How Does Your Partner Support Your Career (And How Do You Support Theirs?)
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We had an interesting discussion over at Corporette last week about the idea of one partner’s career taking precedence over the other. I described a few situations where I had seen this sort of thing, such as rockstar tax lawyer Marty Ginsburg following Ruth Bader Ginsburg to D.C. when she got appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Readers really didn’t like the idea of there being alphas and betas in relationships, or of having one spouse’s career be “at the forefront” — and in fact they had a bunch of great discussions about how they were equal team members and how they supported their partners.
Of course, then there was that fascinating story in The New York Times about how “work got greedy,” which I think changes the conversation in an interesting way. Some excerpts, if you haven’t read it:
This is not about educated women opting out of work (they are the least likely to stop working after having children, even if they move to less demanding jobs). It’s about how the nature of work has changed in ways that push couples who have equal career potential to take on unequal roles.
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Women don’t step back from work because they have rich husbands, she said. They have rich husbands because they step back from work.
Yesssss… I’ve seen this a million times, especially when the couple has generally equal earning potential — after all, the woman will already have to step back a bit for pregnancy and maternity leave at least once if they choose to have biological children.
So let’s talk about it. How do you and your partner work as teammates to help each other with your careers? How does your partner support your career, and how do you support theirs? Have either one of you felt pushed to “opt out” to any degree so that you could be there for family and kids, either in terms of turning down career opportunities or seeking an “easier” job in terms of hours, demands, or just mental exertion?
Any doctor-lawyer couples here? I’d love to hear how people handled doctor spouses and their careers. My husband is halfway through his residency, so while his earning potential is high post-residency, my salary right now is over 3x more in private practice. We both work long hours, but his are usually a little longer (and more intense…there’s a difference between performing surgery daily and representing financial institutions fighting over money).
The NYT article really got me thinking, particularly because I’m trying to figure out the next steps in my career. We want to start a family in the next few years, and around that time or soon after, his salary (hopefully) will be significantly different. I used to think I wanted to be a partner and be in private practice forever, but I think I’d find fulfillment and an interesting career at a non-profit. I suddenly feel like maybe the right thing to do is to move to a non-profit in a few years once he’s an attending, do valuable work that I really believe in with fewer hours (better for a family, which we want in a few years), and let him be the breadwinner for awhile while he builds his surgical career and reputation. There’s just a slight part of me that worries about resentment down the road. These may be totally unfounded–I don’t really think it’d be an issue money wise, but I think it may be about the fact that I feel like his career, by its nature, is always going to have to come first.
It’s been a bit of back and forth for us, but in the past few years, my career has taken precedence. I went to law school later than most, after deciding academia wasn’t for me. My spouse was working as an attorney for most of that, in non-profit/legal aid/government type work. Fast forward – I graduate from law school, clerk, and move our family across the country for a boutique firm where I now make almost five times as much as him. He had to get a new job as a result of the move, still in non-profit/legal aid/government. His hours are more regular, but less flexible (I’m the one who can make the random school events but he can 99% of the time do drop off and pickup ) but my hours are much longer and higher stress. I also have to travel fairly frequently.
We both love our jobs, and the balance is working out for us at the moment. I used to want to move into government or some other less demanding role, but it turns out I actually love private practice litigation – and the paycheck is nice, too. We had kind of always known that my career would have to take some sort of precedence because my initial plan was to be an academic where you often have no real choice over where you live, and I have never had any inkling to go part-time or stay home. And now I just have such greater earning potential than he does that we realize the benefits of making this arrangement work. But most of all I’d say that the understanding at the beginning of our relationship has made it possible for me to be where I am today – had I married someone who needed to be on Wall Street or Silicon Valley or whatever to climb the ladder, my career would likely be very different (and quite frankly, not sure I would have married them).
I left BigLaw so that we could follow my husband’s career across the country. We’re now in our third city since then. I leaned out, took a law-adjacent type role with a 50% paycut. It made sense for us because I hated BigLaw, while my husband is very passionate about his career with a very stable company. Since then I’ve been able to maintain the new role into a remote position which has made the various moves easier, but likely limits my upward mobility (difficult to manage a team if you’re 100% remote). That said, my career path has been part of the conversation and helped steer our last two moves for his job; his boss/mentors know that my career is also important to our family and have respected us finding a balance of moving to a spot that works for both. We are now in a position where we have a pretty good work/life balance and a very comfortable income/cushion in our MCOL city. We are roughly 50/50 in terms of domestic and childcare duties, but ascribe to the 100/100 theory that doing your ‘fair share’ isn’t enough to make a marriage work. We both travel for work and that means sometimes I’m taking on all the things and vice versa.
My husband and I had a long talk about this article when it started making the rounds last week. We’re in similar industries (tech consulting). He makes a little more, is an individual contributor and travels way more than I do. I make a little less but having amazing benefits and a management position. I followed him to AZ for his first job, then he followed me to VA for my PhD. We moved to Charlotte to make his travel easier, then we moved to RTP area because my company’s HQ is here. So we have traded off in terms of prioritization. We are both very glad that we have each grown our careers enough that neither one of us is the sole breadwinner. A few years ago we thought he was going to leave corporate life to start a business and that was totally possible financially. I also know that if I really want to I can change my career path and be OK financially. Neither of us wants to work crazy hours and have made peace with the fact that we’re not going to be CEOs or anything.
