The Right Career for You and Your Family

A few weeks ago David Leonhardt at The New York Times reported on some interesting new data from Harvard researchers Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz indicating that, among white collar jobs, careers in medicine offer the best work life balance, while finance and consulting offer the worst.  I’m thrilled to see serious researchers studying women in the workplace, but I’m not sure that Leonhardt’s assumptions and conclusions are the right ones.

Leonhardt says that children are better off if they spend more time with their parents, regardless of the quality of that time.  To support his claim, he uses a quote from humorist and politician Al Franken, whose only credential on this topic is that he is a celebrity parent.  Throughout the article Leonhardt suggests that having a parent at home, or very flexible, during early childhood is critically important.

While having a flexible schedule might be desirable if you have a child, I worry about the implication that those who must work long hours can’t be good parents.  There is relatively little definitive research on this, but anecdotally, many of us know good parents who work long hours and still are deeply engaged in their children’s lives.  It may not always be the optimal situation, but it’s important that we recognize that ambitious women will sometimes have to invest time in their careers to achieve their goals, and that this choice will not scar their children.

Leonhardt’s primary conclusion is that college students should consider work life balance when choosing a career.  I couldn’t disagree more.  College students should consider their passion when choosing a career.  Women frequently opt out because they are frustrated and unfulfilled by their professions.  The idea is that they will find more meaning in their lives as stay at home mothers — and this may be true for a time.  But in the long run women who work are happier than those who stay home, not to mention more financially secure.  Finding a job that means something to you is far more valuable than finding one where you can work the fewest hours at the highest salary.

I would suggest that doctors feel that their work has deeper meaning and that their participation in the workforce is adding value to their lives and the lives of others.  They are stimulated and passionate about their work, and so when they have children they find creative ways — like the group practices Leonhardt mentions — of working full-time while ensuring that they can go to the school play.  Fewer people may find that kind of fulfillment on a trading floor or investment bank.

But we can’t all be doctors.  And some women do feel passionate about the world of money management.  The answer?  More women with a passion for finance need to opt in to these fields to promote better work life balance arrangements.  If we tell women that they should choose a career with an eye towards having children, this will never happen.  If we tell women that they need to find their passion and pursue it aggressively, we may yet see the kind of change in finance and consulting that we’ve seen in medicine.

Related links:

• The full paper from the Harvard researchers, ”Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors .”
• Cali Yost writes about why it’s time for companies to move from “If Flex” to “How and Why Flex.”
• The Stash, a blog from The New Republic, weighs in on Leonhardt’s article.
• Eric Sorenson, CEO of The Vault, comments on Leonhardt’s article at CNBC.