For World Book Day, McDonald’s have released a set of activity books with their Happy Meals based on the famous book by Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodhart, You Choose.
The premise of You Choose is that you go through the book with your children selecting from a variety of things, eg. places to live, hats to wear, jobs to do, etc building your own story together.
When I was confronted with the book: You Choose Jobs, I thought, well can we? Should we?
I am a graphic designer, I run my own company, I freelance for agencies, but I haven’t been briefed on any new work for a while - agency or my own clients.
I know I am probably being too open and I worry this will reflect on my abilities, but I am going to be honest because that is what Distracted is about.
The industry is in a state of uncertainty. The world is, in case you hadn’t noticed. Clients - that is the company’s with food or personal care products stocked in big supermarkets are under the financial pressures of increase in National insurance brought in by the October budget, increased costs and the uncertainty of the world - international trade, Trump, etc. It is no secret that there is a freelance drought and it has lasted longer than it normally would. My ex-colleagues are being made redundant left, right and centre, the freelance market is flooded and I am starting to wonder why I made this choice in the first place.
You Choose? Yeah right.
There is a responsibility we have when we tell children they can be anything, because they can’t always.
I grew up in a household where we weren’t so much told that we could do anything but more that it didn’t matter because we would be poor anyway. Conversely I went to a school where we were told, as women especially, we could do whatever we wanted - women were capable they were just simply not getting any credit - we could have the high-flying, high-paid job if we went for it.
It was a good school and I was ambitious.
I did go for it. I thought I didn’t have anything to lose.
Despite the wall of what I grew up thinking was possible - like a glass ceiling around the estate where I lived, if you will, I went to art college, went to University and eventually got a job in the industry I wanted to embarking on a career in graphic design.
But this isn’t the first time I have found it hard to find work. I spent a year after University working for free or travel expenses only in London, whilst working weekends in a shop and living off frozen tuna steaks from Iceland. I finally managed to land a job that paid weeks before I would have ran out of money to pay the rent. I was so close to giving up and not because I wanted to.
So when we read You Choose, I do find it triggering. My son may say he wants to be an artist, and I truly believe he could be, that he is even. Art is in his blood and in his soul. He draws most moments he is awake and his drawings have character, they are considered, his colours are well chosen, but could he make a living as an artist? I don’t know. My question to him is will art sustain you and allow you to live the life you want to live?
The reason such careers are lacking diversity is likely that people don’t always have the luxury of choice. If the job you have chosen isn’t making money then you have to find another one. I have to acknowledge my privilege here that I have even been able to attempt to make a career out of being freelance in such a troubled market thanks to a supportive partner, but the truth is money again is running out.
In someways, I think as women we have limitations outside of what career we choose. Maybe it doesn’t really matter what we choose if we lose our careers when we have children anyway. Pregnant then Screwed launched the Career Shredder last week: a live streaming of a physical shredder where you can submit your own cv in support highlighting the impact of maternity and pregnancy discrimination has on women’s careers.
Pregnant Then Screwed surveyed 35,800 parents, then Women In Data® extracted a nationally representative sample of 5,870 parents to create its State of the Nation report. The report found that 12.3% of women are sacked, constructively dismissed or made redundant whilst pregnant, on maternity leave or within a year of returning from maternity leave. When scaled up to represent the entirety of the UK, this means that up to 74,000 women risk being forced from the workplace due to pregnancy and maternity discrimination – compared to 54,000 in 2016.
Pregnantthescrewed.com
These statistics don’t even cover the fact that many women and parents are pushed out of work as their jobs aren’t flexible enough or they cannot physically earn enough money to cover the cost of childcare.
One could argue that the choice here is in whether you have children or not, and perhaps that is another post entirely, but can we really in the state of the country right now tell little girls especially that they can be whoever they want to be?
I consider regularly if I made the wrong choice, seeing every day without work as a failing on my part. A thought that came to me again recently, when I was sat in A&E with my son. A& E is famously understaffed, yet there I was fretting about how I can’t seem to get a week’s work pushing pixels around a screen. These men and women working in any aspect of that hospital experience for the hospital to be able to provide that service seems infinitely more useful than my day job. Despite the fact I may enjoy my job when I am busy or it something that can help charities or small businesses thrive, which is in someways helpful, it isn’t hospital level helpful.
Is the fact that when we tell children we can do whatever they want as a career even true? There is a limit as to how many designers the world needs, we can’t all be one. There is a quota I am sure of how many nurses, dentists and doctors we need too - is it fair that we can choose. Should we choose? Are we making the wrong decisions?
As a mother, of course, I see it differently. I want my sons to enjoy their lives. I want them to do what they enjoy and find purpose in. I wonder though, if my sons were to consider a job like mine, that seems at times to be fickle and insecure, I will be honest about that and the experiences that come with it. That even though on paper it may say you can earn high salaries, with high salaries comes risk and plenty of competition.
Yet I want them to experience the world without barriers, without that glass wall that I saw around my estate or their Mum telling them ‘no’. I hope as parents, we can give them the springboard they need to try whatever they want to do. That they can make the decisions they want to: good or bad. Because it is about choice, isn’t it? Informed choice perhaps, but choice nonetheless.
Even if they do make bad decisions, I hope they succeed in making those bad decisions because frankly who even knows what the world of work will be like when they graduate and what kind of jobs will even be available to them then.
I just hope whatever they do, they have better luck, after all I am going to need all the help in retirement I can get!
How did you choose your career?
Did you see barriers to certain careers growing up?
Were you told you can choose?
Did you choose well?
Come join me in the comments, I would love to hear your stories and know I am not alone!
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So I was told I could do anything, and that I shouldn't "throw my life away" having children - so I went for it and got a degree in journalism, worked for free, applied for the internships that mostly all went to people with connections (very nepotistic world,), ran out of money and ended up with a career in marketing (then had babies and had to unpick the shame that came with making that choice.)
In marketing, I did a lot of writing, but it was always writing to sell, not to emote or to incite anything but a desire to invest in a product. The most money I've made for writing the way I want to is on Substack 😂
I often say to my husband, I really hope the kids don't want to do anything creative with their lives, and are happy to just do a job that pays the bills, because this path is soul destroying. I'm not sure it's responsible to tell them they can do anything, because I know how upsetting it can be when you don't get to do the anything you've set your heart on, but at the same time don't want to limit them - it's a really hard balance.
I think about this a lot. I would never want my daughter to study literature like I did - of all the interesting things you can do, why choose the one where it is almost impossible to make a living. But my school was just focussed on how many people went to Oxford/Cambridge (great for rankings!) - setting people up for a decent career wasn't a priority and, when our teachers were growing up, it was still true that any old degree would get you a job. You can only base your choices on the info you have - but there weren't many jobs for literature graduates 15 years ago either!