What does it actually take to build both a meaningful career and a family?

This isn't an episode to convince you whether to have children or not. It's about understanding what's actually required to build both a meaningful career and a family in today's world.

Our Pandora's Box host, Maria Eliades, speaks with humanitarian and development expert Merit Hietanen, author of The Humanitarian Parent, about the realities of pursuing a meaningful career while raising children—and why the conversation is bigger than individual choices.

Drawing on years of humanitarian work and extensive research, Merit explains why balancing work and family depends less on personal sacrifice than on workplace culture, labor rights, supportive partners, community, and public policy.

Together, they discuss:

• Why "having it all" may be the wrong question.
• The hidden support systems behind successful careers.
• Motherhood in demanding professions.
• Caregiving, labor rights, and workplace culture.
• What women in their 20s and 30s should consider as they think about family and career.

Whether you're planning to become a parent, have decided not to, or are still figuring it out, this episode offers a thoughtful perspective on one of the defining questions of modern adulthood.

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Intro Pull Quote

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Merit Hietanen: Initially, I was interested in wanting to write the stories of mothers who had managed to get to high places in the sector, and had managed the system.

Merit Hietanen: Those people, they've survived generally because of household staff.

Merit Hietanen: Of course, there's other parts to it as well, but that's, that's a big chunk of the answer. You have mothers who've left their kids in another country to work in a conflict zone in a different country. That's also one way of managing, right? You manage having kids by not seeing them, you leave them with your extended family, and you go and work elsewhere. Um, so that's one way of surviving, but is that really what we want?

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Intro

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Maria Eliades: This is _Our Pandora's Box_, a podcast where we stare down the worst of what you're dealing with right now with curiosity to find out what you can do to create a life that rings true to who you really are. Led by me, Maria Eliades, your elder millennial sister.

Maria Eliades: But that being said, I still think it's really important to know for yourself whether or not you want children and to hear from others who have done so in challenging environments. Because I think right now we can all agree it is a very challenging time to have a kid in the United States. So to do that in a way that I think will be helpful and not fearful, I brought in a guest who has managed to have children while continuing a career in a field that is notoriously hostile to doing both: international aid.

Maria Eliades: She's worked for places like UNRWA, UN Women, and the International Rescue Committee in Gaza, Jordan, cross-border Syria, Cameroon, and Myanmar. Her areas of expertise include women's protection, gender equality, and gender-based violence, so she really knows what she's talking about. She's also a fellow Oxonian and is the vice president of the Feminist Association Union in Finland.

Maria Eliades: So you can see why I really wanted to talk to Merit. Let's get into the episode today.

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Maria Eliades: Well, I'm really excited that we're talking today.

Maria Eliades: Could you tell me about yourself in your late 20s? Who were you at the time? How would you describe yourself?

Merit Hietanen: I think in many ways in my late 20s, I think I really believed, in global justice overall.

Merit Hietanen: And I think I really went to study this human rights and politics with the idea that I would utilize it, and I would become a war correspondent, or I would become a journalist. And I think from high school, I had taken that I somewhat knew how to write.

Merit Hietanen: So I think that was, like, a, an easy decision was that, okay, a journalist can get into all sorts of things and interested in everything, and you only need to be able to write. And so that's what I wanted to do, and I think that the studies that I ended up taking then just took me more deep into ending up working with the UN and with international organizations and so

Merit Hietanen: And I think that that's something where being a humanitarian worker or whatever else I do in my life is a bit of a problem because you're, you're not allowed to publicly express your opinions, and you're not supposed to be active. you're allowed to vote, right? But you're not sort of encouraged-to be otherwise an active member of society really. Although I suppose you can, as long as it's not done publicly. But it's still, not very encouraging of that. And I think that that's always been a bit of against of what my otherwise my thinking.

Maria Eliades: I was gonna say, you know, what you're saying about not being able to publicly talk about how you feel in the activism, I think there are a lot of people who can relate to that who do some sort of public service.

