| This post is part of my mentoring conversation series which includes relatively short posts on topics that have come from a mentoring session. Often, these conversations produce insights which could benefit a wider audience. Any identifying information is removed and I always inform participants before posting anything we talked about. |
In today’s mentoring session I addressed some concerns around starting a family while maintaining a tech career. While this post will focus on the specific challenges of pregnancy and raising children, some of the insights may be relevant to any kind of attempt to balance a career with other responsibilities and interests outside of work.
tl;dr: Balance is for people who don’t have a life or don’t have work. For anyone (everyone?) else – the most you can hope for is not to neglect either one too much.
The conversation started with the a concern specifically about how to manage the final months of pregnancy: Should she agree to reduce the scope of her tasks and responsibility? Should she start her maternity leave early? Does this internal debate mean she’s weak, and a man wouldn’t even consider reducing his workload just because he was pregnant?
