It’s hard to be a great parent and a great employee or entrepreneur at the same time. As a result, many parents are wondering whether they should pick career or family? Something has to give. This article well help you think through both choices so you can make the best decision possible for your family.
I’m sure some of you will disagree with my stance since you’ve done a wonderful job at work and at home. However, Unless you believe being a great parent includes being away from your kids for 12 hours a day while your little one gets ignored at a daycare facility, we’ve got different definitions.
And if you’re rich, hiring a nanny or au pair to take care of your kids while you pursue making even more money might not count as great parenting either. At least if you’re poor, you’ve got an excuse to go to work.
Before every parent reading this post gets too pissed off, let me acknowledge we don’t need to be great at both parenting and work. Being good is generally good enough. Further, being able to overcome our guilt of pursuing one or another is what we might really want.
However, if you want to try to be great at either your career or at parenting, then it’s often beneficial to go ALL-IN. Let’s look at the choice between career or family objectively.
Deciding Between Career Or Family
This is not a post about how to be a great parent. Because unlike work, parenting is very subjective. There are no titles or pay increases, only endless care you must provide in hopes that your child enjoys their youth, learns new things, and grows up to be a good person.
After only sic years of being a parent to two children, I’m not a parenting expert. All I can hypothesize is the more time we spend with our children, the higher likelihood that we may become better parents, all else being equal.
I realize some parents have to work full-time to pay the bills. During a pandemic, things are particularly difficult for working parents. Goodness knows I feel burned out all the damn time! However, parents must also own up to their responsibilities.
Having kids is a conscious choice we’ve made. Therefore, it is up to parents to juggle career and family.
More Family Time Brings More Awareness
After spending 18 months sheltering-in-place and homeschooling my two young children, it is clear that spending more time with our children is better. The bond becomes stronger. Kids learn more. And you get to understand all your kids’ idiosyncrasies.
Spending more time with your child makes you keenly aware of your child’s unique needs. As a full-time parent, you end up morphing into a bunch of specialized roles.
For example, you basically become an all-in-one teacher, nurse, physical therapist, visual therapist, and occupational therapist. You want to ensure your baby is getting everything he or she needs.
A Parental Ranking System Based On Caregiving Time
Therefore, we can set up a loose parental ranking system based on time spent caregiving. This is for the good of your child (not yourself).
Here’s a look at the parental ranking system from ideal to least ideal for the child.
1) Both partners stay at home to raise their child, also with support from relatives. Neither parent needs to work for money.
2) Both partners stay at home to raise their child, while also having work from home work. Even though both parents are working from home they can still take multiple breaks and play with their kids.
3) One partner stays at home and has help from a relative, nanny, fellow parent, or friend. A classic childcare arrangement, usually spearheaded by the mother.
4) Both partners go to work, leaving their child with a close relative like a grandparent. Still a great system if the grandparents or relatives are physically fit and really into childcare.
5) Both partners go to work, leaving the child with a child care provider. Not bad if the child care provider is a professional who loves children.
6) Both partners have busy jobs that require constant travel for days or weeks at a time. A nanny, au pair, or relative takes care of the children most of the time.
7) A single parent who must work, and therefore leaves the child with a relative or daycare (bless y’all for being able to juggle everything). Being a single parent is the hardest job in the world.
Overcoming The Guilt Of Not Spending More Time With Your Children
The average amount of time a parent spends with their kid is already 120 minutes or less in America. If you have to juggle work and parenthood, getting help from a au pair or nanny is very beneficial. But of course, getting help costs money. At the very least, if you want to eradicate guilt, then try to spend more than two hours a day with your children.
Please don’t see the rankings as a judgement call either. We all have got to do what we got to do to survive. Further, we can all take steps to improve our situation if we want.
If you want to overcome the guilt of not spending more time with your children, then try to beat the average amount of time a parent spends with their children. This way, at least you know you are doing more than the average person.
