Ask Women

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Jokes on you, everyone on lemmy are males :(. But hopefully that changes eventually! Crosspost questions for females from there to here!

Ask any question and ideally only females answer the question. Males can answer too, but ideally you state that you’re not a female.

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How have you balanced career and family in your life? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Not sure how many people are subscribed to this community, but I think there’s a few of us out there!

I think every woman is forced to grapple with this question as they enter adulthood. What has been your experience? Did you change your priorities at any point?

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[–] ArbitraryMary 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With help! Don’t write off outsourcing things like the housework to paid help.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It feels like hiring a nanny or housekeeper was taboo growing up in my neck of the woods, but I think we are slowly dispelling this idea that women can/should be doing EVERYTHING.

I once got a house cleaning quote for $250 and thought it was far too expensive. But then I wondered - am I still devaluing traditional “women’s work” to be worth less than minimum wage?

[–] ArbitraryMary 3 points 1 year ago

Yes it can be the case with a lot of cultures when women are expected to do everything. If you find the price of a housekeeper is too high though, you can always negotiate with them. Tell them what you’re looking to spend and how often and ask them what they can do for that price. Our cleaner comes once a week for 4 hours and we pay £40. So it’s above minimum wage and omg she does a good job. It’s worth every penny! We still have to keep on top of things in the week but it just means that the free time I have is more for quality time and not just chores.

Also a good tip for balancing work and kids - working from home. If one of the kids is off school sick or it’s the school holidays or something, WFH is a godsend. And an employer who is flexible with your hours. If you can find a boss who is happy that the work gets done and not what time of the day it’s done then you’ve struck gold!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ll add in my own thoughts! One thing is that I personally plan to only have 1 child for exactly this purpose. It feels like a “best of both worlds” - I can experience motherhood with the least amount of downtime in my own career.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This was one of the decisions I made too. I’m so happy with it - my kid is amazing, and I feel like we have enough both time and resources to create the kind of childhood I’d want my kid to have. And I still have had the energy to prioritize my career to the extent I wanted.

We have had to ignore quite a few negative comments over the years, about how our kid will be lonely or kids simply must have siblings. And the cliche about how only-children are selfish. Luckily it seems to haven gotten less and our kid has gotten a bit older.