How Much Would It Cost You to Take a Career Break?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

The New York Times (h/t Creative Class blog) has an interesting report on the financial penalties sustained in different fields by people who take some time out of the workforce. Apparently, although medicine has the most grueling training, once you get there, it's a lot easier on work/life balance than, say, finance, business consulting, or law. Or even academia.

Of course by "people who take time off for family" we still mean mostly (but not entirely) women (it used to be called the Mommy track, remember?), and I'm surprised that the research didn't explore whether women and men experienced different financial penalties when they do take time. (And I'm surprised that the Creative Class blog post didn't even acknowledge that gender is still a huge factor in this.)

It's also, perhaps, a little hard for me to get too worked up about the relatively lower salaries of highly paid MBAs and PhDs who've taken a few years off when there are so many other people for whom work-life balance means being able to get paid time off or support their family without taking on a second job. Ok, so perhaps that's a little too harsh. Work-family balance is important for everyone, for the kids, and because people who've been forced to work 70-hour weeks when their kids are young often have a I-did-it-so-you-should-too attitude toward their own subordinates, not to mention about efforts to improve work-life balance for everyone.

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Day Care Enrollments Plummet as Families Struggle to Pay the Bills

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 23:13:00 GMT

New Horizons daycare center just outside of Chicago has seen its enrollment cut by 50 percent in the last three months. And a San Gabriel, California daycare saw its enrollment go from 51 kids last year to 15 this year.

As the economy goes from scary to terrifying, parents around the country are being forced to cut back on childcare or pull their kids out of daycare altogether, relying instead on extended family or drastic changes to their own work lives.

"It is not about people making choices to drive a second car," said Diane Stout, who is the executive director of New Horizons. "For many low income people it is making a choice for food." And, with yearly day care costs averaging between $3,380 and $10,787 for childcare for one preschooler, even middle income families are being faced with the need to cut back on childcare.

Providers say they are seeing increased disciplinary problems amongst kids who are stressed by their families’ financial problems and by the loss of many of their friends in daycare.

And many fear that kids will be placed in dangerous situations as their parents’ desperation increases. Even families who qualify for aid often don’t bother applying since the waiting list is so long, being forced instead to put their children in questionable situations while they work to pay the rent and put food on the table. One woman, was instance, was leaving her four-year-old daughter in her car while she worked at a shoe store, checking on her every hour.

As the executive director of Child Care Solutions, a New York referral agency put it, "We are driving people into an unregulated system."

Photo: AP

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