Biglaw, Kids

Biglaw Mommy: Take Care Of Yourself

Being a mom is not all that different from being a Biglaw associate -- and this is not a good thing, according to Mommy Dear, Esq.

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The other day, I was reading an article in the New York Times about how major financial institutions are implementing new policies to improve the work-life balance for their junior brokers/analysts/whatever, in the wake of several recent deaths in the industry resulting from, quite simply, over-work. The policies primarily (or exclusively) consist of requiring junior employees to take some ridiculously small amount of time off in their schedules, like one weekend per month. One of the comments on the article really struck me. It was along the lines of, wait, is this a joke? Firms are “requiring” (i.e., allowing) their employees to take one weekend off per month, and we call that work/life balance?

Sadly, yes. It’s ridiculous, but not surprising, given the current state of the working culture in the U.S. We work like dogs and are, as a culture, masochistically proud of that fact. We are hit over the head with the Puritan work ethic, which ascribes greater value to more work and treats taking it easy as almost sinful. People in the “professional” world, the lawyers and bankers and consultants, compete against each other and humblebrag or complain-brag about how impossibly hard they work and how painfully little they sleep. Then the people at the top impose the same working culture and brutal hours on those in service positions, creating a shrinking workforce in which fewer employees are expected to work more hours in a punishing cycle. (I’m sure that’s an oversimplification, but you get my point). We don’t even take vacation—U.S. workers are entitled to less vacation than almost anywhere else in the developed world, and we take even less than that.

Biglaw is one of the worst offenders. We all know by now that the law is exactly the sort of profession that imposes, encourages, and rewards precisely those punishing hours that destroy any semblance of work-life balance. I mean, I personally know of several associates who have billed over 400 hours in a single month, which requires billing, on average, over thirteen hours every single day of the month. Forget a weekend off. On the plus side, law firms are starting to pay lip service to promote work-life balance, but it’s still common for attorneys to play the “who can sleep the least” game and sacrifice their health, personal lives and sanity for the sake of billable hours. Really, I knew this even before entering the Biglaw world, and it’s only been confirmed since then.

What I didn’t know before becoming a mother: In this day and age, being a mom is not all that different from being a Biglaw associate. That’s not to say that I didn’t know moms work hard. I’m not talking about the fact that being a mom is a lot of work. I’m talking about that sense of… competition. The notion that we should all strive to be the “best” mom, the mom who devotes the most of her time to her children, the mom who sacrifices her health, personal life and sanity for the sake of raising her children. (This is definitely a new-ish phenomenon: My mother always shakes her head incredulously when I tell her stories about motherhood in 2015 and says, “It wasn’t like that when you were little.”) But unlike law firms or the financial industry, where there are people at the top who can promote balance and change working culture, moms only have themselves—and we’re not promoting that balance.

I don’t know how much of this has to do with the increasingly popular term “Mommy Wars.” I hate the expression “Mommy Wars,” because I think that the term trivializes the issues women face in having both careers and children. Those struggles are real, and slapping this cutesy, condescending label on it makes it hard to take seriously. But I can’t deny their existence. Now that I’ve joined the mommy ranks, I realize just how seriously some of these women take motherhood. The competition and judgment can be pretty nuts, but what really bothers me is the collective idea that once you become a mother, you’re expected to sacrifice basically everything to your role as Mom. I hear women comparing notes about who sleeps the least (because even if baby sleeps through the night, moms are supposed to be spending half the night doing Pinterest projects and making their own organic baby food, then getting up at 5 to work out before baby wakes up), who has the least time to eat, who hasn’t read a novel in years because who has the time?

It makes me sad because it’s both so unhealthy and so unnecessary, but as someone who flatly refuses to participate in the insanity, I also find it kind of fascinating. I’m sure there are all kinds of sociological and anthropological studies about what’s causing the phenomenon, the most obvious being that these women—many of whom have chosen to stay at home to raise their kids—are reacting to the pressure of earlier decades to have successful careers and feeling the need to prove themselves as mothers, and/or are reacting to their career-oriented female peers. But I think a lot of it has to do with the same factors that I discussed at the beginning of this column, namely, that we live in a society where hard work and pressure are not only expected, but almost… deified. People who work hard are perceived as being better, and I mean better in the moral sense, that they possess better values. “Work ethic” becomes a personality trait that we strive for. I really think this is spilling over into motherhood, and so the moms who devote themselves entirely to their children and take no time for themselves are “better” than moms who put on a movie for their kids so they can have an hour of quiet time.

So, we have Biglaw associates, who push themselves to bill more and sleep less in the pursuit of being a “good” and “successful” lawyer, and we have moms, who basically do the same thing in the pursuit of being a “good” mother. Put them together and what have you got? Biglaw mommies who are stressed to the breaking point. The Biglaw mommies (and other lawyer moms too, I’m sure, but I know only Biglaw) who feel simultaneous pressure to bill the hours and do all those things for their kids that “good” moms do, like, I don’t know, Mommy and Baby Yoga. It’s no wonder that many of the Biglaw moms I know are on the verge of collapse, and it’s really no wonder that many of them bail on Biglaw so quickly. When things are that unsustainable, something has to give, and that something really can’t be your kids.

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Please don’t get me wrong. If I haven’t made it clear already, I do not personally believe that some of the examples I’m using are actually what makes a lawyer or a mom “good.” Hence my copious use of quotation marks. In fact, I think it can be the opposite. I truly believe that the people who are able to find balance in their lives, whether it be in the legal profession, motherhood, both, or whatever your path may be, are the ones who will ultimately end up both happier and more successful. For all the pressures in Biglaw to be that gunner associate, I’m often struck by how many of the more senior associates and partners are people who put their foot down a long time ago and found their balance, whether it’s by working from home one day a week, or always leaving the office at 7. But it makes sense, since I’m pretty sure that most of those gunner associates who bill 2900 hours a year burn out pretty quickly, and many of them may completely abandon a career that they spent years striving for. Such a waste.

Similarly, I think moms who prioritize their own health and happiness are ultimately the ones who raise the most well-adjusted children, because those children are being raised by someone who isn’t always about to snap, who doesn’t feel resentful about their loss of self, and who, when they do spend that quality time with their children, are able to be present in a way that the perpetually stressed mom is not. So what if your kids eat store-bought baby food? Moms who don’t take enough time for themselves will inevitably become stressed and resentful, and that’s a lot worse for your kids than a few preservatives.

Ultimately, I think that you can say the same thing about both the legal profession and motherhood: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. The road is long, and if you pace yourself, you’ll stand a much better chance of finishing the race in one piece. So to all of you, lawyers and moms alike, please take care of yourselves. Get some sleep, watch a little trashy TV, and know that you’re actually contributing to your own success in the process.

Mommy Dear, Esq. is a senior Biglaw associate in NYC by day and a new mommy by evening, weekend, and 3:30 a.m. She’s currently trying to “have it all,” “lean in,” and sometimes even cook dinner. Mommy Dear, Esq. is very, very tired. You can email her at mommydearesq@gmail.com.

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