Finance: A Bad Career Choice for Working Parents

Posted by: Lauren Young on May 29, 2009

A revelation for Working Parents in this week’s New York Times: “Among elite white-collar fields, finance appears to be uniquely difficult for anyone trying to combine work and family.”

Harvard professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have embarked on an exhaustive project, called Harvard and Beyond, examining the careers and family trajectories of highly educated men and women. (In other words, what is referred to as work-life balance.) Their conclusion? Finance isn’t an ideal profession for work-life balance, particularly for working moms.

Their research shows that men and women with masters of business administration degrees have nearly identical incomes at the start of their careers, but their earnings soon diverge: men significantly outearn their female counterparts 10 to 16 years later.

Goldin and Katz cite several reasons for the earnings gap, but the biggest one is that women take a pause in their careers to have children. “It appears that many MBA mothers, especially those with well-off spouses, decide to slow down within a few years following their first birth,” according to the study.

Off the top of my head, I can count at least 10 female friends who left lucrative investment banking and finance jobs to stay at home with their kids. Interestingly enough, one of them on-ramped in the past few years, returning to a major investment bank as an equity analyst. She was just named Best on the Street by The Wall Street Journal in her industry group. (I’d out her, but I didn’t tell her I was writing this.)

Flexibility is key to the all-star analyst’s situation and, most likely, to her success. She works from home much of the week.

Interestingly enough, B-schools are helping families make the transition to academic life, as more students with partners and young children head to campus. But that also means more B-Schoolers are learning the work-life lesson a lot earlier as they juggle school along with family responsibilities.

Another mommy friend who is a consultant in Los Angeles posted something on Facebook earlier this week about work-life balance that caught my eye. One of her clients told her, “I think work/life balance is a crock. Nobody is off the clock.”

What do you think? Is there ANY career that lets women as well as men get the best of both worlds?

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