Viviana’s journey tomotherhoodfollowed an increasingly common pattern for millennial women.
She knew she wanted children, but her early career in her native Colombia took priority.
She met her husband when she was 29.
Not long after, she started a job at a pharmaceutical company.
It wasn’t the only reason, though.
By 36, she felt established enough at work to take time away.
She gave birth to her daughter, Amelia, in 2021.
“I don’t regret waiting,” Viviana tells me.
“I think it was the right thing to do.”
Though she could’ve transferred her job to the US, she decided to quit.
While she once considered having more than one kid, now she’s not so sure.
“Especially with no family around to support us.”
Now, withmore women workingthan ever before, they’re alsowaiting longer to have children.
By that time, she was 32.
“I just wanted to ensure I still had work,” she says.
Still, it was tough.
She had her daughter two years ago, when she was 38.
She and her partner also wanted tobuy a housebefore adding on the cost of children.
“You just can’t rush that,” she says.
They ended up buying the house and moving in when she was a few months pregnant.
By the time the women said they felt financially secure, their careers had also ramped up.
She was particularly afraid that her relationships with clients would deteriorate while she was away.
That, she says, is what kept her from starting a family in her 20s.
She had her first kid at 33.
“One sacrifice I had to make almost immediately was nursing my baby,” she recalls.
It broke my heart that this was a decision I was making explicitly because of my work requirements."
“I was actually contacted by a recruiter while I was on maternity leave,” Anita says.
Parenting is a full-time job, she adds, even if you have another full-time job.
“This is not surprising at all,” Nadia tells me.
“It’s just evidence of the fact that women simply can’t have it all.”
Anita blames social norms.
“Who does the day care call when a child gets sick?
Who tends to deal with all of the admin associated with kids?
There’s a lot employers could do to even the scales.
Some mothers told me that their requests towork remotelywere largely denied apart from emergency situations.
And that’s really tough.”
One silver lining is that somemillennial parentsare going in a different direction.
But that’s just the beginning of what’s necessary to truly ease the balance.
Between work and parenting, millennials are realizing that something has to give.
And it can’t be the parenting.