DH and I were talking about this last night. I chose the legal career, so I put in the time to get through school, but I freely admit that now I’m the lazy one: I chose a stable, 9-5 government job with great benefits but a much lower salary than I could earn in private practice. DH is a freelancer/business owner who earns twice what I make but works harder and more hours and has more risk. He is totally on-board with me working instead of being a SAHM and me choosing a smaller salary for a better lifestyle. I’ve learned to tolerate the risk of freelancing, and I like the flexibility (and honestly, income) that he has. He started a second business this year, and I was all in. W I see by anecdotes that he does a lot more housework and childcare than other husbands and dads, but I carry the mental load of managing a house and kids. I just don’t see how I could handle it all and be (reasonably) happy with a more demanding job.
My husband used to have a consulting job that would routinely have him working 50-60 hour weeks in a stressful environment. He stepped back (in pay and in position) for a low-stress government job where he will never work more than 40, in part to be able to spend more time with me & our growing family. I have a “more important” job and am the big earner in our relationship, yet I also try to work no more than 40 hours a week (though I still do at times). I’m sure it’s true for some couples, but neither of us are trying to become CEO and neither of us stepped back to enable the other’s career, nor would we want to. If I stepped back I would definitely not have a rich husband! Frankly both of us would like to work even less and I’m sure we’d both be great stay at home parents. We’re pretty practical though, so that’s not in the cards for either of us. Also I have the luxury of having a great position now, so I doubt I’d feel like I had missed out if I chose to stop working because I’ve already achieved what I wanted.
I’m a military spouse, so my husband’s career necessarily takes precedence over mine. We made the decision together (we were both in private practice when he decided he wanted to go back to the military) but I still have mixed feelings about it. The downsides are that even though we prioritize his career, I earn more (although with his total comp, incl daycare subsidies, we’re not that far apart); my upward mobility within my organization is limited since I am a remote employee; and I can’t change jobs/job search — even if I wanted to — because we frequently move. The upsides are that my husband gets to work in a job he’s passionate about and really good at; when he reaches retirement eligibility in a few years we’ll have his lifetime pension; and I’m a “live to work”kind of person anyway, so I’m content in an individual contributor, non-exec role. The big unknown for us is what happens when he retires — I expect him to take a reasonably high paying civilian job, but I’m not sure he’ll be happy or satisfied in private practice or in a civilian gov’t role.
Hmmm so my husband does more housework than me and cooking. But we also outsource quite a bit so it’s not a huge lift on the cleaning front at least. I shoulder more of the default parent type responsibilities and I am the one on call for the kids – not because my job is that much more flexible (his probably is?) but mine is closer to the kids geographically, we are in an area with a lot of SAHMs, and I am a lot less committed to my job (I don’t love the work or atmosphere so eh?) That’s probably a terrible attitude but we have three kids under 5 so that’s the reality.
He makes much more than me, but I still make low six figures and considered our contributions to be fundamentally treated equally and pooled financially, but last night I made a reference to spending “our money” and he made a joke about my word choice with the implication that he brings in much more and I am still annoyed! As I told him. I tell this story because I think even when you have a partner who is supportive and really takes on a lot of household work, there’s insidious forces that still make those types of jokes common – he made it because he just wasn’t thinking! Ugh.
Husband was a very supportive partner when I was in Big Law (did almost all the housework so when I wasn’t working I could just sleep and relax). Of course, with Big Law money we outsourced a lot but there’s stuff you can’t outsource, as you all know. But then we had to do a big move in order for him to continue up his chosen career ladder, so I leaned way out into a quasi-legal role that pays about 1/4 of what I made by the end of my time in Big Law. I don’t think I really give him any career support (we work similar hours and divide household responsibilities pretty equally, even though he makes quite a bit more money), except for being willing to move so he could take this job. But that “except” is a pretty big thing, I think. This was all pre-kid and I think I’m the rare woman that did all my leaning out before having kids. Now that I have kids, I feel like it’s far more socially acceptable to tell people that I leaned way out and took a huge paycut because people are like “Ohh of course, you did it for the kids!” But not really.
I’d say we’re about as equal as we can be, given our respective fields and demands of the jobs. I left biglaw before I even had kids in search of more balance and ability to spend time with my husband and friends outside of work. Husband has mostly always had a normal hours job and is well compensated still, due to being in a very in-demand field. We both work full time with two kids and both do our share of childcare and houeshold work (or outsource what we need to). My job has busier periods so he definitely bears the brunt of solo childcare sometimes, but I try to limit that, and we also have family nearby that can help out.
Both of our careers will probably be limited for growth (me more than him honestly) due to a lot of the reasons that the NYT article mentions, in that neither of us wants to work long hours and be 100% available for work at all times. I wish that weren’t the case for success, but in my experience, especially in the legal field, it seems to be. I’m not totally ok with it, but at the same time, I’m happy that work is not the top priority for either of us and having us both work at pretty good jobs gives the other the breathing space to not have to keep climbing the ladder.
My husband chose to stay home with our kid (hopefully plural in the near future). He thought someone should, I would have lost my mind doing that, and so he chose to give up his career (also a lawyer). I was perfectly on board with daycare for 1, nannies if our family grows. I’m partner track at BigLaw (next 1-3 years I expect), and the ability to not have to worry about snow days, sick days, late calls, early calls or travel is a huge asset to my ability to advance. I don’t think my job would be sustainable long-term without his support (or at least not without multiple nannies and an incredible amount of household help, and then, at least in my mind, what’s the point). I’ve fought for him to keep his law license active in case something happens to me or if he decides to pick up part-time work once our kid(s) are older, but at least at present he has no intention of ever going back.