I used to feel bad having children late. But now I realized older parents can actually spend way more time with their children due to greater financial independence! I have to put in the effort, but it’s great to know it’s possible.
Brain Size Differential Of Toddlers With Different Care
To help illustrate the importance of love, attention, and time spent with a child, below is an extreme image. It’s not the average.
The brain on the left is a normal three-year-old brain that received normal care and attention. The right brain is from another three-year-old that experienced extreme neglect and abandonment. In other words, spending time with your children and caring for them matters.
Try Your Best To Balance Career And Family
You can be a good parent in any of the above scenarios except for the last one. At the end of the day, you can only try your best and make the most of your current situation.
Remember, this logical parental ranking system isn’t to massage your ego. This ranking system is for your children, not for you.
If you’re mad at the ranking, then look at your family situation and try to make some changes.
Prioritize Career Or Family?
Before I became a father, I already suspected I couldn’t become a great dad if I continued to work 60+ hours a week in investment banking. I spoke to plenty of colleagues who worked 60+ hours a week. They all lamented about never having seen their kids grow up.
Many parents, especially working mothers, also told me they felt a tremendous amount of guilt being at the office all day. When I asked why wouldn’t they just take a break from work, they always said they couldn’t quit the money.
It wasn’t just the people from banking who said this. The same refrain was echoed by the people I spoke with in private equity, venture capital, management consulting, and technology.
Despite the good pay, there are plenty of miserable folks. It’s unsettling to feel a constant tug between career or family.
Guilt is mentally draining and can really weigh you down if left unchecked. It’s important not to overlook your mental health if you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Career And Family Planning
I recognized my inability to simultaneously give my best to both work and fatherhood. As a result, when I was 33 years old I started to seriously plan for a career transition.
This was one year after I had started Financial Samurai. Even back then I could already see its potential to one day free me from corporate bondage.
The whole idea was to have something to do at home while my wife and I took care of our little one together.
She would ultimately join me in early retirement. Since time spent with your baby/toddler is a key variable for being a good parent, having two stay at home parents seemed better than having just one.
We both negotiated severance packages to provide us a financial buffer after work. Further, I diligently focused on building as much passive income as possible to support our lifestyles. With the addition of supplemental income from this site, we have been able to both be stay at home parents since 2017.
The 2 – 5 Year Timeframe For Parenting
Dilemma: For years, I thought the best solution was to forsake my career and focus on being a good father. This is one of the reasons why I waited so long before deciding to have kids. I felt I needed to save way more money than I realized because I was never going back to work. I regret having waited so long.
Solution: What I now realize is that if you want to be a great parent, it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Instead, all you really have to do is give up at most five years of your career to make things happen.
Related: How To Get Into An Elite Preschool Or Private Grade School
Why Give Up Five Years At Most?
Age five is when most kids start going to kindergarten. Once they’re in kindergarten, you no longer have to spend all day with them. Given you now only have to drop them off and pick them up, you’re welcome to go back to work.
If you feel five years is too long of a period to be out of the workforce, then there’s another solution. You only have to give up your career for 2-3 years because age two is usually the earliest kids can attend preschool.
Being out of the workforce for 2-3 years won’t impact your career very much in this more understanding world. You should have little problem getting a similar type of job with similar type of pay should you wish to reenter the workforce after 2-3 years of full-time parenting.
Further, the labor market is bouncing back two years after the pandemic began. Corporations are offering more flexibility to work from home to try and retain employees. Employees are quitting at the highest rate for better opportunities.
Preschool To The Rescue To Help Working Parents
A preschool day lasts between 3-9 hours, but it’s usually recommended not to leave your kid in pre-school for longer than six hours or else they’ll be too tired, too cranky, or too homesick.
The only hitch is that preschool at age two is sometimes only two or three days a week. Most preschools are five days a week only once the child is three or four years old.
If you don’t have kids, you probably won’t be thinking about these timelines because you’ve got so many other things to think about.
