In my case I only took a €13k pay cut so not a massive difference like this lady. It has definitely reduced my earning power long term though. I went from above average for my experience before kids to only now being back in average pay for my experience.

However I think in my personal case it was worth it. My old job was very stressful with lots of travel. They used to e.g. call me on Monday and say “you need to be in London tomorrow at 10 am until Friday evening”. That would have been a big sacrifice when I had a baby. My husband also is away for work a couple of days a month (and works in a public sector job with a guaranteed pension so would not have been open to leaving) so we would have probably needed some live in childcare. We could have made it work but it would have been very stressful and child care costs would have been much higher.

In my case I’m glad I leaned out. Different situations suit different people.

In total I took 2.5 years off entirely from when my eldest was born till my youngest was 1 (I got made redundant when my company was sold and got a nice payout). I did find it a little hard after that to get back into the workforce at the same or higher level, partly because I didn’t want to do the same job. So I lowered my expectations of salary slightly and 2 days later I had a job on 13k less than my previous salary. It took a couple of years after that to work my way back up and now I’m in a job that is actually a little easier than my old job but better paid. I’m smack bang in the average salary for my current years of experience so I’m happy enough.
As the kids get older I will probably lean back in a bit more too and up my salary more.

Yes! I think this is a perfect situation for that exercise where you change the “or” to “and”. I assume not *every* interesting consulting job is 100% travel and zero flexibility. She wants a job that is both challenging *and* has some flexibility (maybe not unlimited flexibility, but *enough*). OR – as you say – she decides to create challenge for herself with the extra time. Is there a need that she sees at the organization that she can fill? Maybe consider this a sabbatical or Google 20% time and use it for deep thinking.

I think the crucial thing for her is not to get sucked into the idea that she’s irreparably tanked her career. That’s not a helpful place to be. Also, she’s still working a full-time job in her industry. If that’s leaning out, then what exactly does it take to lean in? I mean, I get that consulting is competitive and all, but really… If she’s got a good work history and good references… Unemployment is low right now… She made one choice when it made the most sense, and now she’s going to make a different one with the benefit of having more experience of a parent. That’s life experience… let’s not pathologize it.

f you want to get back to your old company, why not ask? They loved you so much – there might be a place for you yet!

Chelsea, I like this comment (and enjoy this post overall, it’s a fun scenario to think through!). I think there’s a bit of a ‘false choice’ fallacy in the question ( a little Gretchen Rubin-inspired note) . It’s not “big stressful job” or “little boring job”. There are, I’m sure, shades of gray or even other avenues she may not have thought of. Maybe since she gets her work done by noon, she could use the extra time to write a novel, take a class, start a side business. Or look for a job in between the two extremes.

Great response!!! Well said. And you are 100% right that it seems far more challenging for women to lean back in than for men. But, could this also be because we are the ones most likely to do this?

Haha! Thank you for saying this so much better than I did! I do think there is a perception that any time a woman takes her foot off the gas pedal, the change has to be permanent. In academic medicine (my field) it seems to be the case somewhat, but is not necessarily even universally true there, depending on what you want to do. It’s frustrating because life happens to everyone eventually, and everybody deserves to be cut some slack. It seems to me to be a waste of intellectual capital to only value workers with this uniform life experience.

To the writer, I’d say, “You don’t really know that you’d be happier if you’d stayed in your old role. Maybe you’d be totally burned out right now. You’ve gained lots of perspective over the years about what you want and don’t want in your family and job situations, and now you’re in a great position to find a new job that hopefully gives you more challenge and some flexibility.”

As OMGD said, you are still a valuable employee even if you took a more flexible job for family reasons (Can you imagine a man being “punished” in his career for doing the same thing to – say – care for aging parents? No, he’d be considered a saint). I think you have a lot more career capital than you are giving yourself credit for and you have lots of great years of work ahead of you. Good luck!