This month we celebrated Mother’s Day. Motherhood is deeply important to me, both because of how much my relationship with my own mother has shaped my life, and because of what becoming a mother myself meant to me. It is also Mental Health Awareness Month, which seems fitting to me, as mothering and the mental health of our children are intertwined.
It is common knowledge that our relationships with our mothers are one of our earliest and most significant, and that our experiences with our mothers have a lifelong impact on us. I have met people who lament that they had uncaring or unattuned mothers, and I have met people who have had close and caring relationships with their mothers. In both cases, the impact of the relationship is profound. We also know that our relationships with our mothers during childhood shape who we become as adults.
The quality of our relationships with our mothers when we’re children impacts our psychological adjustment in adulthood, how we respond to stress, how we relate and communicate in our closest relationships, and even our overall satisfaction with our lives.
The comfort that a mother can provide is one of the deepest sources of comfort there is. You can see this calming relief whenever you see an upset child in their mother’s arms. And we see it later in life too – soldiers cry out for their mothers at their most vulnerable moments, when hurt in battle.
Given this intuitive and universal understanding, I find us to be behind-the-times in that our workplaces generally don’t honor this important relationship through policies that allow mothers to excel in their roles at work, while also having the time and space they need to attend to their children in the moments that require it.
Many mothers will make decisions that negatively impact their career progress in order to prioritize their children, including not pursuing a leadership role because of the time required for the position, turning down jobs with extensive travel, and leaving one industry for another one that offers more flexibility. Each woman will make the decision that is right for her and her family, with many of us choosing paths that allow us to succeed in our careers, and to also feel successful as mothers.
Making a deliberate decision to support mothers benefits both women and workplaces. High achieving women whose jobs allow them to feel successful professionally and personally are more likely to stay in their roles.
Retaining working mothers serves employers by eliminating the costs associated with turnover, retaining institutional knowledge and being able promote from within, and reaping the rewards of gender diversity. And when companies build a reputation for supporting women, they are positioned to attract top talent.
One of the key policies that workplaces can adopt to retain this important segment of workplace talent is flexible work.
Why Flexibility is Important
Many highly educated professional women quit their jobs due to lack of flexibility. I was one of them.
While I was pregnant with first child, my daughter, I thought that when she arrived she would simply “slip into my well-established life”. I had children later in life on purpose, was very focused on my career, and had no intention of scaling back professionally.
However, when I met my baby, things changed for me. I found that this sensitive little person, much to my surprise, wanted to me held or breastfed by me, all the time. If those conditions were met, she has happy. If they were not, she let her unhappiness be known. Loudly.
Having no desire to leave the workforce, I tried to negotiate for flexibility with my employer. I was told “No” unequivocally. So I quit my job. I didn’t want to quit—I wanted to stay on the professional path that I had worked for years to create for myself. And I needed to continue to pull in a paycheck. But now, as a mother, I also needed to take care of my child in the moments when she needed me the most. And when she was an infant, I had no control over when those moments were.
When flexibility is not an option, women who want it are faced with a stark choice: be away from your children more than you are comfortable with, or leave a job you want to be in. For me, I wanted flexibility when my kids were little. For some women, the need for flexibility comes from having a child with special needs, the work involved with caring for an elderly parent, or the desire to have better work-life balance given the combination of caregiving, career, and the responsibility of running a home. Whatever the motivation for an individual woman, the end result is the same: workplaces that don’t offer flexibility will not be able to recruit or retain women who are prioritizing it.
What led me to leave my job over the lack of flexibility is that I am someone who wants a challenging, engaging career, AND I want to be present for my children when they need me. I want both. While I don’t believe we can “have it all,” flexibility allows me to feel successful in my career and as a mother. It is common to hear working mothers say, “I’m spread too thin between work and home, and I feel like I’m not doing anything well. I feel like I’m failing at everything.”
Flexibility doesn’t solve this completely. Working mothers do have way too much to do, and likely always will. But flexibility does make it easier to get all of the important things done, to feel like you’re growing and excelling in your career, and are also a great mother.
