fact that it wasn’t enough to merely offer parental leave, but that they themselves had to be seen to leave early to pick up the kids from school or work from home during school holidays. They are walking the walk and not just talking about it.

It is this generation of managers that will ultimately remove the see-through barriers that have traditionally prevented working mothers from progressing up the corporate ladder, at the same time as they enable this generation of working fathers to have a meaningful relationship with their kids.

And while it’s not an easy progression, it’s a heck of a lot more fun and rewarding than it was for the boomers, who either found themselves closed out of management jobs despite their skills, or got home so late from work that the closest they came to active parenting was a peck of the forehead of a sleeping child.

BRW

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