#65: answering the question "what do you do?"

using new words to change old narratives (and stigma)

Good morning,

We are up to prompt week in our new format and today’s letter continues to explore this month’s theme of work-life balance.

The older I get, the less interested I feel in what people do for work, yet it’s still one of the first things I ask when I meet someone. I don’t know why I do it. Perhaps because there are few communities I am part of where it’s not the norm to get to know someone based on their career. The only one I can think of is my Buddhist community, where we usually go straight into heart-to-hearts. There is something so lovely about knowing someone for their heart instead of their job.

When you’re in the position of answering the question “what do you do?” sometimes it can be hard to say. I’ve witnessed this to be true for people who freelance, hold multiple roles, or are between jobs. I’ve also witnessed it to be true for people who dislike their jobs and don’t really want to say. And by contrast, I’ve witnessed people who over-identify with their jobs wait to be asked what they do because they can’t wait to share about it. I’m sure, in different seasons, I’ve done a bit of each.

But something of growing importance to me these days is to move away from this question, or to find better words to answer it. Today’s prompt is inspired by a discussion I recently heard about doing exactly this for parents. I keep coming back to it as an illustrative example of the power of changing language.

Let’s dig in.

The Words: “career pause” and “lead dad”

A few months ago, I watched a talk given at the Care at Work Summit called Re-imagining the Pause, which featured a conversation with Paul Sullivan, founder of Company of Dads, an online community for “lead dads,” and Neha Ruch, founder of Mother Untitled, an online platform for women in between paid work and motherhood.

(Recording is here, starting at 3:53:10, if you’d like to watch it.)

I’ve been thinking about it ever since, because it directly addressed a gray area I’ve seen but not had the words for and am now about to experience myself: the career downshift that takes place when people take on parenthood or other caregiving duties.

Career Pause or Downshift: Ruch explained that after a decade in marketing, when she had her first son, she wanted to be able to take a break to be with her child, but the stigma that ambitious women face when taking a career break was difficult. In reality, she explained, many women made the choice to pause or downshift their paid work when having children and during that season, there was a vast gray area between “stay at home mom” and “working mom,” like freelancing, consulting and working part-time. (Here’s a study they did about the pause.)

Lead Dad: Similarly, Sullivan, a former NYT columnist who chose to take on the bulk of the parenting duties (raising children, keeping the house together) in order to support his partner to start her own firm, defines men in this role as “lead dads.” They are often the spouse who has a more flexible work schedule and can therefore pause or downshift paid work in order to take on care work. Typically, men who do this are isolated or stigmatized, be it through employers and colleagues referring to their time off as “retirement” or “vacation” or being called things like “house husband” or “Mr. Mom.”

In both cases, the stigma comes from a false belief that taking a pause, or taking on more parenting duties, is due to a lack of career ambition, motivation or drive. Most of the time, it’s actually due to being rational about the needs of the moment, like wanting more time with kids, decreasing stress at home or the prohibitive costs of childcare.

Why these words are powerful

Here are my notes from the talk on what these terms enable and disable:

• Enables honesty: Because money and masculinity are inextricably linked in the U.S., using the term “lead dad” allows men to be more honest about the time they spend on their kids, rather than being performative around other men and only talking about work, or making up excuses when care-related duties interrupt paid work instead of just being honest.

• Enables worth: “Stay at home" parent implies that one is shut-in or stagnant, which is untrue in today’s highly connected world. Parents on a pause are usually still connected to their professional networks, still developing skills, and still taking on gig work or consulting along the way. But once someone is labeled “stay at home” it cuts them out of conversations about work, despite all of their previous work experience. Meanwhile, during the pause, people are also gaining valuable skills that come from caregiving, be it management, organization, empathy or creative thinking through the intellectual labor of raising kids or supporting aging family members.

• Disables assumptions: “When you say I am on a career pause,” Sullivan explained, “it forces the person across from you to also pause and think [instead of] putting you in a box.” As an example, he shared the story of a dad who got tired of being alienated when he said he was a stay-at-home dad, so he started saying he was a real estate investor who managed his family’s portfolio… which only consisted of 1 rental unit. But it was language people could understand and accept. By contrast, using the word career pause, “allows for the breathing space to fully explain what they are doing, why they are doing it and what their plans may or may not be,” he said.

So, going back to our prompt, how might we better answer the question “what do you do?” consider these words from Ruch:

The modern woman who is pausing has clocked in 10 years in her career. She's established herself and so much of her worth has been tied to her title and salary. The first time she walks into an event and someone says, “What do you do?” and she doesn't have the language to convey how much she does, how much she knows, how much she has to offer, is deeply, deeply debilitating for her identity.

Further, when we have a culture that's architected so much value towards our monetary output, the feeling of worthlessness disempowers women from then investing in themselves.

We saw in the American Mothers on Pause survey that the majority of women relied on very little childcare, and 29% never had any childcare, including family assistance. [But] they are doing a 24/7 job. No one should be expected to do a 24/7 job without support. And how can we then expect and empower them to transition back to the workforce if they haven't been able to take care of themselves physically and mentally?

Part of it is changing the narrative to be able to understand the dynamic nature of caregiving, as well as changing the language men and women have to be able to speak about their time away from the workforce.

I loved this clear takeaway because whether it’s time away from paid work for caregiving, or a different reason altogether for re-allocating our time, the words we use can either strengthen stigma or strengthen understanding.

I think it’s time to strengthen understanding, in all of our gray areas.

So this week’s prompt is to practice asking or answering the “what do you do” question in a new way even one time, and when you do, feel free to share in the comments how it goes. :)

Happy Monday,

Jihii