Does anyone feel like having a child set their career back?
I work as an electrical engineer in the aerospace field. I have 9 years of experience and have been at the same company my entire career.
2 years ago I took maternity leave for 3 months and I feel like my career has been derailed ever since. Before having my child I was leading projects and receiving promotions. After returning, my boss put me on a cookie cutter project that doesn’t even deal with engineering. He even stated that he thought this would be an easy job for me to ease back into work but after two years I still feel like I’ve been put on the back burner. When I brought up to him that I would like to switch to a project with a focus on engineering, he said he would look into where he could place me but that was months ago. Then a new project started and he gave it to a guy that I trained along with a nice promotion. The guy has only been an engineer for 3 years. He has always favored the men we work with, he has a group chat with only them and jokes around with them like they are buddies. I ran into a former coworker this week and when I was telling her everything that happened, she mentioned that she got passed over for a promotion because she has kids which is why she chose to leave the company. I don’t have a lot of experience with other companies but have any of you dealt with this? Is it normal for you to be passed over just because you have a family?