Motherhood Is Not Career Suicide.

Straight from the “on ramping” guru’s mouth » Self-Made Mom

Straight from the “on ramping” guru’s mouth » Self-Made Mom — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 02:36:39 GMT

PingBack from http://selfmademom.net/2007/06/04/straight-from-the-on-ramping-gurus-mouth/

re: Motherhood Is Not Career Suicide.

Latia — Wed, 02 May 2007 22:26:24 GMT

I've taken a year and a half off to raise my baby girl and finding a job now is TOUGH!

Before I was pregnant I had excellent credentials. Mind you, I was a college student, but a very well qualified college student with a beaming GPA, Volunteer services, and excellent references.

However, when I apply to jobs or staffing agencies now, and the interviewer or staffer asks "Why the long break?" I tell them, I wanted to take an extra long maternity leave. All of them get a furrow in their brow and say, "That's interesting-but why the long break?"

I guess they are all sexist asses who believe that the only time a woman needs to raise a baby from birth til finish, is six weeks. While six weeks may be good enough for some, I took the personal option to do a little longer than that.

Now that my baby's father and I have split, I am actively seeking employment-now I've finished college but it gets tougher and tougher to tell employers that I have a small child.

BOOOO! To them for being so prejudiced.

Am I not going to be a good parent because I have a baby?

re: Motherhood Is Not Career Suicide.

Selfmademom — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:29:15 GMT

Oh, and I forgot to add- it makes good business sense for companies to want to hire moms who used to work for them and take time off- it has to mean lower recruitment and "ramp-up" costs I would think to hire someone with organizational knowledge!

here's my post- it has a link to that NYTimes "advice" article. Ok, enough rambling here!

http://selfmademom.net/2007/04/30/my-humble-opinion-on-how-easy-it-is-for-a-mom-to-reenter-the-workforce/

re: Motherhood Is Not Career Suicide.

Selfmademom — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:12:30 GMT

Thanks for writing this post. I actually just blogged about this very topic based on a recent New York Times article I read about women going back to work after they've spent time at home raising their kids. I'm not 100% on Bennetts' side, but I am not 100% convinced it's as easy as these authors and experts you mention say it is for moms to get back into it. Yes, Lehman Bros does a great job trying to get women back to their ranks, but other than that and some other really large financial companies (Ernst and Young is a good one) I haven't seen a lot of other case studies on women actually getting a similar job back in a similar career after they've taken time off to raise their kids. I wish the experts, who have good advice, would show us a couple of "real life" moms who have achieved this in careers like marketing, advertising, PR (what I'm in)... because I don't have many role models to look up to on this one, and frankly, that's why I'm still working. I don't think I could ever get back into what I do now if I took time off. I'd love to hear more thoughts on this.