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Recent data has highlighted shrinking gender inequalities in domestic responsibilities when both partners work outside the home. The short of it: Men are picking up more slack in the house when it comes to raising a family.

But there's one area of parenting that falls 100 percent on women: Childbearing. The individual factors that come into play when deciding whether and when to have children are myriad, but for women lawyers — particularly those on the partner track — the legal profession isn't exactly the most conducive to starting a family.

At many firms, the partner track can range anywhere from 6 to 12 years or more, according to the graduation years of the 2018 new partner class. So a woman who entered the workforce right after law school could anticipate making partner in her early to mid-30s.

Is the best time to have children in that partner track before a woman even enters the workforce? What about in the middle of it, risking disrupting a fledgling practice? What about after, just as the increased business and major responsibilities of partnership are materializing? When, then?

These types of questions have caused some women to delay their childbearing years by freezing eggs and embryos, according to the New York Law Journal, an affiliate of Texas Lawyer.

“I don't think that there is a good time to have children if you are really engaged in the practice of law. I think there are pros and cons to nearly every phase of your career. And I did wildly underestimate just how physically taxing it would be to be pregnant and practicing law,” said Ashley Senary Dahlberg, 34, a senior associate who handles commercial litigation at a Big Law firm in San Antonio.

Dahlberg has two children — a 15-month-old and a 3-year-old — with her husband, who is a partner at a small firm. She emphasized the potential pitfalls of choosing between parenting and a partner track.

“Is it going to damage my career prospects to be partner if I have children? That's a completely individualized decision, right? I am certain that leaving the practice and having to rebuild a practice after two extended maternity leaves, having child-care obligations, being a mother, the type of implicit and explicit bias that comes with all those things, having less hours in my day to do anything — let alone practice law — all of those things are real,” she said. “They're very, very real.”

For Ashley Menage, 36, an associate at Walker Wilcox Matousek in Houston doing insurance defense, the mere prospects of undergoing in vitro fertilization treatments the first year she was licensed posed problems for her practice. The law firm where she worked at the time strictly barred remote work. She said the ability to work remotely would have made a significant difference in her ability to stay on top of her billable hours while juggling doctors appointments.

“When I was negotiating with my current firm to come to work, one of my key requests — one of the things I really negotiated hard for — was the ability to work remotely without judgment,” she said.

Negotiating maternity leave was a big part of Faye Comte's decision to have more children after leaving a midsize firm in North Texas to have her first child.

“I became pregnant while I was there and knew — while It wasn't said — that I wasn't going to be able to take maternity leave,” she said.

A short time later, Comte, 42, and her lawyer-husband moved to a small town in East Texas to raise their family. They had two more children a few years later after she made partner.

“Part of that was me negotiating a partnership agreement that allowed for maternity leave,” she said.

As law firm policies evolve on parental leave, law firm leaders may have to reimagine how they gauge performance and value, Dahlberg said. As it is, the business of law rewards a certain type of attorney — one who is always at work with few outside obligations.

If the promotion track means “we are only going to promote the people who have 24 billable hours in every day and who are exceptional lawyers and who are great at client development but who are also always in their chair or don't need to go to the doctor during the day, you are going to lose such a vital and vibrant part of your workforce, who ironically in many instances become your clients,” she said. “Because where are these women going when they are leaving the profession or if they don't make partner? They're often going in-house.”

In the meantime, lawyers will have to continue navigating the tension between the partner and parent tracks. Audrey E. Mross, 60, a partner and co-chair of Munck Wilson Mandala's labor and employment group, attributes her ability to achieve some of her career accomplishments at least in part to never marrying or having children.

“You have to be realistic about what you can do and what's going to keep you happy. If you do happen to have a spouse and kids, then what's going to keep them happy, too? I'm kind of fortunate, I don't have to worry about other people's feelings — there is nobody to worry about! But obviously someone who is married and has kids, that has to factor in,” she said.

Mross derives much of her fulfillment and happiness from her work and outside activities like alumni involvement with her alma mater and mentoring other women in the profession.

“My advice to every one of them is: You need to know yourself really well. Don't set your goals based on somebody else's parameters. And certainly don't base them on your perceptions of what a practice area is like or what a certain firm is like or what a certain in-house corporation law department is like,” she said. “Get more facts. Find out as much as you can. Know yourself very well, and then set your goals so that you don't have to backtrack and start over.”