Merit Hietanen: Not very well, I think. It's like, I think it was in places like when I was working in Gaza, for example, I think it was easier because then you feel like you express yourself through the work. Like, you're just responding all the time, and you wouldn't have time for that anyway.

Merit Hietanen: And you can put your full, like, time into doing sort of useful things. I think it's much harder when it comes to roles where you're, like, throwing around papers in an office somewhere and for example, monitoring impact of other programming or something. I think then it becomes much harder to do if you can't have a voice or,can't use your voice.

Merit Hietanen: I do often wonder, especially in times of turmoil, how many people's voices have been shut down because of this, you know? Or, like, if you think of humanitarian sector, you have, like, 200,000 people who can't say what they think, for example, publicly, about different issues in the world. I think it's hard, very much so.

Merit Hietanen: I think the good thing is once in a while I've been working as a consultant, and then I don't have staff rules that are, restricting me.

Merit Hietanen: I don't think it's just for these sectors, right? Companies have their own restrictions too.

Merit Hietanen: So I think it's, the realities that come with working with different entities.

Maria Eliades: It's true. It's though I think it's, it's less than, say foreign ministry type work or humanitarian work where it becomes your whole life, especially if you are in another country doing it.

Merit Hietanen: Yeah, I would think so. I think it certainly can be harder for others. I try to generally, ground myself in the thinking that when, for example, I've been really angry, let's say about like the Bidoli situation or something else, that it's million times harder for the local colleagues who are also similarly being told that they can't comment on things.

Merit Hietanen: So I think in some senses you should always have a perspective as well on your own situation somehow.

Merit Hietanen:

Maria Eliades: So to get to the book and, like, the big main reason why I wanted to talk today...

Maria Eliades: Your book got my attentionbecause I haven't seen something like this before, and I think it's extraordinary. But also, I was about to call it a job, but it's, it's more than a job of being in the humanitarian sector, and it is not an easy job. So when did you realize that your desire to be a mother might conflict with this calling that you had to be in humanitarian sector and in your work?

Merit Hietanen: I think the moment I informed of pregnancy, for example, to especially some senior colleagues or senior men, in the humanitarian sector, who I think had had high hopes for me also, like I think it was a bit of, for some people, a bit of a mentorship role, and I think they were disappointed. Of course it's not true with everyone, but I think those experiences are there for sure.

Merit Hietanen: And I think when you yourself have had really interesting roles in many humanitarian context, somehow at that point it felt like, oh, I'm ready to also give that up and that then this is the next part of life. But the other jobs are much less interesting, I can tell you that.

Merit Hietanen: And of course there is like a number of locations which, you just simply can't apply for anymore, and the work reduces so drastically because staff, that work internationally generally are not allowed to bring their families along to a lot of humanitarian contexts. So for me, that limitation was of course there.

Merit Hietanen: And which is very normal in the humanitarian world. I mean, things like that happen. But it also meant we simply lost anything to do because we couldn't anymore go to our jobs, and so, a lot of the staff got sacked, and I got sacked, and which was normal, but I was eight months pregnant at the time.

Merit Hietanen: So that obviously made life a little bit challenging at the time. I mean, I was fine. I found other work in time. But I, I think that certainly made me think about this sector a lot, which really relies on kind of project-based staff that are do short-term missions, and that

Merit Hietanen: They were fleeing a government. They were considered terrorists for having worked for an international organization, and no one cared or asked if they were pregnant. So I think also there is this constant I don't know, paradox about your feelings about, recognizing that this is not great for labor rights.

Merit Hietanen: This is not great for a woman who is pregnant. This is not how itshould go. But can you fight for your rights when you know that so many others' situation is actually the people who you should be fighting for, rather than your own rights? And I think that's the kind of the dissonance that you're having all the time in the work.

Maria Eliades: And if women are shut out of these positions, we lose something really important. You said yourself also of you looked at things differently after having a child versus before when you were working on programs for women and children.

