By SARAH BUTLER
‘I actually wasn’t enjoying my job anyway,’ my friend confided to me a few weeks ago, as she tickled her one year old under the chin, ‘so really, it was an easy way out.’
‘I totally agree,’ another new mother told me recently over coffee, ‘I LOVE that I don’t need to explain why I’m not going back to work, but it was really getting me down.’
They echoed another female friend I saw a few months ago who admitted that she is considering a complete career change and is hoping to pursue a more creative vocation, something she has always wanted to try, when she returns to the workforce after having a baby.
These conversations, along with yet another newspaper feature article about ‘mumprenuers’, got me thinking: is pregnancy the new exit strategy? Is giving birth perhaps one of the only legitimate ways to escape answering to the man and freeing oneself from the daily grind? Assuming you can afford it, is getting knocked up one of the only ways you can opt out or try something new without the risks typically associated with a new venture?
Unless you are an athlete or work in an industry where your talent has a shelf life, it can be hard to recognise burn-out, career fatigue or the fact that you might simply have become out of sync with your industry. Often one of the only ways that you can get the perspective required for this type of realisation is by stepping outside of your daily work routine and taking some time to literally watch the world go by without you standing in the thick of it.
Having a baby does, among many other things, provide this vantage point. But without the swell of a growing belly it can be difficult to admit to yourself, let alone anyone else, that you want some time out, a break from the crazy merry-go-round of working life.