Parents Who Lead by Stewart D. Friedman

Author:Stewart D. Friedman [Friedman, Stewart D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2020-01-23T06:00:00+00:00

There are innumerable opportunities to enrich your life—as a parent and in all the things that matter to you—by strengthening relationships with people in your professional life. But most people usually don’t think this way, because the default mindset is to assume a zero-sum relationship between work and the rest of life. Our hope is that the conversations we’ve invited you to have in this chapter have expanded your thinking about how to make this idea come alive for you and your family.

Chapter 6

CULTIVATE YOUR COMMUNITY

The ancient African adage “it takes a village to raise a child” may have become part of our modern consciousness, but few people actually feel part of a village. In the United States, we remain centered in our nuclear families, with less connection to extended families and local communities than ever.1 Americans today feel there are few people with whom they can discuss important matters.2 Yet, as ever, parents need all kinds of assistance in order to garner the resources—quality childcare, flexible work arrangements, emotional support, and much more—they need to raise their children while contributing to the world through work.

While his wife, Amy, was considering how to reinvent her IT career after staying home for a few years, Jack Brenner felt that he was smoothly sailing in his career as the director of technology at the Bureau of Land Management. Amy and Jack have two children, Bethany, thirteen, and Connor, eight. They have become friendly with a few parents of their children’s friends, happily chatting when they run into each other at school and taking turns hosting playdates and sleepovers. But at the time they took our workshop, they hadn’t made much effort to strengthen those relationships. In fact, since having children, they hadn’t given much thought to friendship at all, let alone how they might develop deeper friendships with other parents. As a pair of introverts, making plans with other couples didn’t come naturally. We challenged them to reach out to their community. Here’s what Jack had to say about a dinner they recently had with another family:

After struggling to sync our schedules, we finally had dinner with Kayden and Hyun and their two kids. The conversation turned to how we’re juggling the various responsibilities of our lives. It felt good to hear that they have similar challenges. Hyun recently returned to full-time work, but, like Amy, she had spent several years full-time at home.

Kayden has to travel frequently, and we recently helped them out by picking up their children from school on a day when Hyun couldn’t get there. They told us how much that meant to them. We agreed that having the kids play together was good for the kids and having this “support group” was good for the adults, so we made plans to keep it going.

For Jack and Amy, this dinner conversation transformed how they thought about their relationship with this other family. While it was hardly an inconvenience for Jack and Amy to help with school pickup, they hadn’t realized how much it meant to Kayden and Hyun.

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