Seven Motivators for Relaunching

Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work
by Carol Fishman Cohen, Vivian Steir Rabin

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What are the motivators for making the relaunch decision? If your family has managed to survive this long without your income, why should you return to the rat race, this year, next year, or ever? After all, the choice to return to work is not foreordained. Although most of the women we read about in articles on women leaving the workforce claim that they'll return to work someday, we all know women who are thrilled to be home full-time and may never wish to return.

Although each woman may phrase her reasons for wanting to return to work slightly differently, we've identified seven major motivators, with many women experiencing a combination of these.

1. Money

Not surprisingly, number one on the list for most women is money. According to the Center for Work-Life Policy's March 2005 "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps" study, 38 percent of on-ramping women cite "household income no longer sufficient for family needs" and 24 per-cent cite "partner's income no longer sufficient for family needs" as the major factors propelling them to seek jobs. Although your husband may have earned enough to permit you to take time off while your children were young, you may not be able to afford this setup any longer. Or you may be concerned about your financial future. These concerns may not force you to get a job tomorrow, but they may play, more or less subtly, into the calculus of your thinking about returning to work.

Indeed, the very growth of your family may precipitate the need for additional income. For example, you may be busting out of the starter house you bought when you were first pregnant. Feeding, clothing, and entertaining a teenager costs more than doing the same for babies and toddlers. Part of the reason why Judy, the corporate lawyer who gave up her corner office, relaunched her career was that she and her husband wanted to switch their children into private schools. When Bonnie, a former sales manager, ran the numbers on retirement and paying for college, she realized the family would come up short unless she added another income stream into the projections.

Over the last few years in particular, after the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000, many husbands have encountered career hiccups, for perhaps the first time in their work lives. Even if you managed to stay home during these episodes of reduced or nonexistent spousal income, you may have vowed not to put your family at the mercy of one employer again.

And for better or worse, there are also many of you who are currently single again, whether through widowhood or divorce, who may have enough of a cushion for the next few years but who know, or believe, that the money won't last forever.

We're not arguing that you should take a job on the off chance that you might get divorced, but we do stand by the Girl Scout motto of "Be prepared." Divorce, widowhood, spousal disability, and protracted spousal unemployment can and do happen. Relaunching thus offers a contingency plan in case of a major financial dislocation.

Even though making money may be one of your goals, there may be situations in which it's advantageous to start off by taking a job in which you barely break even financially after accounting for child care, transportation, and other work-related expenses. As we discuss in detail in chapter 3, you should consider such an opportunity if something special about the job content, flexibility, or people will lead to a more lucrative future position. Think of it as an investment, a résumé builder, a way to indicate to future employers you are serious about working and keeping current.

Leah, a primary care physician and mother of two young boys, relaunched by joining the satellite office of a small private practice two mornings a week. After three years, the physicians who owned the practice decided to close the office, and Leah had to reevaluate her options. By then, her older boy was in elementary school and her younger child was in nursery school three mornings a week. She really liked working two mornings a week, but she couldn't find another practice that would allow her to work the same schedule. Finally, she came across an opportunity to work part-time as a clinical instructor at a university medical school residency program located close to her home. Unfortunately, the position was unpaid; typically, paid senior physicians on staff supervised the residents on a rotating volunteer basis.

Leah weighed the pros and cons. She loved the babysitter who had been with her for the last three years, and didn't want to lose her. The university would pick up malpractice insurance coverage that she would otherwise have to maintain herself, and would also give her an associate professorship title. She really liked the people she would be working with. Taking this position was a net loss because of the baby-sitting and transportation costs, but it was less expensive than covering her own insurance while she continued looking for another job. Her husband questioned the decision. What convinced her (and eventually him) that it was worth doing was that it gave her continuous work experience on her résumé, kept her medical knowledge current, gave her access to a medical community with lots of contacts, and bought her some time to look for the right paid position the following year when her younger child entered kindergarten and she would be available for more hours.

If you can live without a positive income stream in the short term, the intangible future benefits from a job in which you temporarily lose money or only break even may make it worth taking. Make sure you weigh all the benefits, as Leah did, not just the cash compensation, when making a relaunch decision.

Copyright © 2007 by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin

About the Author

Carol Fishman Cohen is a frequent speaker and consultant to employers, universities, non-profits and individuals on the topic of career re-entry. Carol graduated from Harvard Business School in 1985. She was on maternity leave with her first child in February of 1990, when her firm, investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, dissolved. After five years working part time followed by six years at home full time with her four children, Carol relaunched her career in 2001 at age 42 by taking a demanding, full time job at a major investment firm.

Vivian Steir Rabin is currently Vice President, US Operations for retained executive search firm Salovey & Associates, where she focuses on recruiting for the real estate industry. In addition to her work in executive search, Vivian consults and speaks on the topic of career re-entry. Ms. Rabin graduated from Harvard Business School in 1986 and joined Lehman Brothers as an investment banker specializing in the media and entertainment sector.