Pointer to Fox News video about Dr. Anna Lee Fisher and her daughter Kristin Fisher

Dr. Anna Lee Fisher was the first mom to fly in space back in 1984. As, Anne McClain, also a mom, prepares to head to space later this month, and to commemorate International Women's Day, Dr. Fisher appeared on Fox News last week along with her Fox News Washington correspondent daughter, Kristin Fisher. 

Watch the video of the conversation to gain insight into how a mom's decision to go into space when her daughter was 14 months old, influenced that daughter.

Interestingly, both of Kristin's parents worked as NASA astronauts.

Related story:
-- Speaking of Business Travel

Working Parent Stories often mentions the fact that kids learn from parents and the kids of working parents learn unique and valuable lessons. Having just finished reading the book Educated by Tara Westover, it seems safe to claim that she learned some really unique lessons from her working parents. And many of them have turned out to be surprisingly valuable and definitely thought-provoking. 

We're late to the party in terms of reviewing and praising this book given that Barack Obama included it on his 2018 Summer Reading List and Bill Gates recently gushed about it too. With that said, in addition to being a compelling memoir, it gives parents a lot to think about in terms of what aspects of parenting and education help a child the most.

Educated is a real page-turner* that will leave you thinking and thinking and thinking some more about what you've read, what it means to be a "good" parent, and what opportunities and responsibilities you provide for your children. After you finish the book, we recommend listening to interviews with the author posted on YouTube (like this one) to gain even more insight into her story. 

* We actually listened to the audio version

Assuming that a person's future family status is unknown (i.e. they are not yet married):

Does it ever make sense to give different career advice to boys/men vs girls/women?

Serious question. Let us know what you think.

Disclaimer: This info is intended for people who are able to make general plans for their career in advance. It may also be helpful for people considering a career change. 

Some people say that their job doesn't pay enough for them to be able to afford childcare. Or, to be more specific, their job doesn't pay enough for them to be able to meet the needs of their family, including childcare costs. Before you make plans to launch a career (and possibly incur the expenses associated with educating yourself for that career), find out which jobs don't pay enough to enable you to support a family (including childcare costs) and avoid those careers! 

It's also smart to avoid educational expenses that lead to careers that don't pay enough to enable you to repay student loans if you need them. 

The good news is that it's often possible to do something you will enjoy most days, without pursuing low paying jobs. For example, if you love teaching, but fear that being a school teacher won't pay enough to support the lifestyle you desire, consider becoming a corporate trainer which usually pays well. Or if you want to work with children, consider becoming a speech-language pathologist which can involve teaching children outside a traditional classroom. 

When people pursue jobs that pay well, in addition to meeting their own needs and enjoying the freedom that comes from some level of financial flexibility, they also help people in low paying jobs by lowering the supply of people pursuing those lower paying jobs. Basic economics teaches us that when supply becomes scarce, wages rise. And wages usually rise faster when supply is reduced than they do by complaining, striking, or attempting to legislate pay rates.

Avoiding future frustrations takes planning and hard work, but it usually pays off in the end. 

By the time my husband and I decided to marry we’d already determined that he could cook better than I could, he cared more about food than I did, and he was happy to take on a permanent role, at least for the foreseeable future, as “chief nutrition officer” within the family we were planning to establish. So I literally found it funny (at least I hope I laughed) when his mother informed me that I would need to make his dinner after we were married because he would be very tired when he came home from work.
 
The reason this was so funny was that we worked together. We met at work, we had similar roles and the same level of responsibility at work, we’d earned sort of similar degrees (mechanical engineering and computer science), and we had similar plans for the future (i.e. we both wanted to have children, raise a family and pursue our careers). So it really did strike me as funny that she mentioned he’d be tired at the end of the day. I remember thinking, and knowing me I probably said, “I think we’ll both be tired at the end of the day!”
 
A few years later we were excited when I became pregnant. (And boy was I tired at the end of those days.) Lots of people asked me, “Are you going to work after the baby is born?” To be fair, I wasn’t sure. I wanted to work after the baby was born, but had heard so many stories, even from co-workers with children, about how hard it is to come back to work after having a baby because you just miss the baby so much, so I decided to keep my options open. After getting advice from an experienced mother and colleague, I told my employer that I would definitely be returning, but my husband and I agreed I would stay home if that felt like the better option. I loved my baby before she was born, so actually assumed nobody would find it harder to return to work after giving birth than me. The thing was, I did love my baby. A lot. Maybe more than any mother ever. But I also wanted to return to work, so I gave it a try. In order to ease my transition, my husband stayed home with our daughter for the first month after I returned to work. And I was OK. The baby seemed OK too. Even my husband was OK. So we tentatively decided to see if we could make it work. Two years ago, and two days after our little bundle of joy turned 26, I finally decided to let up at work, and I retired.

I share this story because it highlights the fact that we don’t encourage men and women in the same ways when it comes to careers. Nobody ever told my husband that he should take on more work at home because I’d be tired after working all day, and nobody ever asked him (like not even one person) if he planned to return to work after our baby was born.
 
To be clear, I’m not blaming anybody for anything. When things change and cultural norms shift, people have questions and sometimes they even ask them. That’s OK. It’s good. And it’s how we make progress.

But, when we criticize women for pursuing careers with the same intensity as men and question their devotion to their children and families when they make the same career choices as men, we send them messages. Make no mistake about it. And those messages causes some women (but not all) to ease up, step back, and sometimes even drop out. And when that happens, and we all know that it happens, women’s ability to compete in the workplace is diminished. Companies, or at least the people who work at them, start to wonder if any given woman is really in it for the long haul. And many of the very capable women who could help close the wage gap, drop out of the game completely. It’s hard to be paid the same as a man if you’re not even getting paid.
 
