Raising children should not be considered a "gap" in a resume

Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash

Recently, I been volunteering by helping with conducting interviews for a new position at a local charity. Overall it has been a fun and rewarding experience!

During the interview process, one of the candidates said something that bothered me. The comment was not a reflection on the candidate at all, but rather the comment was a reflection on our standards as a society.

I don’t think it’s any secret that women have a harder time gaining, retaining, and advancing in employment. Whether it’s the gender wage gap, the impact of the pandemic on increased unemployment for women or even having to deploy a fake male assistant to write emails, there is no shortage of additional hurldes our female colleagues have to jump over.

I think an additional hurdle in the career path of women is the time time being taken out of the ‘rat race’ to prioritize raising families. In Canada at least, it’s not uncommon for a new mother to take 12 to 18 months off of work to raise a new child. If the woman has 2 children before the age of 35, she will have 2-3 years less “work experience” than a colleague that does not take time off to raise children.

In a 10-12 year career window that means a woman who left work to raise two children will have 20-35% less work experience at the same age as someone who does not.

The comment that the candidate made was something along the lines of “I took time from the office to raise children, so there are some gaps on my resume.”

I think it’s a fundamental failure of society if we consider raising children, or the development of a human, to be a gap, or something to be left off the resume. That being said I also do not recall seeing many resumes that explicitly lay out time as a stay-at-home parent on the work-history timeline.

It should also be noted that stay at home dads are not immune to this challenge; my experience has been with predominantly stay at home mothers. I would think the same approach applies to all parent types.

I think a logical first step in combatting this is for those of us conducting interviews to encourage anyone that discloses “gaps in resume” to re-consider whether it is a gap or an important part of their development.

Anyone who can stay at home with a toddler and stay sane has to have at least some transferrable patience and empathy skills that can transfer to customer service, don’t you think?

In the long term I’d love to see additions to resumes such as this:

Stay at Home Parent (June 2002-Sep 2023)
Responsibilities
- On call 24/7
- Coaching, mentorship and emotional support for a brand new human
- Functioning on 2 hours of sleep

Skills Used/Developed
- Negotiation
- Time management
- Multi-tasking

What are some other responsibilities/transferrable skills that could be listed? Should people be putting this type of thing on their actual resume? Would love to hear your comments below.