Recently I interviewed someone for a position at work. Towards the end of a reasonably pleasant interview with ten minutes to spare, I started to chit-chat with him. Do you live around here? How do you like business school? Do you have any kids?
A 40-days old was his answer.
I told him he is crazier than I, who interviewed when Little Guy was just 3 months old and I was still on maternity leave. When he offered the information that his wife doesn't work and both sets of grand parents take turn to come help with child care, I casually made a comment that, "Yah, it's generally easier for working dad than for working mom."
He wanted to argue but smartly backed down.
It puzzles me why he even saw the need to argue. It is much harder on working moms than working dads, PERIOD!
I would never think about comparing working moms and stay-at-home-moms, because I think it often times comes down to reality and personal preference. And regardless which one was the cause, both jobs are extremely taxing. At the same time, I would never think about comparing working moms and working dads either...because there is no comparison could be made!
Do working dads need haul an extra bag of pumping contraption daily to work, and try to schedule at few a couple pumping sessions between meetings? And if not, you may need to be stuck with rock-hard breasts that may start to leak through to your dress shirts? Do working dads need to try to explain to TSA when going through airport security that those frozen bags are indeed breast milk? Do working dads need to make sure they eat constantly so they don't feel like fainting from literally being sucked dry by your offsprings? And it's not just about the breast feeding aspect of things. I heard plenty of working dads able to travel on "necessary" business trips weeks or even days after baby were born. I think I can count a handful of working moms who are able to do so. Yet working moms are expected to perform just the same as working dads.
On top of that, as much as the society wants to demonstrate gender equality, daycares seem to contact moms first prior to dads.
Bottom line is, moms are just super women!
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