“What do you want to be when you grow up?” We question children and teenagers throughout their upbringing, but somewhere along the way, the question is no longer asked. I think that we should all be asking ourselves a version of this question regularly as we move through the seasons of our lives, not stopping at the start of our professional lives as if having arrived at the final answer. Perhaps each adult year it would be more helpful to ask: “What do you want to do for the next five years and how will it give you more options and opportunities as you anticipate the next season of life?” By reflecting regularly, we are more prepared to respond to the inevitable evolution of our wants and needs as we move from single, college graduates climbing professional ladders, to marrieds adding children, aging parents, and other responsibilities into our respective mixes.
Certainly for my husband and me, our collective ambitions and priorities changed with the arrival of our first son over a decade ago. To thrive in both our work and life, we recognized and reconciled those changes by our decision to move from corporate employment to self-employment, allowing us the flexibility and availability we needed. It is not an easy path or the right path for all, as self-employment involves significant financial responsibilities and realities, tremendous self-discipline, and a certain amount of risk assumption. However, we made calculated and intentional decisions to choose this path to foster the family life we desired during the child-raising season of our lives.
Two articles this week confirmed that we are not alone in recognizing the need to adapt our professional plans with the seasons of our work-life. First, in The Opt Out Generation Wants Back In, Judith Warner finds that “not a single woman I spoke with said she wished that she could return to her old, pre-opting-out job — no matter what price she paid for her decision to stop working. What I heard instead were some regrets for what, in an ideal world, might have been — more time with their children combined with some sort of intellectually stimulating, respectably paying, advancement-permitting part-time work — but none for the high-powered professional lives that these women had led.”
Additionally, Anne-Marie Slaughter confirms that being “self-employed” in the sense of having control over your own schedule rather than being controlled by someone else’s schedule is a significant in reaching meaningful work and family in a recent interview in The European:
European: “In your famous op-ed for “The Atlantic,” you argue that a woman either has to be “superhuman, rich or self-employed. Which one are you?”
Slaughter: “Most women with a family, who have made it to the top of their careers, have been at least one of those things. I would say that I have elements of all three. I am certainly wealthy by the standards of most Americans, and I have an unusual amount of energy. But above all, I’ve been more or less self-employed. As a professor or dean, I have always set my own schedule and that has been indispensable for me. If you set your own schedule, you can have kids, work, and whatever you want, but when you’re on somebody else’s schedule, that’s much harder.”
Being self-employed is a good fit for my family and me at this current season in my work-life, but I recognize that self-employment may not be a viable or attractive option for others for various reasons. Each of our mixes is as unique as each of us, but the challenges of mixing work and life are shared. There are many ways to adapt to our current circumstances and season of life. Please join this conversation by sharing how you have embraced or would like to embrace this current season in your work-life mix. We would love to hear from you.
