“I have caring responsibilities which mean I must earn to the level I am. Resigning really isn’t an option. My caring responsibilities bind me to this level of pay.”
A woman in her 50s wrote that in January. There are three layers stacked inside it, and only one of them is about her job.
The care obligation sets the salary floor. That might be childcare or a nurse for an aging parent. —>The floor sets which jobs are available to her. She might need to leave early for school pickup or a doctor’s appointment. —>Those jobs shape her career.
I’m lucky that my husband shares household responsibilities and childcare, but we’re all living in different situations (e.g., divorce, multi-generational, single). It can’t be contested that women still carry the brunt of invisible labor at home.
There’s a lot of talk about the binary of stay vs. go, but the decisions behind it have already been made two levels upstream by people who aren’t in the room.
Deciding to leave a job is often treated as, “find your courage,” or “take the leap, the net appears.” That may be part of the decision-making process, but I argue the bigger constraint is number.
The household negotiation nobody scheduled
“Worked 18 yrs to build a niche career, husband now says ‘quit or no second kid’.”
That’s a post title from last year. 18 years of specialized work showing up in a household negotiation as a bargaining chip.
The easy response is to make this about the husband, but there’s a structural problem at play.
In most two-earner households, the career decision gets made at home, and that conversation happens without an agenda, data, and potentially in the middle of a crisis.
I spent 15+ years running global programs. I’d never make a decision carrying an 18-year cost and resolve it in a hallway conversation on a Tuesday night. It would be scheduled, I’d bring documentation, and we’d assess costs and trade-offs, in money, time, and energy
Are we doing this for the biggest financial decisions in our households? Maybe, sometimes.
The childcare math
“Childcare options are going to cost more than my income.”
Daycare, aftercare, babysitters, camps, it’s a long list.
You know the costs are coming, but it isn’t always possible to be prepared. My daughter has a good start for her college fund, but we lucked out with subsidized daycare. As we prepare for a move, we’re anticipating $2,200-4,000 a month. The assumption is that with time our salaries will increase. We just have to make it to kindergarten, right? Another kid, no problem.
What’s still adjustable when the floor is fixed
Sometimes our careers hit life events (e.g., maternity leave, a sick parent), and we are forced to lean into negotiable variables such as:
Which hours, not how many. Whether you own the 7am block or the school pickup window is worth more to most people than a small raise, and it’s a far easier ask.
Who knows. A manager who understands the situation, the colleague who covers without being asked. An invisible constraint gets no accommodation, ever. It just gets absorbed by you.
The questions we receive
“If one salary could cover your expenses, would you stay at home?”
A man asked me this yesterday. He said women didn’t recognize the impact their decision not to have kids was having on the population at large. I’ll add that he’s single without children.
I was curious about his perspective, so I engaged in this conversation. His main argument was that the fertility rate in many countries is dropping due to household financial capacity. That is one of many issues. I cited that in the U.S. with a 50% divorce rate, it’s risky for anyone to be dependent on their spouse’s income. There are also challenges in re-entering the job market after taking time off. Plus, there’s still the imbalance of the workload at home. Is this single-income family household salary covering housework, breaks for the caregiver, etc.
I’ll leave you with two questions:
What’s the most ridiculous question or assumption that you’ve heard about your decision to have or not have kids?
As you think about salary floor, is it time for a refresh?
Family responsibilities are definitely a concern for me. I’ve said it many times before, but if it were just me, I had to think about, the decision would be easy. Quitting my job and putting my family stability at risk just something I’m willing to do right now.