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Restarting my career after motherhood

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Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#111

To the author: what exactly are you looking for? As in, what type of job, position, desired amount of work per week, etc? There are people here that may be able to help.

Thank you so much for reading my blog and for asking all these questions. I am very grateful for everyone's interest + support! I do not have specific requirements. I am flexible in terms of hours/week etc. I am looking on entering a career that utilizes my strong Computer Science + Analytical skills and a career that allows me to develop/ use my content creation skills/ passion, networking, events, communication, di…

You are welcome. Given that this blog is on HN I would think about amending your article with some of these details too. Let people know. There will be some that want to help.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#112
post #77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

equality ends where it hurts the capital let me give you an example good equality: have more women enter workforce so the pool of candidates is bigger and the salaries (expenses) decrease bad equality: pay for parental leave of both parents

Yeah, I'm constantly surprised that nobody every says this. With women entering the work force, now the family as a whole needs to work almost twice as much, as before when women were house wives. That's a pretty hefty price to pay for everyone, to save those women who were unlucky to have a cruel or unfair husband. I don't know if it's possible to say if it's "worth it" or not, but this independence sure does not co…

> With women entering the work force

What year is it again?

> That's a pretty hefty price to pay for everyone, to save those women who were unlucky to have a cruel or unfair husband.

Uh, I don't think that's the trade off here.

> I don't know if it's possible to say if it's "worth it" or not, but this independence sure does not come for free.

When one option is to go full Taliban, it's actually pretty easy to say if it's "worth it".

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#113
As for Upwork, this is optimized for people in low cost-of-living countries. I wouldn't take rejection there to be anything.

Here's what you do: you lie by omission. By this I mean you imply you went to college during or after any experience you have. Do not specify when you graduated. Don't specify what years you went to college. They can't really ask because that risks age discrimination.

Put work experience first then college afterwards. This gives the impression of chronological order without saying that's the case.

You can even leave off work experience you don't think is relevant or will help you, particularly for entry-level positions. If you're concerned you're competing with new grads then come across as a new grad with some experience.

> However, being a stay-at-home mum came at the cost of my career.

To generalize, doing anything for 5-6 years will come at the cost of your career. This isn't specific to raising children.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#114

I strongly disagree with "I remained flat" statement. I mean, you were taking care of your children, weren't you? If you do it right (imho, if you even just try to do it right), it's the biggest accomplishment one can do. I understand how frustrating it must be to stay professionally flat compared to your peers. We absolutely should celebrate people taking their time off to literally raise the next humans, instead we…

> If you do it right (imho, if you even just try to do it right), it's the biggest accomplishment one can do. Family ambitions and personal ambitions are two separate things (although for some people, typically women, they do match). Personally speaking, I do have parental and professional goals, and I don't think of any of the two as neither superior nor compensating respect to the other. > they spent 5~6 years off…

> Based on the description of the article, the wife and the husband deliberately chose extreme positions - the wife as fully involved stay at home mother, and the father as all-time worker:

Maybe you didn't mean it like this... but I find the use of the word "extreme" here in this context somewhat discomforting. Perhaps I'm an old-fashioned 35-year old, but her reasons for wanting to stay home don't come off as extreme to me.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#115
> So far, I got rejected from over twenty job opportunities.

That's all? I am in the middle of a job search, I am gainfully employed, I just got a raise and a new bonus structure, and yes I have been "rejected" by well over 100 positions, I have been a finalist in at least 3 or 4 (maybe 5) and 1 offer was rescinded at the last moment for reason unrelated to me/my qualifications.

There was a time in my life when I was in a similar situation returning to my professional career after a 5-year sabbatical in a different field and as an entrepreneur, so I know the pain of convincing prospective employers to hire me.

We don't like it, but it's a numbers game. Period. 20 is not a meaningful number. 4,000 is.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#116
post #109
post #80

I am thinking about, All those parents who are forced to work but always wanted to stay back and provide best care for their kids but couldn't do so.. feeling a gut punch. Parents who chose career path and gets the slap in the face moments every time they realized that they could have spent more time with the kids instead of the work. Is it possible to eat the cake and have it too?

Yeah but you've got to learn to let things go. I'm temporarily single parenting with a full time job and it doesn't have to be that hard. Like kiddo usually eats microwaved meat & vegetables plus a pasta/rice that I cook twice a week. Is that worse than a cooked from scratch meal? Everyone will say yes, but he's getting the macronutrients and vitamins he needs so what difference does it make? Kind of applies to every…

How many kids? She has twins.

A long time ago, when I had only one child I made a joke to one of my coworkers that had twins. It was something like that child care was O(N), so she had the double of problems.

Now I have two small children (and a big one), and now I'm convinced that it's at least O(N^2). [In my case O(5) not O(9), because the old one is old enough.]

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#117
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I guess it depends on where you live, but it is so much less expensive to be childless in the US. Monetary aid provided by the government does not cover the costs, let alone make it profitable. And government aid is not just for unfortunate events, it's used to promote desired behavior. That's why there are subsidies for companies developing green energy and EVs, for farmers growing certain crops, for animal feed (ve…

> It can be very isolating when your childless friends can drop whatever they are doing to go have a good time

Yeah parents can't have as much spontaneous fun, but they don't have to deal with unhealthy loneliness of being alone on thanksgiving, christmas, vacations etc. Society is organised for the family unit, and there are no options for single people.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#118
post #102
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally depends on the state of society and what the needs are, China had the opposite policy for over 30 years to achieve a declining birth rate. It's not true that more children = better. It's only an issue somehow for pyramid schemes of the welfare system.

Yes, and that policy turned out to be a huge mistake that the Chinese government is now struggling to reverse.

I appreciate having fewer humans to compete against for resources, including carbon emissions.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#119
post #108
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but some men would have more than two children, and some men would have zero. We balanced this out up until recently by sending men to war and other dangerous jobs that made them die before they had a chance to reproduce. There is an enormous asymmetry between the sexes in our biology and that's the feature that drives natural selection and evolution. The only reason why all people are able to reproduce are subsid…

That's just a silly assertion. Many developing countries have little to no subsidies in regards to children and yet their birth rates are higher. Better medical treatments and lack of wars are not child subsidies.

> Better medical treatments and lack of wars are not child subsidies.

Lower education and religion is probably the biggest cause for these higher birth rates. In the victorian era, people would simply not get married if they didn't have the means to raise children, and they would be childless, and there was nothing strange about that. To give subsidies for everyone to have children comes from the post ww2 politics.

Re: Restarting my career after motherhood

#120
post #108
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but some men would have more than two children, and some men would have zero. We balanced this out up until recently by sending men to war and other dangerous jobs that made them die before they had a chance to reproduce. There is an enormous asymmetry between the sexes in our biology and that's the feature that drives natural selection and evolution. The only reason why all people are able to reproduce are subsid…

That's just a silly assertion. Many developing countries have little to no subsidies in regards to children and yet their birth rates are higher. Better medical treatments and lack of wars are not child subsidies.

If women in developing countries had financial freedom and access to easy and convenient birth control, then they would not have high birth rates.
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