PLAIN TRUTH: Choose a good spouse for career success

I need to get something off my chest. I overhead a man talking about me yesterday. “That woman, the feminist,’ he said with his lips pursed in my direction as if that is a very bad thing to be. I don’t get why people think that the words ‘feminist’ or ‘woman’ are insults. I don’t.

Anyway, now that that’s off my chest, let’s get on with it. I met one of the few women who have managed to strike that ever-elusive work-life balance this week. She is in senior management at a multinational company, a wife and a mother of two well-adjusted teenagers. The most interesting thing about her journey is that she barely experienced the guilt that most working mothers today struggle with when they have to work late or leave their little ones to go back to work after maternity leave. “My husband, he made me feel comfortable,” she told me.

They say that whether you get to smash those glass ceilings or not has a lot to do with the kind of man you settle with. Turns out that for working mothers, how well you can balance the two facets of your life also depends not on how smart you work, but on the man you choose.

WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE

So what does this man, the man who will make you feel comfortable being a career woman, look like? Nothing like the majority of present-day fathers. This majority refers to their parenting duties as ‘baby-sitting’; they are men who do their parenting on social media. The man who will get you to a place of comfort as a working mother is one who appreciates that your career is important to you just as his is to him.

This supportive man has no qualms stepping in to share the child care duties. He does not expect to be lauded for his achievement because he took junior out to the school function or the play date and he was the only man there. He calls it parenting; he knows that baby-sitting is something you do with other people’s children, not your own. And no, he will not accuse you of being a bad mother if you can’t be your child’s primary care giver all the time. This man is the modern family man.

The good news is that you can help your man get here by removing that tag you have placed on him of ‘provider and occasional baby sitter’. Let him be a parent to your child. He may do it differently but he will get it done. It might be hard to let go of your role as primary care giver but your career will thank you for. Plus it’s a show of trust and respect to him so your relationship will also reap from it.

And you can help us all by not acting as if it is extraordinary the next time you see a man parenting his children.