Merit Hietanen: I'm not also for not having any international staff anywhere. I think there is positives to sharing global best practices and having different views on things.

Merit Hietanen: And also, human rights are not the same all over the world, so if you wanna, you know, advocate for those, I do think there is a good place for different international staff in different places. But in any case, I think that's completely right. Like, I myself, I certainly, after having become a mother, I think I've worked in a lot of these contexts where women's identity is defined by their motherhood.

Realities of motherhood

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Merit Hietanen: And if you don't comprehend the realities of being a mother, I think you can empathize, and you can understand, and you can read, and you can always try to understand different people in different contexts. Of course, you can't be everything, and you can't experience everything.

Merit Hietanen: But certainly, I think having gone through childbirth myself and having gone through the experience of motherhood myself, I think it gave depth to my understanding of mothers' issues in different situations. Not to try to claim that I would, for example, know what it is to be a mother in Gaza, for example, right now.

Merit Hietanen: But it gives another extra layer of somehow understanding what those needs might be, and how, not having certain services might feel, for example, in those situations.

Maria Eliades: Exactly. You know, and it's a big part of the human experience, so it's important that we have those knowledgeable viewpoints, you know?

Maria Eliades: You asked me if I had children, and I don't. But I ask this, and this episode to me is really important because we should be talking about it more, of thinking about this is a big decision, and it's not something we can just put off because the answer is just, "Um, I don't know," you know?

Maria Eliades: So you have been through it and you are doing it, so how is it possible? how do you make it possible?

Merit Hietanen: I suppose the easy answer to some senses is that you don't really, right? Like, I don't think I try to claim that it's easily possible. I think the whole work life at the moment is not supportive of it in many ways. I mean, it's not been really created for that. But I think that I'm...

Merit Hietanen: And also there's public daycare, where it's not free, but it's based on your income progressively. So it's affordable. You have a free public schooling system, you have free universities, you have all of these kind of... I mean, none of it is free. We pay tremendously in taxes, right?

Merit Hietanen: But in a sense of at least it's ... there is decent, uh, equity, to support kind of parenthood. But I think it's also one of the big problems in our society in addition to the workplace being so, in many places at least in the humanitarian system, and I think you can claim this for the US for a big part as well, is not very, uh, accepting of bringing the home or the parenthood to the workplace-

Merit Hietanen: And I think I happen to have also parents who support. You manage. It's not joyful when the kids are small, but you manage. I think the unfortunate answer when I was working abroad was a big chunk of, the reason why it was possible, and working still in kind of demanding roles, was having household staff.

Merit Hietanen: And, and I think that that's also part of this boring privileged answer of why, why it's possible. But in the humanitarian sector, it's almost expected that if you're an international staff member and you have children, you will have staff. And I think the salaries are also high enough relatively always that it's generally possible.

Merit Hietanen: I was a bit shocked when I came back to work in Finland again,

Merit Hietanen: The first week I went to my new job with the Finnish MFA, the first week I was really embarrassed and I was like, "I have a sick child, can't come to work." And my boss laughed and said like, "Same happened to me when I started." And I think that that's really not something that you would have done when you were working in the humanitarian sector.

Maria Eliades: I'm hearing the ways that it does sound like it's possible is essentially supports. So either being in the humanitarian sector, not in your own country, you have staff because of the salaries and the expectations, or at home it's having family that is supportive that can take some of the, the load of taking care of kids, and having a supportive partner as well who does 50/50.

Maria Eliades: This is what I'm hearing of this is how it's possible.

Maria Eliades: Those are some of it. I think, of course, it depends on the context how much what is possible. And of course,there is, for example, in my book, I interviewed people who felt that in some situations, for example, the higher you go, the easier it may get. Like in, for example, in a lot of INGOs where they felt if you get to country director level, some women felt like it's easier at that point because you don't have your imminent supervisor in the country, and you have a deputy who's doing a lot of your legwork actually.

