The choice: career or family

By ALISON HORWOOD

Some parents want to have it all - a career and children. For others, it is an economic choice: they want children and they simply have to work.

Many women, and an increasing number of men, find that parental leave, part-time work, shiftwork, working from home and childcare provide the best options.

But others decide they cannot do it all and must choose one or the other. How do they make such a choice?

Nuala MacDermott made an active decision to pursue her career and not have children. She says the decision was really quite clear cut: "There's no real space for [children] in my life."

MacDermott, in her mid-40s, is a member of the management group of PA Consulting, a global management, systems and technology firm.

For the best part of 15 years, she has left for work at 7am and returned home at 8pm. With 40 offices in 20 countries, she divides her time between England, New Zealand, and Europe. Last year alone, she was away for two-thirds of the year, which means home is often a hotel room.

"You just couldn't do it with children," she says.

Although PA Consulting encourages women into top management, and there are a good number in that echelon, MacDermott says: "They simply don't last as long, because they have families and want to be with their family during the week."

It is a problem with frequent-travel, high-demand jobs across the board, she says.

"Many companies try and find ways to keep senior women, but it is very difficult."

PA has 4000 consultants, 250 within the management group. A dozen or so are women, and some do have children, she says, probably with the help of a super-nanny and a supportive partner and family.

MacDermott never canvassed different options for combining her career and children.

"If I had been desperate to have a child, I would have found a way to have both," she says. "But that debate didn't really go on in my head. It all seemed so clear."

Making an active decision not to have children is not a case of missing out, she says. However she is aware of people who cannot have children and may therefore put more energy into other parts of their life, such as a career.

"For me, it was a choice. And I cannot imagine my life being richer, or fuller, than what it is."

Although it is too late to now turn back the clock, MacDermott says she has never doubted, or regretted, her decision.

"It's not that I don't like children. I like other people's children. I like my sister's children, they go home," she jokes. "But honestly, I don't mind them. I just chose not to have them."

She reached her decision after two crunch points, in her early and late 30s.

"In the early years, it was 'never say never'. I was too young to make a firm decision. It was more a case of not now.

"Then in my late 30s, I thought, it's a one-way street. It's not just a matter of not having children now, it's not going to happen."

If anyone reacted negatively to her decision, she did not really notice.

MacDermott says she is close to her extended family, and sees a lot of her nephews and nieces.

"I never felt I was under any pressure from my family to have children. I think they just thought, 'That's Nuala'.

"Probably in my 20s, people around me were more resistant to it, but the world is growing up a bit now. When you make a decision in your late 30s and 40s, people tend to take it a bit more seriously for a number of reasons."

She says she is lucky her partner, Nick Johns, whom she met in her early 20s, supported her decision.

"I don't remember us having any big discussions when we first met. But at some stage we must have said, 'Let's not think about it, we might change our minds later'. I am lucky in some ways that he was indifferent.

"If at any stage I had said I wanted children, I'm sure he would have been happy with that. But I was clear that I didn't, and it's never been an issue."

Among her circle of friends, mostly professional working women, it is fairly common to be childless. "I think people accept it much more now," she says.

However, she has noticed that in social situations, she will gravitate towards the women without children.

"I just find I have nothing much to talk about with the women with children. Whereas, at a party, my sister, who does have children, finds it easy to talk to them because they share so much in common.

"You can't blame them; it's a huge part of their lives."

Kirsten Muxlow took the opposite decision to MacDermott - she gave away her career for her children

When Muxlow and her husband, Peter McCaffrey, began discussing having a child, they wanted to each take a year off to work to care for the baby.

"I loved my job. I was quite career-minded, so even that would have been quite hard to do," says Muxlow, who was working six days a week as an assistant editor in the film industry.

"Then, once I had one child, I thought, 'I am at home breastfeeding anyway, I may as well have another baby and have them close together'.

"Then I had two children and thought I would go back to work when they started school; just work the hours around them and do something that interested me. Of course, that hasn't happened."

Today, Muxlow, 34, is a full-time mother to Tess, 7, and Jakob, 5.

"I did miss working at first," she says. "But less and less so now. I have a great life and really diverse and interesting friends; that helps."

McCaffrey has worked as a camera operator on productions such as The Lord of the Rings, Scooby Doo, Beyond Borders and Vertical Limit.

That means travelling out of New Zealand for much of the year. To spend time together around his busy schedule, Muxlow and the children simply go with him when they can.

"The children are still young so we either travel in the holidays, or I take them out of school for a while. They love it and they learn just as much, if not more, as they would in a classroom," he says.

In the past year, the family have accompanied McCaffrey to Canada and Thailand, and soon to Australia.

Much of Muxlow's time at home is spent planning what educational outings she will take the children on in the country, while their father works.

"For me to go back to work now means our family would never spend time together. If I worked, Pete wouldn't take the jobs on, because if he did we would never see each other.

"I am not denying that we have a nice lifestyle and I don't have to work. In that way, I am lucky. But it has also been a choice not based entirely on money.

"When Tess was born we were living day to day. Pete's career hadn't taken off and we had no money for extras. We knew then that one of us would always be at home with her.

"If we hadn't ended up with Pete moving into the international market, I guess we would just make do. Your priorities change when you have children," Muxlow says.

"It was a nice idea for us to take turns taking time off from work, but it sounds nuts now. There is no way I could earn a quarter of what Pete does, so it just doesn't work for us."

Muxlow says she loves her time with Tess and Jakob, but has noticed a change in how people perceive her.

"You are treated slightly differently by other people. I am asked, 'What do you do? Oh, you're a mother'.

"I remember I did one commercial when Tess was 1. I went to a party with Pete, and I was praised by everyone, considered to be fantastic because I was working and had a child.

"What it really came down to for me was that I enjoy being with my children more than I want to keep working.

"For me to go back to work would mean taking on someone to spend the time with the children that I already do.

"I thought, 'What can I give the kids and what can a nanny give the kids?"'

* A future story will look at how men balance work and careers.