Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

Children turned men into heroes and mothers into lesser employees, if we didn’t play our cards right.)

I spent the first nearly five years of my professional life feeling as though the other lawyers on my team were consistently wondering: When is she going to have kids? In some respects, I get it. We were constantly stretched too thin. Everyone was working crazy hours. And if I went on maternity leave, my team members were going to have to absorb those hours somehow, some way. But the thing is that there were plenty of married guys on our team and we never went around worrying about when they would have kids. That was the tone in which I entered motherhood as a professional woman and that was the tone that continued. I never mentioned stepping out for a pediatrician’s appointment. Instead, I frantically answered emails as if I was still at my desk. I did the same with sick kids and for relieving nannies. I never got over the feeling that the idea of me having children felt like a liability for my co-workers. Have you experienced a motherhood bias? Do you see it applied to women whether or not they actually have children?