Continued From Page 1An Impact That Transcends Death, Gender, and IntimacyOne obstacle to appreciating the profound effect of the father factor is rationalizing
it away. For example:
- My father has been dead for fifteen years; how could he still have an impact on my career?
- I'm a woman, so it makes more sense that my mother rather than my father has affected my career choices and job performance.
- I was never particularly close with my father, so I don't think he has much of an impact.
- My father was a nonprofessional and worked at the same job for forty-two years until his retirement. I am already a professional, have had two career changes, and have never worked longer than four years at any one company.
- I never respected my father's work ethic or his work history. I am completely different.
Let's look at why each of these rationalizations are specious.
If your father has died, that doesn't mean that the feelings from that relationship are dead. Many of the most important relationships we will have in our lifetimes are timeless. We carry the impact of these relationships in our minds and hearts. When women and men of all ages talk to me about the death of their fathers, even the people who maintain that they didn't have a close relationship with their dads say that they were surprised by how much they were affected. People routinely use terms such as devastating and overwhelming loss to describe their reactions. It is not unusual for daughters and sons, then, to suffer from depression and hopelessness and/or to begin to question life's meaning. It is also common for adult children to question and ponder their careers after their fathers' death. Suddenly, a job that they liked may appear trivial and meaningless.
Years later, this death still has tremendous power and influence. When some consider leaving a job long after their fathers have passed away, a number of them note that they can hear their fathers' voices in their head, "I didn't raise any child of mine to be a quitter," and they heed that voice. When others decide to make a significant career change, they often explain it by saying, "I didn't want to end up dying like my dad and never having had a chance to do what I really wanted to do." Therefore, don't underestimate the impact of your father on your career. If your father is dead, recall the enormity of your feelings about him at the time of his death. If he's alive, talk to trusted colleagues or friends whose dads have passed away and ask them whether their career decisions have been affected by the memory of their fathers.
Many women -- in fact, some men -- believe that their mothers had more influence than their fathers did over the adult professional they became. No one would argue the commonsense logic that mothers are invaluable to their children's development. In fact, in the world of stay-at-home moms and often emotionally or physically absent dads in which many of us grew up, mothers had the greatest impact on our lives simply because they were there the majority of the time. Women certainly are role models for their daughters, and it would be absurd to suggest that fathers are models for their daughters in the same way. And because of a distant relationship between many fathers and daughters, their dads are discounted in terms of importance and long-term career influence.
Despite all this, however, most of you from the baby boom generation were probably were raised with a man as the primary breadwinner in your family. In the prototypical nuclear family or some combination of it, Dad wore a suit, work clothes, or a uniform and went to work every day, while Mom was a homemaker. Even if your mother worked, she was probably viewed -- overtly or more subtly -- as second in importance from a work and financial perspective.
Typically, men made more money; they didn't take time off to have children or to raise them; and they had "real" jobs (doctor, lawyer, businessman) as opposed to women, who primarily were in the helping professions (teacher, nurse, social worker). It is extremely important to note that being a teacher, nurse, or social worker is by no means less demanding or important than the traditional male professions. There was -- and still is, at times -- a cultural bias against women that has been in place for many years. Though things have changed quite a bit in recent years, typically men still are paid more than women even in careers such as law, medicine, engineering, and business (especially at the top corporate levels); men are still less likely than women to stay at home and raise the children. Women are still considered the primary parents for their children regardless of their career status. Those women raised in a traditional home need to understand their mothers' legacy in the home and also their fathers' legacy in the business world, for these daughters have a double-edged sword approach to their career. One side is their fathers' role and work ethic. The other is their mothers' approach and view of the working woman. It is critical for all daughters to understand each parent's beliefs about the home and workplace. It may be very difficult for a daughter to reconcile her dad's professional accomplishments against her own professional competence and her mother's views of what women should be doing.
