The Parental Leave Playbook

Chapter FifteenTouchpoint 10 Access to Career Development

ONE OF THE most powerful experiences I see many new parents go through during their leave is an internal reorientation or realignment with their values and purpose in the world.

One client, Lyn, told this story:

My dad was a small-town architect and I grew up side-by-side with him on the drafting table. I loved helping him make the models out of balsa wood and imagining the lives that would happen in the buildings he designed. When I went to grad school for architecture, I really thought I was going to be making that kind of life for myself and my future son. Instead, I found myself in the big city, working around the clock so the celebrity architect of the firm could get more famous. I told myself that if I could make a name for myself there as his protégé I could leave and start my own firm and have more flexibility. When my son was born it was the best day of my life and leaving him to go back to work broke me. I felt like I had seriously gotten off track somehow. Here I was with this perfect kid, and I couldn't even spend time with him because I was at work all the time, and it wasn't like they would ever let me bring him in to draw next to me. That's when I knew I had to move, both cities and jobs. I'm working for a small design-build company now and I love it.

Becoming a dad forced Lyn to face something he had been avoiding for a long time—his career was turning out to be incompatible with the life he wanted ...