I have a nanny but I am the ONLY attorney in my BigLaw office that does.  However, I do think there is an unspoken expectation that all attorneys with children will have some sort of plan that allows them to work in this client-centered service business.  Because law is that sort of business it is unpredictable.

For me the solution is a nanny because I do not have reliable family or a husband that works a predictable 8 hour days either.  I also know that nannies are a very popular child care choice in the northeast but very unpopular in all other parts of the country. The pressure you feel to get a nanny may be because of the region where you are located if having a nanny is the regionally accepted choice for working professional parents.

I think you raise a really interesting issue that is only recently coming to the forefront: unmarried fathers and unmarried mothers face very different realities. For an unmarried father, the likelihood is that the children live with their mother, so the father may have occasional weekend responsibilities but rarely has to face the day to day obligation of caring for a child. Though you hear in theory about the single dad raising kids alone, I've never actually seen this happen except in the tragic case of widowhood. I think Peg is right that the BigLaw mentality is that you have to find a way to have the flexibility to work long hours, but this expectation weighs differently on women than on men, especially single mothers, who presumably can't rely on consistent help from the fathers (though maybe I'm mistaken in thinking this). On the other hand, I can see that from the point of view of a big firm, they are paying any attorney enough to afford a nanny, so if someone isn't willing to go that route, then it's not (arguably) the firm's fault. Everyone has the choice to find a workplace and profession that offers the perqs most important to them, and it really may come down to choosing the money of a big firm or the flexibility of a less high paying law job, where you can prioritize flexibility to deal with your family. I don't know--part of me thinks that these kinds of tough choices are part of achieving equality, though the fact that childcare isn't shared equally yet prevents these choices from seeming gender-neutral or fair.

I am not sure you will need a nanny per se, but you absolutely need a back up option in case you get stuck at work late. I've already gotten stuck at work until 8 or 9 a couple times during my summer associate position. Luckily for me, they were all nights where my husband did not have a shift in the ER, so he was able to pick up our son from daycare, which closes at 6:30. This summer has underscored the fact that we will need a nanny if and when I take a job in a firm. We don't live near family, so we don't have a reliable person we can call in a pinch.

I think you are going to have to think seriously about this issue in whatever legal position you take. This is a service profession, and sometimes clients have emergencies that require work beyond normal business hours. I think Big Law may be more intense, but I think any firm or even a lot of public interest positions might have similar demands.

I don't work in a big law firm, so my experience may be completely different than yours.  When I was considering a baby, when I was pregnant and just having given birth 9 months ago, I knew that I had to find both daycare and evening care and weekend care for emergencies. While I can get most of my work done during the weekends if I needed it.

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