Merit Hietanen: The jobs before the country director, some of them are quite hard to do with children, unless you have somebody staying at home. And I think that's often what a lot of couples do in the humanitarian sector, is that, in these kind of overseas work, is that you have the other partner stays at home and the other person works, and I think that's how you manage.

Maria Eliades: And it's tough to be that trailing spouse, especially when you have been equally as educated and equally as invested in doing the work and having a purpose outside of raising a family. And I don't--don't know how we address that, because I certainly saw that overseas and, you see it again in the international community writ large, not just with humanitarian work.

Merit Hietanen: Yeah, And many people divorce, right? And then it becomes even more difficult because then you're suddenly trailing a spouse who you don't even like, and then you're not married to anymore, but you're, because of kids, you end up trailing them anyway.

Merit Hietanen: Or then the one person originally whose career has been followed, they lose their international career. I think a lot of people have returned because of that as well. So yeah, there are difficult situations for sure.

Listener Question

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Maria Eliades: Hi, my name is Sam. I'm 27 years old, and I live in Brooklyn, New York.

Maria Eliades: My question is, how can a mother find time for herself while working and also being a parent?

Merit Hietanen: Thank you so much for the question, Sam. I mean, of course, I think there's plenty of mothers with good support systems and co-parents who actually do their bit in many ways, or without jobs who are less demanding, in which case I suppose there is less of an issue.

Merit Hietanen: So I think one thing would be certainly is to finding ways of being more communal where you could, share the load and share, um, parenting with other people even if they're not necessarily your spouse always or your partner. but generally, I mean, I do think it's a problem with the system, but I also...

Merit Hietanen: If I look in myself as well, I know that I'm sometimes also part of the problem in creating a working culture where I don't take my own time. I think, part of a problem with high achievers as well that we, we sometimes work when we shouldn't. And we want to show that we're very dedicated with our work.

Merit Hietanen: I've worked also in organizations in Finland where I've had a supervisor who, when I've been there over time, has come to me and said like, "Go home now," because it makes them look bad if I work late, and they don't want to have that culture where you have to work late.

Merit Hietanen: But that's not even in Finland always the case. You have often supervisors who are quite happy for their team to work late even though that's not part of what you should be doing. And I think that's whereyou have to also find your own way of saying no and making those limits all the time.

Merit Hietanen: That's not where the real answers lie, but often it's where while waiting for system change, thenyou're trying to make, uh, try to be a bit more selfish with your own time and try to share the load with others a lot. But I think it goes back to very much, like, finding those networks and people where you could literally...

Merit Hietanen: Like, I have kid going again for an overnighter at a friend's house, and then that friend will come over to our house, and you take your night off with that, and you give them another one. So I think you, you try to find ways of doing that.

Maria Eliades:

Systems and culture change

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Maria Eliades: I'm sure Sam will appreciate that answer.

Merit Hietanen: I'm not sure she will because I think the answer is that we should change our whole labor system.

Merit Hietanen: But I think that's it. We should demand more from our workplaces. I think that's the thing. And of course, it shouldn't be on the individual to look bad to shape a culture of a workplace. It should come from higher up, and one should be demanding it from higher up always.

Merit Hietanen: But I feel like I can't lecture to people who are working in the American working culture. It's so different from where I am right now.

Maria Eliades: No, it absolutely is, but important to have voices from outside of that working culture. And you've dealt with the working culture because as you pointed out, the UN system, especially here in New York at headquarters, is heavily influenced by American working culture. So we can't ignore it, and also you have experience with it and I imagine my audience will be heavily American as well as international.

Merit Hietanen: Yeah, indeed. I think big part of it also is the simple things of you think simple, but it seems like very difficult. 'Cause, like, how many workplaces there are where you simply can't take your leaves, you know? Of course, in the US you may not have enough leaves to take in the first place, but even if you have, the culture might not support you taking them.

