Paul Cashman-Roberts
I have grown up like many people believing that family is probably the most important entity in life, they support you when you struggle, they look after you when you’re ill and they pick you up when you fall. However, a family can be seen in a different light, sometimes your family or the chance of having a family of your own can stand in the way of you achieving your career goals.
I am currently studying law at Canterbury Christ Church University with the ambition to qualify as a barrister. Personally, I have found that my current family (which is fairly large) has been nothing but supportive. Sometimes families can be overbearing pushing you to go down a route that you have previously decided was not for you. Furthermore, it can sometimes be hard to leave your family behind to go off to university. My family and I are all very close and it was hard for me to leave them, but I knew I was going to start my training to enter into a well-respected profession.
However, the biggest barrier that family poses is not the existing family I have but the future family I hope to have. As I have said I have grown up being very close to my family and I hope to have a family of my own someday. However, having a family now in a world where we sometimes have to choose between family and work. Personally, I feel as a man it will be very hard for me because I would only be allowed two weeks off work to spend with my child.
In addition, the choice of a career or family is harder for a woman because they have to take several months out of work to have a child. This then can cause employers to see a woman wanting children as a negative, this then has a negative effect on a woman in the working world as they are sometimes forced to choose between the two paths of children or a successful career.
Overall, I think one’s existing family poses no significant barriers to a successful career unless they are actively trying to sabotage you. But it is more the prospects of a future family that can pose barriers to a person achieving a fully functioning career. Although a future family can pose problems, I have seen first-hand that having a family and a career can work. My own parents are trained professionals and I have no complaints to how I was raised in fact they did a very good job (vanity compels me to say that). So looking to my own successful family I know having a career, marriage and children can work!
