Ep141: Power, Money and Marriage Part 2- Why do many women downshift their careers after kids

**Special note to our listeners** Love the show? Help us keep the conversation going! Become a paid subscriber through our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your contributions help us continue to make content on issues related to the Asian-American, immigrant, modern parent experience. THANK YOU to our super awesome listeners who have already signed up! -------------------------------------- We cringe even as we write this title. Should we use the word "downshift"? Is that a betrayal of generations of feminists who fought for our right to equal opportunity in the classroom and workplace? To current and future women who work so hard for their place in society? Should we use a more neutral word like "renegotiate" instead? But at the exact same time, the question is so obvious to any mom who lives between the paid working world and the child-rearing world. We downshift/change/renegotiate our careers (or don't) because of financial considerations, the emotional weight of going either way and the power that is lost or gained. For the three of us, we are seeing it happen to mom friends all around us. Quietly shifting to something less than full-time. Moving to a related but lower-stress field. Leaving the industry altogether and building something more flexible and maybe more personally meaningful. But it doesn't mean that these women aren't working. On the contrary, many are working more than ever across family and outside of family. At the same time, the specter of expectations of still contributing half of the family income still hangs over many of us. We process it out loud on this second episode of our series.