Flexibility gives mothers ownership over their schedules. It allows us to decide: What is most important this week—is it the client presentation, or my child’s soccer game? Is it business development, or do I need to shift everything because someone is sick or having a hard time emotionally?
Flexibility allows mothers to do what strong business leaders to everyday: Continually look at all of the new challenges coming up, and prioritize and re-prioritize each day to make sure the most important and time sensitive things get managed well, and the other work gets pushed off. I was running a meeting with high-level women leaders recently, and it became clear—every single one of them was excellent at prioritization. High achievers are great at this skill. And so we must make sure that high achieving mothers have the flexibility they need to prioritize across their professional life AND their personal life.
When We Won’t Allow Flexibility
Without flexibility, we lose many talented mothers from the workforce.
Without flexibility across all workplaces, women will:
Stay in jobs they don’t love or that don’t allow them to grow as much as they could because their workplace does offer flexibility, and they’re afraid they won’t be able to find it elsewhere
Quit their jobs altogether even though that’s not what they want
Leave established organizations to start their own businesses. Some will never return to working for someone else. Others will go back to roles in-house after their children are older and need less from them.
Be forced to grapple with feelings of failure. It is very common that mothers feel spread too thin, and either like they are not good enough Moms or not good enough workers.
Not feel valued for the incredible contribution they are making to society by prioritizing their children’s wellbeing.
When flexibility is offered, workplaces gain:
Dynamic, strong women who are effective leaders
The segment of the workforce (women), who overall bring higher levels of interpersonal awareness and sensitivity to their management roles, and are more likely to prioritize diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace
Money. Because gender diverse companies bring in more revenue.
Motherhood and Time Poverty
Time poverty occurs when people face intense demands on their time due to work, caregiving, and other responsibilities.
Time poverty can look like constant rushing, and/or feeling like there is not enough time to complete all of the tasks that you are required to get done to meet all of your responsibilities.
Time poverty means there is not enough time to rest and recharge, or to invest adequately in your health and in self-care. It also means there is not enough time for fun and socializing. Time poverty leads people to feel stressed, run down, exhausted, and it lowers overall quality of life.
Working mothers are one of the groups of people most likely to experience time poverty in their lives for several reasons:
The combination of working, commuting, providing care for their children, and running a home creates a never-ending task list that can’t realistically be finished
We live in a world where expectations for professionals have intensified—many professionals feel the pull to be plugged in at all hours of the day
The expectations around parenting have also intensified, and mothers are striving to hit a very high bar in terms of the care they provide for their children
Most families today do not live near extended family. This means parents are raising their children without any help or additional childcare, unless they are able to hire and pay for it.
Flexibility does not solve time poverty completely, but it does alleviate some of the stress working mothers feel by giving them back a portion of the time they would spend on commuting and getting ready to go into an office.
Flexible work also allows parents to multi-task domestic and professional responsibilities by making adjustments to their day such as getting laundry or cooking done while they’re working, or by taking a call while on a walk and getting some exercise which they might not be able to squeeze in otherwise.
Flexibility for All
Flexibility benefits working mothers the most when it is utilized by all employees, including men.
When flexibility is only used by women, it hurts their careers by perpetuating stigma and stereotypes, such as women being less committed to their careers. Similarly, if men are in the office disproportionally more than women, it gives them more access to developing relationships or receiving mentoring, which are key factors when getting promotions or increases in pay.
When both men and women have flexible work, it provides many advantages to BOTH women and men, such as allowing mothers and fathers to spend more time with their families. It also gives people more time to invest in their health and their self-care, such as being able to exercise, get more sleep, and see their friends.
When men have flexible work arrangements, it also provides benefits to working mothers specifically, such as:
More equally distributing the work of running a home, with men being able to take on more childcare, cooking, and cleaning at home
Changing the perception that mothers are more engaged parents than fathers
Improving work-life balance for women, because sharing the domestic load more equitably gives women more time to spend on their careers, personal development, and stress reduction