Legal News

Can Having Children Early Help Women?s Careers Later On?

By Peter Lattman

There’s a page-one WaPo story on young professionals in their 20s and early 30s who decide to buck demographic trends and have children. It’s the third in an ongoing series about the choices young professionals make. We posted on the last story in this series — about a third-year law student who could not decide between taking a law firm job or pursuing a non profit position or fellowship.

This time around, we have Erin Foley Lewis, a 28-year-old associate at Cadwalader. Foley Lewis (Wake Forest, Harvard Law) talks about how having an early start on having children might help her career. Go Demon Deacons!

“By the time I’m at a point in my career where I am going to be making partner, my kids are going to be old enough to be playing on their own and sleeping on their own,” said Lewis, who recently had twins. “If I had waited until 33 to have children, I’d have newborns at the time I would be up for partner.”

O Loyal Law Blog readers, what do you make of this? Does having kids relatively early make work/life balance easier for women to achieve later on?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 15, 2008 (boomark / email).