The Case for Pursuing Leadership Roles When Your Kids Are Under 10

The case for pursuing leadership roles when your kids are under 10 hinges on this argument: the big four is just too ‘spensive. Along with elation at meeting your little one, math starts to work in exponential (ly negative) ways when your child is born.

Pursue leadership roles so you can afford:

●College expenses and tuition (annual fees in the $80K range for the elite universities in 2025 so budget $400K for four years in 2040)

●Retirement (at least $1M for quality of life)

●The equivalent of renting or owning at least a 2BR apartment ($5500 rent per month in NYC; $2M + ongoing taxes and maintenance to own)

●Healthcare ($3000 out of pocket before anything is covered if you're lucky; dicey payments if you have any sort of condition or require ongoing medication)

●Memories with your kids (priceless but these sure add up when ice cream runs $8 a scoop)

Not included in the big four?

●Daycare (basically a second mortgage)

●Vacation(s)

●Private elementary/middle/high school if you’re in a crappy school district or you’re realizing education just isn’t what it was in the 90s ($40K/year for K-12)

●Aging parents who need you

It's the most demanding time of your life

The under-3 years are the hardest and the time when moms are most susceptible to the marketing ploys of Tradwives. Between the still-gated-by-naptime wake windows, the short attention spans that require input and/or stimulation, and the emotional labor of helping underdeveloped brains become kind, rational people, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Pursuing leadership roles would forgivably be dead last on your list (and it should be, but it shouldn’t be stricken from the list).

I’ve been there and I remember that desire to stop working and just focus on making sure kiddo was thriving while fiercely protecting any dregs of personal time I could hoard to myself. The thought of having to give hours to my workplace - as understanding and flexible as it was - was difficult.

But you know this is the part of the story where I tell you it makes zero sense to turn your back on leadership roles. That if you must, the wise course of action is to at least meet standards - however they are defined in your workplace - and keep the lights in your career on. Eventually, people hire you who will not have known you during the early years of your child’s life and who will only know you in that next golden phase when they need you a smidge less. Candidates with unbroken work records unfortunately still get a look over those with career gaps - executive leadership roles or not.

Your workplace won’t love you back or recognize you for the weight of the new responsibilities you have, but you owe it to your future self and your child’s future to stay in the ring and keep preparing yourself for a time when an executive leadership role is yours for the taking.

We live in a world of great inequality. Whether we will see a revolt similar to the one that brought down Marie Antoinette or that of the Gilded Age when robber barons ruled is hazy. But your earning power is clear - the goalposts for living a middle class quality of life have moved up. What it took to be middle class when we were growing up in the 90s is borderline low income today. The fact of the matter is it really just takes more money today to afford the quality of life we had as kids.

Is allowing this systemic problem to continue correct? No. I take mad offense that we live in a world where Bezos is a billionaire and can afford a ritzy second destination wedding but can’t pay his factory pickers a decent wage. Where is the humanity and dignity in this? But how many hours in a day does any working parent realistically have to rail against the system?

It may feel futile, but the early years don’t require you to go full throttle in your career in order to still be eligible for executive leadership roles - they require you to be strategic about how you bide your time. The one thing you cannot do is stop showing up at the office. There is a real penalty that women pay for stepping off the career track. I don’t know why this is or how to fix it, but I do know that there is a red scarlet letter waiting for moms who do this.

So how do you bide your time well? Ah this is the question that speaks to my efficiency loving soul.

How to use the early years to prepare for leadership roles

●First and foremost, lean in to understanding your child and helping them become independent. There is no point in having a child only to neglect it. It’s going to have strengths and weaknesses like any other human being, and our job is to nurture their strengths and help them overcome their weaknesses.

In the beginning, the amount of repetiation you do to instill basic manners and decency in them will wear you down fast. But it will pay off when they are able to go to playgrounds and not be harassed or the bully. Instilling emotional intelligence and the ablity to deal with big feelings is the single most important super power you can give your kids. This is a time suck but the foundation for anything meaningful.

●Next, set up systems that allow you to survive (notice I did not say thrive because the odds are stacked against us when the day does not contain 36 hours). This means learning to at least build a second brain if not become an AI integrator, getting to know and setting up a system of individuals you can call on to watch your kiddo, diving deep into the skills and topics that your orgnaization or boss are focused onthat align with your interests, and finding outsourced help for the daily round. I can’t tell you what a gamechanger it was to have a cleaning lady show up even just once a month, or what it felt like when I discovered there are prepared meal services that will send you ready-to-heat foods. You’ve got to nail your bases first before anything else can happen outside your home.

●Finally, use the time to explore what is calling to you in the next phase of your life which now holds kids. This looks like taking career quizzes and scratching your head over the results but remaining open to them, talking to folks about what they do when it’s interesting to you, snipping magazine profiles of interesting people and keeping a folder of those articles, exploring extracurricular activities that speak to you, and making parent friends so you are emboldened by what is possible even with a family.

We can’t have it all at all times. But to get to leadership roles, you’ve got to be in the game. Don’t step out of the office when you have kids. Keep going. You’ve got this!