The best careers for work-life balance

by Andreea Lofgren

The question of how to balance your work and family is a difficult one. The past two decades show that a great number of highly educated people choose jobs in finance. For this reason, many people expressed their worries that maybe the financial markets everywhere attracted too much of human resources that otherwise would have gone to different fields such as medicine, education, etc.

Now, this shift is felt even more by women who choose to pursue a career in finance and the cost is their struggle to keep a balance between career and family.

A research done by two Harvard alumni, answers college students question: which jobs offer the best choice of balancing work and family life?

The results show that finance is by far worst than law and academia. Another field that became increasingly popular over the past decades is consultancy. Medicine, on the other hand is looking promising as a highly paid profession with a lot of flexibility.

It’s a bit surprising to see medicine coming up as great career that allows work-family balance, when everybody knows that to become a doctor it take significant long study hours. But apparently, most doctors in their 30’s are presented with a wider set of options compared to candidates in other fields.

It’s true that certain medical specialities don’t allow a lot of flexibility, but a considerable number do. The same goes for public services jobs and master graduates in areas other than finances.

Group practices, when people share their work, is a growing in popularity. For example, a family’s obstetrician isn’t guarantee that he/she will deliver the baby (doctors take turns when they are on calls). Law and consultancy firms consider that work is too complicated to be passed from one employee to another, so they resist to approach this group work norm.

Research has shown that women largely prefer this type of work, but there is a growing hope that men will start take this kind of jobs too. (for the past decades men have increased their average time amount that they spent with their children).