Question : Comprehension:
Read the passage and answer the questions.

A woman who rides the success wave as an underwater photographer, pilot, financial adviser, management consultant, pearl diver, bartender, bus driver, or police officer, is very often suddenly swung back looking for answers after she becomes a mother.
And there comes a phase when she has to choose between motherhood and a thriving career. The former takes precedence for many, as it becomes the purpose for the latter to exist.
To work or not to work: Hobson’s choice imposes a high cost on both individuals and society. As a result, many professionals reject motherhood entirely. Others delay childbearing for so long that they are forced into the arms of the booming fertility industry. Some choose not to work at all, representing a loss to collective investment in talent. But a choice must be made!
Conventionally, a mother is seen putting others before herself. She is known for slaying her own sphere bit by bit to build a new world for her child. Thereupon, motherhood and sacrifice get conjoined in such a way that both become inseparable.
What merits attention is to understand a woman’s struggle to answer the individual within her! Her circumstances post-delivery (over which she hardly has any control) conveniently rob her of the goalpost she fielded half her life, that is, her career. Neither money nor family can restore what is lost when she loses her career.
To map the paradigm of this loss-gain conundrum, let’s examine women in the empowered and non-empowered categories. The first lot have financial, ideological, and emotional resources to re-create a career. It is the latter that gets sandwiched between their call for motherhood and a slipping career.
Noticeably, education is the least responsible factor for their deplorable situation. Instead, it is the educated bunch who are more frustrated than their uneducated counterparts; the ones who had carefully worked on a skill and climbed up the success ladder, only to embrace identity crises.
It is important to close the vacuum of a lost career as soon as it appears. At risk is a woman’s individuality, her self-esteem, which constitutes the very purpose of her being. Otherwise, a long hiatus from work can consume even a well-minded woman and push her into depression.

Question:
“The former takes precedence for many"—here, ‘The former’ refers to:

Option 1: the sacrifices of women

Option 2: the taking up of a new career

Option 3: the thriving careers before childbirth

Option 4: the responsibilities on becoming a mother

Team Careers360 15th Jan, 2024