Combining career and family life – it’s complicated!

With nine children, a City career along with campaigning work, I'm often asked how I ‘juggle everything’ – of course the truthful answer is that I drop balls all over the place. It’s one of the (many) reasons I don't like the ‘superwoman’ tag; by now, I know not to even try to be ‘super’. When calm, I can do a lot – more than might seem theoretically possible. But stressing about it, trying to be perfect tends to lead to the complete opposite. I've sometimes claimed that learning to do one thing at a time has helped me cope; my husband Richard says I haven’t even learned to do that!

What we’ve both come to appreciate is the obvious (yet often glossed-over) reality that it’s complicated and difficult for parents to be genuinely, deeply involved in bringing up their children at the same time as furthering their careers. There is no secret way of easily combining these two intense aspects of life; separately, careers and parenting can be all-consuming, so putting them together is bound to be tough. The coronavirus lockdown is currently driving that point home, literally.

While this obviously applies to both parents, I'd like to focus here on the specific anxieties that can beset mothers who also work (for money; all mothers work hard, but are not always paid). I'm not talking about the societal pressures that are so widely discussed (the rights and wrongs of working at all – the fact is, many mothers have no choice), but about the physical, psychological and emotional impacts of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and the long periods of separation from a young child when we return to work. 

In my view, this whole intense experience for women is massively under-estimated. Nine months of carrying a child, giving birth, followed by the immediate, powerful bonding as a mother gets to know her baby and the impact of breast feeding (which is wonderful but also depleting) along with typical sleep deprivation: cumulatively, these experiences affect women in many ways – and it seems bizarre to pretend otherwise.

Yet the pretence continues. There’s enormous pressure (including the sort we heap on ourselves) to act as if everything is back to ‘normal’. And managers in the workplace, even if they are concerned, are often (understandably) reluctant to treat a maternity returner in any way differently, for fear that they might seem condescending or even discriminatory. It’s very unfortunate and highly problematic that almost everyone – the mother and the employer - seems compelled to pretend everything has returned to exactly as it was before maternity. 

I returned to work after each having of our nine children in various states of physical and mental health. I always looked forward to actually working again, but felt disoriented. In all cases besides Fitz, our first, I was still breastfeeding, and expressed my milk at work. (I just can’t imagine where I would have done that at my first employer, where I was the only woman in a team of sixteen - but to be fair, it was a long time ago). The nursing created a layer of anxiety in itself; sterilising, storing and transporting the milk, avoiding long meetings (and therefore the risk of embarrassing leakage), ensuring I ate well enough etc. was stressful. I’ll never forget being ‘encouraged’ (I didn't feel there was a choice) to speak at an overseas conference when I was still on maternity leave; the journey entailed a train, a plane, a helicopter, a car….and when I arrived late due to inevitable missed connections, I had to go straight on stage. My baby was seven weeks old and I knew if I did not express, well the audience would remember me for rather different reasons than what I said. My host was a lovely gentleman in his sixties, who I had to plead with to let me visit the ladies even if the audience had to wait.  Many women have told me they’ve had similar experiences.

My maternity leaves ranged from 6 months (Fitz) to just 8 weeks (Millie). That short leave was far too short, but I was worried about my job, since my fund performance was poor that year and I wasn’t coping well with the worry at home. On each of the nine occasions, the few days back at work felt like an out-of-body experience. On several, I felt terrible, drained and unsure of myself, missing my baby terribly and struggling to concentrate. Yet I presented a brave face, and ‘over compensated’ by working extra hard (even if not long hours), anxious to prove myself all over again – right from when I first walked back in the door. I would put my work clothes on about 30 seconds before I had to leave home to avoid milk stains (or worse) and squeezed back into pre-maternity dresses and high heels so that no one would think I had ‘lost it’. I regret that now. Perhaps I had no choice – certainly being a CEO, as I was for my last four babies, is hard to reconcile with showing vulnerability.  But perhaps I could have done more to change that. 

My advice for women before they go on maternity leave and then when they return is to articulate clearly what they hope for from the next stage of their career, in the context of a life that’s changed. One senior woman who reported to me was 40 when she had her first child and she kept me posted about her thinking. She had waited a long time to have a baby and she was clear that she wanted to enjoy her maternity leave, and envisaged returning to work 3 - 4 days a week for perhaps the first year. But, she spelled out, she remained highly ambitious. She wanted to continue working at a strategic level, to feel challenged, to have career and earnings potential. It was such a strong stance to take – and enormously helpful to me, her boss. While I emphasised that of course she could change her mind, she did return 3 days a week for first 6 months, then 4 days for the next, before reverting to full time.  She had a second child a couple of years later and her career has since gone from strength to strength. 

I’m a big fan of maternity ‘buddying’ or mentoring – pairing a woman about to go on maternity leave with someone who’s been through it before. I’ve recently been ‘maternity mentoring’ a wonderful woman who runs her own business and was expecting her first child. She had so many questions; I didn’t have all the answers but could reference my repeated experiences and hopefully set her mind at rest about some points. Like many people who run their own company, she felt the need to keep her hand on the tiller even when on leave but she has an amazing team (and agreed that they are completely capable). I am optimistic that she will become more confident about delegating. She lives close to the office – and this can make even harder to leave it to others, although the logistics will be helpful when she returns.

The fact is, there is no simple or single way, no right answer, but there are ways of being a good, devoted mother and having a fulfilling career. We certainly can’t ‘do it all, all of the time’ – but we can work things out so our children are well and happy, and we are (generally) too. It might take some false starts, some difficult times, but try to experiment if the first attempt just seems too hard. If you are going back to work after maternity leave, don’t rush it, talk to your manager in a confident way, speak to friends or mentors, and go easy on yourself if something doesn’t go quite as well as you’d hoped, or if it takes a long time to find anything even vaguely like ‘normal’. And if you decide (and are able to) take some time to be with your young children at home, that’s great too.  Live the life you are leading and as my mother told me when I was struggling, remember that ‘nothing lasts for ever’ – good times, bad times and certainly not the-immediate-returning-to-work-after-having-a-baby-time. 

I'd recommend the following resources:

She’s Back: Your Guide to Returning to Work by Deb Khan and Lisa Unwin

www.reallyhelpfulclub.com A network and practical help to return to work, start a business or explore a new opportunity

www.workingfamilies.org.uk A fantastic source of information about a wide range of aspects of combining caring and earning, from employees’ legal rights to workshops for employers aiming to provide modern flexible workplaces.

www.worksmart.org.uk covering your basic employment rights as a new or expectant mother

www.parentandprofessional.co.uk Workshops for companies to train their maternity mentors

www.womenreturners.com Getting-back–to-work help and events for both returners and employers

www.timewise.co.uk Flexible working consultancy

Richard questions me further about this topic in our latest podcast: please go to www.britfamilymorrissey.org if you'd like to listen.