We were thinking about things like buying the right home, getting an umbrella policy to protect our wealth, remodeling, getting a safer family car, life insurance, taking pre-natal vitamins, proper feeding, right size diapers, doctor visits, and more.
But if you know you’ll only have to be out of the workforce for 2-5 years maximum, you won’t have to save and invest as much. You’ll also be able to be more confident having kids earlier, which may make it easier on the mother’s body and safer for the well-being of both mother and baby.
If you exit the workforce for 2-5 years at a younger age, you’ll correspondingly be that much younger when you restart your career. After all, many people who stop work and go to graduate school for 1-2 years seem to have no problem finding work again.
Related: Have A Net Worth Goal Before Having Children: How About $1 Million
Balance For Career And Family
I know some of you are thinking I overanalyze things. Millions of people just wing it all the time and are fine. Well maybe not, since there are so many messed up kids and divorces.
But this article isn’t for me since I’m already a father who doesn’t plan to go back to work ever again. Let’s check back in in the year 2030 to see whether I’m still as enthusiastic about being a permanent stay at home dad.
This article is for those of you who are considering when is the right time to have a kid, when to have more children, how will having kids disrupt your career, how much you need to work, save, and invest to ensure your family is taken care of, and for those who want to be the best parent possible.
I wish someone clearly explained to me the 2-5 year timeframe during my most gung-ho career days. I would have been much more serious about trying to start a family when I was 32, instead of trying at age 36-37.
One of my biggest regrets was not having children sooner. Given you will love your children more than anything else in the world, you want them to be in your life for as long as possible as well.
That said, there are a lot of benefits doing being an older parent as well. Namely, you may not have to stress as much about money. Further, you can spend way more time with your children during their first 18 years of life than younger parents.
Parenting Is Hard Work
Being a full-time parent rivals the toughest jobs in the world. You need a tremendous amount of patience, endurance, and calmness about you because there is no reasoning with a baby/toddler. Sometimes I daydream of going back to work to take a break from fatherhood!
At any moment, my kids could injure themselves or worse. I would say in comparison, most jobs are a walk in the park compared to taking care of a baby/toddler. No wonder why so many parents can’t wait to get back to work after their parental leave is over!
Now that I’ve spent almost five years as a stay at home dad with two children, I can unequivocally tell you that it was the best time spent. I wouldn’t trade any amount of money to not have that time with my kids. They grow up so fast. Once that time is over, you can never get it back.
Related: The Cost Of Raising Many Children Is Not Just The Money
The Best Career Plus Parenting Combination
In conclusion, I believe the best combination for families is to have one working spouse to insure financial security and one full-time parent to insure maximum childcare. If the full-time parent can be a full-time parent for 2-3 years until the child attends preschool, this combination is best for the child and the full-time parents career.
A great preschool is usually a place of joy and learning for a child. Your child will get to do new things they might not have done at home, such as participate in art classes, physical education classes, music classes, and so forth. The preschool has trained and motivated educators whose job it is to provide the most enriching environment for your child.
Of course your child won’t receive the most amount of love and attention compared to when you were taking care of them at home. However, your child will be able to learn important social and survival skills.
My hope is that more parents find employers who provide more flexibility when it comes to childcare. Increased employer flexibility is one of the main benefits of the pandemic. Please find an employer that supports both your career and family life.
Related post: Love Or Career? Which Will You Regret Not Having Most?
Recommendations For Parents
1) Get term life insurance.
If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us is that tomorrow is not guaranteed. All parents need to get a term life insurance policy to cover all liabilities and expenses until their children are independent adults. The easiest way to compare quotes is by checking on PolicyGenius.
My wife as able to double her life insurance coverage (match mine) and pay less with PolicyGenius. PolicyGenius gets qualified life insurance carriers to compete for your business. As a result, you can see all the customized quotes all in one place.
