HOW MOTHERHOOD CHANGES WOMEN'S CAREER

Women are no longer limited to the kitchen or stereotypical jobs like secretaries, and teachers etc. Some have condemned working mothers because they have gone out of the home to seek paid employment, but many have done so just to help meet the basic needs of the family. More women today are obtaining college degrees and are moving into professions previously regarded as men preserved. The bottom-line is that women can spend more money, more time preparing for a career that will ensure success, fulfillment, and financial security.

          Prominent among the agents which have a hand knowingly or unknowingly in the decisions that affects a woman’s career are parents, teachers, peer-groups, employers, career counselors, public opinion agencies, mass media proprietors and practitioners, and of course a woman’s husband and herself.

          The women ‘s Liberation Movement made tremendous contribution in securing equal pay and equal rights in the work place. Since they first started burning bras, women have continually demanded and gained footholds for equal rights in the work place and society. However powerful the women liberation may have been, women are still behind in the corporate world. It is common knowledge that women make less money than their male counterparts. For this reason, many women have put family plans aside for career plans.

          It is extremely difficult as a corporate executive to carry briefcase in one hand and a diaper bag in the other. Women who have worked to build careers and have paid their dues in a man’s dominated corporate world find it difficult to risk all they had put into their career to have a baby. Some of them see themselves as strong and independent, and fear a child would only

make them vulnerable and drag them down. Depending on the amount of time a mother takes off for maternity leave, her chances of advancing up the success ladder may be compromised or even impaired seriously.

In many countries of the world, legal advancements such as the Family Medical Leave Act in U.S. have tried to increase women’s opportunities to have career while still raising families. This notwithstanding in many countries women are still regarded as the nurturers and caregivers. They are the ones who are expected to stay home with a sick child. They are the parent who faces putting her career in the backburner in other to take care of some pertinent family domestic problems.

Some women still choose to have a modicum of each part of life, a chance to have children and still pursue a career. Yet, they too will have to make sacrifices. They will have to leave their children in the care of someone else for better part of the day, unless their job is the rare occupation that allows them to have their child nearby. There will inevitably be a time when she is forced to go for medical emergency, no matter how prolific her babysitters might be.

 The purpose of marriage, along with companionship and providing succor, is the perpetuation of the human species with a sheltered environment designed to ensure that a woman is not left to rear her child alone and that a man does not escape the responsibility of maintaining his offspring. For those women who decide, upon having a child, to take up motherhood as their career, there is ample evidence to attest to the positive impact it will have on their lives, and the lives of others, specifically their children’s. Children represent the ultimate protection of aged parents in a violent and troubled world.

 Preparing for motherhood is truly of utmost importance, although not necessarily accomplished by attending expensive lectures or reading every book there is in child care. Some women have made the ultimate sacrifice and walk away from it all to raise children. These women find fulfillment in the appreciation they receive from their children. These are the women that their careers are affected by motherhood. They throw everything away and become completely different people, in a new world, with new ideals. Variances in life situations may require some women to work in order to be able to afford to have children.

Motherhood is a permanent state of life for every woman, whether she realizes it or not. Whether she distances herself from motherhood all together, make concessions to have a modicum of both worlds, or devote her life completely to her family and walk away from corporate world, every woman has the unenviable task of balancing the concerns of running the world with populating it. Motherhood is a wonderful experience if a woman is lucky to experience it.