Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to rethink what is family friendly. Sometimes jobs
Speaker 1: that aren't known for being family friendly can be more
Speaker 1: doable than you think. Today's tip, like some others this week,
Speaker 1: comes from my book I Know How She Does It,
Speaker 1: which came out ten years ago this month. For this book,
Speaker 1: I collected time diary data from one thousand and one
Speaker 1: days in the lives of women with big careers and
Speaker 1: families to see what life really looked like. It turns
Speaker 1: out that in the one hundred and sixty eight hours
Speaker 1: of a week, there is time to work, have family time, sleep, exercise, read,
Speaker 1: or whatever else people choose to do. Lots of women
Speaker 1: and men quietly and successfully do have it all anyway.
Speaker 1: I collected data from women in all sorts of fields
Speaker 1: that have not historically been known for being family friendly, law, medicine, finance, tech, consulting,
Speaker 1: you name it, and yet these women often had a
Speaker 1: ton of control of their time, and the higher of
Speaker 1: the latter they were, the more autonomy they had. They
Speaker 1: also earned enough that they could afford the help they
Speaker 1: needed to deal with any potential challenges. For instance, a
Speaker 1: woman working at a hedge fund told me that despite
Speaker 1: her field's reputation, she basically worked market hours plus ninety
Speaker 1: minutes on either side. That means that on a normal
Speaker 1: day she worked from eight to five thirty. Her time
Speaker 1: log showed that she did not work at night, she
Speaker 1: did not work on weekends. She got paid a lot.
Speaker 1: Not bad, right. Or Consider a physician who told me
Speaker 1: she cringed when she heard young and women say things
Speaker 1: like I'd like to go to medical school, but I
Speaker 1: also want a family. She noted that no one says
Speaker 1: I'd like to be a teacher, but I also want
Speaker 1: to have a family, using that loaded word but. But
Speaker 1: the physician had arranged her life to have way more
Speaker 1: flexibility in her practice than her friends who were teachers
Speaker 1: turned out to have, and she noted she earned multiple
Speaker 1: times what her teacher friends were earning. I am sometimes
Speaker 1: asked what the best job is for working mothers, and
Speaker 1: I like to say, CEO, I'm kidding, but only sort of.
Speaker 1: Because when you run the show, the meeting will happen
Speaker 1: when you want it to happen, And if you want
Speaker 1: to leave early for something, you will and other people
Speaker 1: will figure it out, and if you don't feel like
Speaker 1: cooking dinner, well, you can use some of your extra
Speaker 1: cash to sort out that problem. That is to say,
Speaker 1: the evidence from time diaries is that many jobs that
Speaker 1: aren't known for being family friendly can indeed be quite
Speaker 1: family friendly if you want them to be. So, don't
Speaker 1: rule anything out. If you find something intriguing and you'd
Speaker 1: like to try it, you could. If you are offered
Speaker 1: a job, you can always negotiate to work however you'd like,
Speaker 1: or you can simply work for organizations that focus on results,
Speaker 1: especially if you see that other people there tend to
Speaker 1: be enjoying full lives as well. They are in on
Speaker 1: a little secret. Sometimes things are family friendly that aren't
Speaker 1: known for being family friendly. Maybe you can take advantage
Speaker 1: of that secret too. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
Speaker 1: got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Speaker 1: Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.