Anyone who is serious about wanting to close the wage gap, who thinks that their sons and daughters deserve the same pay when they deliver the same value, has got to help close the encouragement gap first. If you’re a woman who thinks that women deserve to be paid the same as men when they deliver the same value, start by staying in the game. If you’re an employer who wants to be able to say that you’re paying women the same as men when they deliver the same value, find ways to help your women employees understand that their contributions are valued and actually helping them become better parents. If you’re a man who isn’t afraid of competing with women when proving your value in the work place, find ways to mentor women who are interested.

Change is never easy. That’s why we admire the people who make it happen. Be one of those people; a changemaker. Let’s close the encouragement gap. That may go a long way toward closing the wage gap.

Related Stories:

• Choices and Consquences
• What Can I Do About It?
• Mind the Gap

A movie review

We enjoyed the CNN documentary RGB enough to conclude that we wanted to see "On the Basis of Sex" too, the "inspired by a true story" movie about events that occurred duing Ruth Bader Ginsburg's education and early career. And we're glad that we did because it provided a different view into Judge Ginsburg's history. (One, we should note, that is somewhat fictionalized. You can check the facts vs. fiction online.) 
​
Not long ago, I attended a class called "Understanding myself from a cultural perspective". One of the most memorable things the instructor told us is that an outsider can't become a member of a group unless he or she has an insider advocate. In addition to being a thought-provoking claim, it got me thinking about responsibility; specifically, what responsibility do I have to help others who are on the outside?

This movie, and other stories I've read about Judge Ginsburg, highlight the fact that after finishing two years of Harvard Law School and then graduating from Columbia Law School (where she tied for first in her class), RBG couldn't find an NYC law firm that was willing to hire her. That's hard to believe in 2019, but apparently it really happened.

Ruth and Marty both worked while raising their two children; Ruth started out as a college professor and Marty spent his career as a tax attorney. It's well known that Marty was the family cook long before many men assumed such roles. Their successes appear to be linked in many ways.

Thankfully for Ruth, and all women really, her husband, Marty, remained convinced that she should continue to push the legal system until she found a crack; a way to practice law instead of just teaching others about it. It's an example of a person on the inside advocating for a person on the outside. 

And it leaves us wondering, is there a person or people who are deserving of our advocacy?

Pointer to funny SNL video

Dads took center stage on SNL last week in their "Westminster Daddy Show" skit.

​Enjoy :)

Pointer to a funny SNL video

Last night I went to bed way too late. I had no business watching YouTube after climbing under the covers, but I did. This SNL video called "Best Christmas Ever" was "recommended" so I watched it. And I liked it, a lot, for two reasons:

1. It made me laugh (which wasn't helpful in terms of falling asleep)
2. It made me feel like a good parent (while I could relate to the family in the video, our family isn't that bad :)

Maybe you'll enjoy it too. Good luck as we head into the holiday homestretch.

Pointer to an interesting HBR article about working parents 

If you spend time wondering how your career and/or your spouse's career might affect your kids, you'll want to read this HBR article: How Our Careers Affect Our Children by Stewart D. Friedman.

Here are just a few of the interesting insights provided by studies outlined in this relatlvely short article:

• Children’s emotional health was higher when parents (both fathers and mothers) believed that family should come first, regardless of the amount of time they spent working 
  (i.e. Attitudes and priorities are more important than the number of hours you work)
• Children were better off when parents cared about work as a source of challenge, creativity, and enjoyment (regardless of the time spent on it) 
  (i.e. Your attitude and feelings about your career make a difference in your kids' lives)
• Children were more likely to show behavioral problems if their fathers were overly involved psychologically in their careers (whether or not they worked long hours)
• To the extent that a father was performing well and feeling satisfied with his job, his children were likely to demonstrate relatively few behavior problems (independent of how many hours he worked each day)
• For mothers, having authority and discretion at work was associated with mentally healthier children
  (i.e. They found that children benefit if their mothers have control over what happens to them when they are working) 
• Mothers spending time on themselves (for relaxation and self-care, but not housework), was associated with positive outcomes for children
  (i.e. What mothers do with their time at home is more important that how much time they spend in the home each day)
• The time parents spent working each day did not influence children’s mental health

A great idea from Dr. Alison Escalante: Sigh, See, and Start

​If being a great parent only required us to read the right articles and follow the advice provided in them, more of us might consider ourselves great, or at least pretty good, parents. But most parents would probably agree that reading and following the advice provided doesn't alway produce the results we expect! No two kids are alike, and we've yet to find any advice that works for everyone who follows it. 

Many corporate leaders tell their employees, "We're paying you to think, not just follow instructions." Jobs that only require people to follow precisely defined instructions rarely pay as much as jobs that require people to think in the midst of challenging situations. And most parents would probably agree that if parenting were a paid gig, it would definitely be one of those jobs that requires a lot of thinking during challenging situations!

Dr. Alison Escalante's recent TEDx Talk called Parenting the "Shouldstorm" is very entertaining and uplifting. She describes how we can get caught up trying to do all of the things others tell us we should be doing, and she recognizes that the advice isn't always helpful. Often, as parents, we've got to think through unique ways of dealing with our challenges. In the TEDx Talk Dr. Escalante outlines a great process for engaging your brain during tough situations, and it might just change the way you parent. We highly recommend it!