Professional Transition as a Parent

Professional Transition as a Parent

After working in the same department in a few different positions at my alma mater, the University of Northern Colorado, for seven years, I accepted a new job at Colorado State University. I was starting a new job at a new institution for the first time in a decade.  This time, I was starting a new position as a parent.  Since starting my last job, I had two kids (now 18 months, and 4) and I had another on the way.  Starting a new job as a sixteen-week pregnant woman was not something I thought would be easy – and it was something I disclosed in the search process.

When I applied for the position at CSU, I didn’t know I was expecting a new baby, but did know by the time I was interviewing on campus.  I believed that it was important to start a relationship based on trust, so I disclosed, at just eight weeks, my pregnancy to the director, and that I was due in December. I received a myriad of advice about whether or not to share that information, and my decision was entirely personal.  I don’t think that there is a right thing or a wrong thing to do, but I chose to talk with the director about it.  Disclosing gave me license to ask to speak to an HR representative about the maternity leave policy as part of my decision making process. I understand that for some people that might not be true, and I acknowledge the privilege of a great (potential and eventually actual) supervisor.  When I was interviewing I asked a lot of questions about the culture around flexibility, work life balance, and family culture in the department.  I was reassured enough with the answers that I felt comfortable in accepting the position.

As I navigated my exit from Northern Colorado, my mind turned to what my start at CSU might look like.  I sought the advice of many female colleagues across the country.  Some advised me to meet with staff ahead of my start date at CSU to get a sense of the culture.  Some advised me to not take on typically female roles, like taking notes in meetings, in my early weeks since that would emblazon my identity as a woman who would fill such traditional roles. Several well-intended advice givers suggested that I not, as I typically do, bring in baked goods to the office for fear of being seen as domestic rather than professional.  Perhaps they were hoping I would continue to bring my baked goods to their office, or perhaps they too had read the multiple references to “Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office,” by Dr. Lois Frankel, that suggests that women who bake are seen as the department mom and not the poised professionals we are (as if being a mom is a negative attribute).  More than one kind parent told me not to talk too much about my kids early on, since a small minority of my future colleagues had children and I might lose out on opportunities that might overwhelm my plate.

About six weeks after accepting the job, I started.  I initially followed some of the advice of my colleagues to not be too feminine in the work place.  Not wanting to be seen as the office “mom” with staff I worked with or supervised, I treaded carefully.  Then, within a few days my youngest got sick and I needed to stay home.  I needed to talk this over with my boss and her generosity was a step in the direction toward clarifying my thoughts on parenting and working.  Then, within a few weeks I got sick and needed to stay home.  I had incredibly low energy, and felt like I couldn’t bounce back from my cold.  Through my sniffles I had a moment of clarity.  Why wasn’t I comfortable enough to take part in the culture that I had learned about in my interview?  What was holding me back from being my whole self?

What came next was an a-ha moment that I had ten years prior when looking for my first hall director position.  Just ten years ago, I had convinced my partner that we needed to be engaged before my job search process so that I could say, “my fiancé” in interview conversations about my desire to live with my partner.  In a fugue-like state after the centralized search I attended I realized that (for me) if a school wasn’t willing to let me live with someone regardless of their gender or my marital status it wasn’t for me.  Once again I found myself living out the same lesson.  If the culture wasn’t going to let me be my baking-feminist-mom-pregnant self, this place wasn’t for me.  And suddenly I was free.

Free to bake, free to talk about my kids, free to talk about the woes of daycare, free to put a photo or two of my kids where I could see them.  Free to be a mom, a student affairs professional, and free to be a driven, goal achieving, and poised professional regardless of where I worked.  Sure, I wasn’t able to put in the hours that I was at my last job pre-kids that gave me the status I had earned as a practitioner in my time growing in a position.  It might take more time for staff members to be convinced that I support them, even if I can’t go to their staff meetings the same week as a campus event because of my only-miss-bedtime-once-per-week policy.  But in the grand scheme of cost-benefit analysis of changing jobs, what I gained was the potential to far outweigh whatever pre-mom achievement I had before.  At just two and a half months in, I’m starting to figure it out – and I’m feeling more comfortable in both roles.

Whitney Newman

Assistant Director of Community Development, Residence Life

Colorado State University

Whitney-Newman@Colostate.edu, @Wsnewsman