One of the mistakes we made was not having the same life insurance coverage amounts. This made no sense since we both take care of our children, manage our investments, and keep this site running.
2) Stay on top of your finances.
College tuition is now prohibitively expensive if your child doesn’t get any grants or scholarships. Therefore, it’s important to save and plan for your child’s future.
Check out Personal Capital’s new Planning feature, a free financial tool that allows you to run various financial scenarios to make sure your retirement and child’s college savings is on track. They use your real income and expenses to help ensure the scenarios are as realistic as possible.
Once you’re done inputting your planned saving and timeline, Personal Capital with run thousands of algorithms to suggest what’s the best financial path for you. You can then compare two financial scenarios (old one vs. new one) to get a clearer picture. Just link up your accounts.
There’s no rewind button in life. Therefore, it’s best to plan for your financial future as meticulously as possible. It’s better to end up with a little too much, than too little!
I’ve been using their free tools since 2012 to analyze my investments and I’ve seen my net worth skyrocket since.
3) Negotiate A Severance
If you want to be a full-time parent, then you should negotiate a severance. Don’t quit. If you negotiate a severance, you can get a severance check, and potentially subsidized healthcare, deferred compensation, and worker training.
When you get laid off, you’re also eligible for roughly 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, sometimes longer. Having a financial runway is huge during a transition period.
Conversely, if you quit your job, you get nothing. Check out my book, How To Engineer Your Layoff: Make A Small Fortune By Saying Goodbye. It teaches you how to negotiate a severance.
I first published the book in 2012 after I engineered my own severance. The book has since been expanded to over 200 pages for 2022+ thanks to tremendous reader feedback and successful case studies.
4) Buy The Best-Selling Personal Finance Book
Finally, if you want to drastically improve your chances of achieving financial freedom, purchase a hard copy of my new book, Buy This, Not That: How To Spend Your Way To Wealth And Freedom. The book is jam packed with unique strategies to help you build your fortune while living your best life.
Buy This, Not That is a #1 new release Amazon. By the time you finish BTNT you will gain at least 100X more value than its cost.
After spending 30 years working in finance, writing about finance, and studying finance, I’m certain you will love Buy This, Not That. Whether it’s wanting to retire early or decide on a big decisions, my book will help you make more optimal choices. Thanks for your purchase!
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Where I live in Austria, I took 1 year maternity leave to take care of my child. The best time ever. My husband was working but he missed on this special bonding time. When she was 2, the Pandemic hit and I was able to work from home, which I loved as I could take care of her and not give her over to the system. We tried and she hated Kindergarden. I intend to find a job which allows home office, so that I can earn, but also be there for my little one. I don’t care what science, other people or the society thinks. But in my gut I know that people in day care cannot take care of her as I can. Children need parents.
Wow, you opened up a can of worms the first time this article was printed. My son is 27 and I was 37 when he was born. We had already accumulated enough savings for me to choose to stay home full time until he was in 2nd grade. I choose part time work after that, which allowed me to do a lot of volunteer work for the schools and the booster club fundraising for the activities my son was interested in, in middle and high school.
I don’t know about studies on the effects of parents staying home vs. working but I did notice that when my son was in high school in AP courses I knew most of the other parents whose kids were in these classes. These kids were all college bound, all involved in music, sports, robotics, drama, speech, etc. And the majority had one stay at home parent, or at least a parent who had stayed home during the early years and both parents continued to be heavily involved in their kids activities.
Every child wants to receive love from their parents, not just from a nanny. Balancing career and children is not easy, so many couples live a DINK lifestyle these days. I do not support this idea. To each their own.
This article is quite opinionated. I think we can change our paths, but the things we truly have power over are sometimes limited. What we do have the ability to do is respond in positive ways and parent the best we can. I have a hard time relating to this article because I feel like I started in a place with very different circumstances. But it did get me thinking and appreciating what I have.
All opinions welcome. What is your situation?