Sometimes, quitting the rat race is the fulfilling choice | Oct 02nd 2006
By Jacqueline Dooley
A recent Newsweek article, “Getting Back on Track,” addresses how challenging it can be for new mothers to restart their careers after being out of work due to having a baby.
The article cites some progressive programs available to help mothers “on ramp” their careers by easing them back to work and providing benefits that help them manage work and motherhood with more flexibility than ever before.
I was glad to see this topic being brought to the forefront by mainstream media, but I don’t necessarily think corporate America should be patting itself on the back just yet.
Flexible schedules and in-house day care aside, women will continue to drop out of the work force rather than return to the corporate grind because companies just don’t get it. We don’t want to play by the same rules as we did before. A new variable has entered the picture — one that’s super cute, utterly dependent on us and impossible for you to compete with.
It’s pure corporate ego to assume we will continue to hold sacred the age-old success markers such as executive job titles, six-figure salaries and the amount of prestige we’ve earned at THE COMPANY once we fall in love with our babies. But you know what, that’s OK.
I’m continuously surprised at the perception that women who do not return to a full-time corporate job after taking time off to be stay-at-home moms are somehow failing in their career goals — or companies are failing them.
Why do we have to jump back into the same career path after giving birth to prove we’re successful? Can’t success mean spending one, five, 10 or any number of years at home with your children before getting back to work? And why does my rat race have to look like everyone else’s?
Women seen as victims
When men start businesses, they are celebrated as entrepreneurs. When women — particularly mothers who have left corporate jobs — start businesses, we are lamented as casualties of inflexible male-dominated corporations who were driven away from the path of corporate success by an unsympathetic system that has little tolerance for our parenting concerns.
I’m not sure that’s 100 percent true. I think the paradigm is changing and companies are becoming more flexible. Even so, it’s not enough. I doubt there is a full-time job out there that would ever give me as much personal satisfaction and flexibility as running my own business.
I quit a full-time director of marketing position with a company that let me work four days a week from home. After the two co-founders, I was the most senior employee there and the sky was the limit in terms of where I could’ve ended up. Yet I left. I did not quit because they pressured me to work long hours. They certainly allowed me total flexibility with my schedule, but I just wasn’t happy. I quit because I missed having my own professional identity.
Defining success
If we continue to measure success using the “corporate ladder” approach, then we’re missing the point. Success doesn’t have to have a title, or wear a suit or fit into a mold that was created 50 years ago during an era long gone.
Those of us who leave the rat race to start something uniquely ours have the power to change the corporate paradigm. We can teach our children a new definition of success — one that involves less stress and much less time stuck within the colorless walls of a cubicle for half their lives.