Because We're Worth It by Gill South

Author:Gill South
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143011262
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2010-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Career choices

The big career comeback

In the past few months I have had dozens of conversations with mums about their career comebacks. One, a scientist who was intending to return to work in a lab, told me she didn’t want to go back to being a scientist after all, she wanted to do something more creative. Another, a mother of two who had a successful music career in her twenties, told me she had just secured funding for a comeback album, all while holding down her full-time job. One mother of three told me she loved the fact that her market research job was really making use of her statistics and psychology degree, which she hadn’t used for years.

Don’t tell me women aren’t enthusiastic and engaged about their careers after kids. Many of us get a lot out of our work, no matter how minimal or badly paid. It’s just a matter of finding the right situation. My message to you is: if you didn’t enjoy the career you were doing before kids, keep looking for something that does appeal. You may find inspiration in the oddest places.

When women make career choices after motherhood, they are sometimes affected by their recent life experiences. Maria, a part-time working mother who discovered a love of art while at home with her kids, wants to work in arts administration because she wants to help artists get access to the money they need. Michelle Collyer, executive officer of charitable trust Fertility NZ, was so touched by the volunteers she met in the health industry during a series of back operations that she decided to abandon a more lucrative career to work in not-for-profit.

Whether or not you were enjoying your career before you had children has a huge influence on whether you want to return to work afterwards. If you were just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s or actively disliked what you were doing before your family, then of course there is no incentive to dive back into your work post-children.

Louise, an accountant returning to paid work, says: ‘I admire women who can work full time and make the family work but I think the only way you can do that is if you are doing something that you really, really enjoy and to give it up would be bad for you. For me, to go back to accountancy would be like toothache.’

Judy McGregor, New Zealand’s Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and a former newspaper editor and university academic, thinks career choices are serendipitous and that New Zealanders don’t handle them well – especially when it comes to young women. ‘There is evidence that a lot of young men take longer to decide,’ she says.

I was lucky that my career choice to be a journalist suited me and it made my return to work a no-brainer. Why wouldn’t I return to being a journalist? I meet interesting people and write features about all sorts of fascinating topics from luxury tourism to the fast-growing IVF industry.

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