Merit Hietanen: And I think that's also really problematic, I think, that you have to fight to be allowed to take your leave. I think it's a shift in much larger culture than what one individual worker can do,I recommend in many ways for anybody who is wanting to improve labor rights to advance and become big bosses and then start making changes.

Maria Eliades: Uh, sorry,

Maria Eliades: _The Humanitarian Parent_.

Merit Hietanen: Well, I was working in the humanitarian sector, and I was quite young when it comes to parenthood and at least the humanitarian work context, in a sense, I think early 30s or late 20s.

Merit Hietanen: But I had people left and right of me who were late 30s or early 40s, who were immensely stressed about becoming a parent, or wanting to become a parent. And some of them were doing IVF across borders, in different conflict situations.

Merit Hietanen: pushed me to have my first child, and then I came to this recollection of what it had done to my whole life and my career and the reality of it all. And initially, I was interested in wanting to write the stories of mothers who had managed to get to high places in the sector, and had managed the system.

Merit Hietanen: And so I initially started with interviewing them, and it was meant to be a story about them, but that story became boring very quickly. I mean, those people, they've survived generally because of household staff. That's often the answer, and that's not really an interesting answer in many ways.

Merit Hietanen: You manage having kids by not seeing them, you leave them with your extended family, and you go and work elsewhere. Um, so that's one way of surviving, but is that really what we want? And I think that's seemed to be a particularly true story, by the way, from women working internationally who come from more from the Global South or the global majority, if we want to say.

Merit Hietanen: And then every, every person I talked to said to me how I need to talk to someone else. There is a lot of painful stories, with different people also especially everything related to a lot of people who were then in the end, ended up without a child as well.

Merit Hietanen: There's so many stories of also people who, who try and feel like they've given all to their sector and then they don't end up having a kid, or those who've had really painful birth stories all over the world, or those who have kids on their own, as women in countries where that's illegal and then they try to do it anyway.

Merit Hietanen: So I felt like the story was much wider and much more interesting than what I originally started, and that's what happened.

Merit Hietanen: I hope so too. I know there's also a a lot of technical information in it from the humanitarian sector, but I also think it's, it is reality for a lot of people, especially working globally, but I also think in, in kind of the labor force in general and the realities of how... work-life balance isn't reality for a lot of people, unfortunately, in this world. It's just how it is. And I think each person in the workforce has to take kind of a bit of responsibility of what they bring to the workforce in this situation.

Maria Eliades: Agreed.

Merit Hietanen: is, really important.

Maria Eliades: Yeah, because regardless of whether we are parents or want to be parents, we might have other child caring duties or, or caring duties at some point in our lives with parents or something might happen to us. So ultimately it's one big ecosystem.

Maria Eliades: If we had it as a basis, we'd be in a different place. So that's up to everyone to advocate for that no matter what, administration we find ourselves in. no matter who is in charge of the country, it's still,something that we need to advocate for.

Closing Thank You

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Maria Eliades: Merit, thank you so much today for this conversation. I think it will be useful to a lot of people in the question of motherhood and a humanitarian career and I think overall too. So thank you again for coming onto _Our Pandora's Box. _

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Outro

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Maria Eliades: Thank you for listening to this episode of _Our Pandora's Box_. If you liked this one and are looking for more answers about careers, check out the previous episode with Stefanie O'Connell, a money expert and author, about equal pay and what we can do to get it. To check out Merit's book and further readings on the subjects we've talked about today, come to the Our Pandora's Box Substack to continue the conversation, and leave us a voice note with your question to shape future episodes.

Maria Eliades: If you liked this episode as well, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss another one. You can get _Our Pandora's Box _wherever you get your podcasts. _Our Pandora's Box_ is a Pentelic Productions podcast that was created, hosted, produced, and edited by yours truly, Maria Eliades. Thanks again for joining us, and remember to stay hopeful and stay curious.

Maria Eliades: I'll see you soon on the next _Our Pandora's Box_.