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Moms and dads care about personal growth. Why don’t male/female managers?
I wonder this a lot. I guess the easiest reason is “With kids, I produced this thing, so I care more.” I’d nod at that. I was at an event in 2019 and some guy had six kids, and his wife wanted a girl, all his kids were boys. She wanted a girl. He said, “We could adopt.” She said, “I wouldn’t love that child.” This is reality. But what I wonder, beyond this, sometimes … is that people who become parents consistently talk about growth and personal development, right? They always discuss this. They love to grow their children. But yet, those same people are often managers back at the ranch — and they could barely care less. So, the question then becomes why someone cares deeply about growth as a parent and cares barely at all about growth as a manager. What’s the answer? The easiest one is, well, easy: “I produced this child” vs. “I inherited this direct report.” That takes a chunk of the account. The other big aspect is the dividing line between personal and professional, i.e. “This is one thing” vs. “This is another.” What else would you say?