Single Parents, take a bow...
Jessica Heagren
Careers After Babies Founder, Author & Accreditor | Speaker & Panellist | Fractional Strategy & Change Director | Transformation Expert | NED, Chair & Advisor | Passionate Diversity Advocate
Did you notice a Careers-After-Babies-shaped hole in your inbox last week??
I was so ill I didn't get out of bed for 5 days. Who even heard of such a thing from a mother of four? It's been utterly brutal. I'm now on antibiotics and feeling significantly better, thanks for asking!
How do they do it?
The problem was that?I wasn't the only ill one. Two of the children were off school for a week and my husband wasn't in peak condition either.?Life became even more chaotic.
I'm very transparent about my husband and I being a team. We're 50:50 on most things, meaning we get to have careers and also be the type of parents we want to be. It means I'm not the only one doing school runs or the only one packing the bags. I'm not the only one checking the whatsapp groups. And I'm not doing bedtime for four children on my own every night.
People tell me I'm lucky to have such a supportive husband. I fire back that it wasn't luck, it was design. We were very open about how things would work when we had children.
But I very much appreciate that I am privileged to be able to share the load.
I spent a lot of my delirious sick days wondering how on earth single parents manage work, parenting and be ill? Who gets the kids to school when your head is so scrambled you can't lift it off the pillow? Who makes lunchboxes when your legs have such bad shooting pains you can barely walk?
There was a day when John had to be in London and I couldn't drive, so I rang my Mum and asked her to collect the children from school.
That got me thinking about all the people who live miles from their families or don't have them around. Who do they call when it all goes awry?
Being a parent is such hard work.
Doing it alone or with very little support is so much harder.
Add to that the financial burden on one person providing for their family means that work isn't a choice. It's a necessity.
Ordinarily I speak to people who are very sympathetic to single parents that work for them. But so many organisations rely on the empathy of an individual line manager. If that person changes, or they're not quite as understanding, life becomes impossible. Working and being a parent becomes impossible.
It's why, in Careers After Babies , we labour so hard on the theme - empathetic and inclusive line managers. It's so critical to retaining all working parents that line managers "get it". They need to understand the value that working parents bring to the organisation. They need to live and breathe supporting them in all aspects of life. They need to be the type of manager that, when things go wrong at home, are understanding and empathetic. Not adding stress and complication to their lives.
Single parents, I bow down to you. I think you're incredible. You are the kings and queens of the working (and parenting) worlds.
领英推荐
If you're an organisation that needs help with consistency among your line managers, or any other aspect of supporting working parents, now is the time to reach out to me! If you're planning how to spend your budget in 2025 - I promise you will gain value from Careers After Babies. Saving just one working parent saves in the region of ￡50k - and that's a mild estimate.
Things to check out
Follow Anne-Marie Kinlock, founder of KindHaus - I met this absolute powerhouse this week and am excited to see her next steps!
Listen to BBC's Women's Hour to hear the realities of life for so many working Mums
Celebrate Australia being the first country in the world to ban social media for under-16s!
It's the time of year when germs are rushing at us from every angle while we work, parent, prep for Christmas and everything in between. So take care of yourself, please!
See you next week
Jess
PS Christmas is less than a month away. I'll leave that there.
OBM & Lead VA ?? B Corp Consultant ?? Project Manager ??
3 个月Thank you for sharing this. I hope you’re feeling better. I am a solo parent and this hit home this morning. I’m not unwell but my daughter is going through a phase of very early starts, this morning being 4am. All I want to do right now is go back to bed but that isn’t an option, I still have to continue with the day, making breakfast, entertaining her etc. I would love nothing more right now than for someone to say, you go back to bed and I’ll take her out for a few hours. ??
It is just so awful on those days, isn't it?! I don't usually get the choice or luxury of staying at home, as it's usually just me for most of the week, most weeks. Having to do all the usual rushing about when all you can comfortably manage is sitting up in bed with the duvet on is singularly the most tiring experience of parenthood. Very lucky to have had great line managers in Motts who, if not all in the same situation, have all been v empathetic and helpful. Thanks for your article and hope you are feeling back to normal soon! X
Senior Management, Commercial, Change and Legal Professional
3 个月Thank you Jessica for acknowledging the reality for so many of us, and I hope you’re all on the mend now. For lone parents, especially those like me with young twins, the reality is simply that you just have to cope with it all, there is no other option. Some things just have to be re-prioritised, that may have seemed important pre-children, such as tidiness! I definitely keep the mantra of ‘this too shall pass’! ?? For me the privilege comes from not having had to settle for the wrong partner in order to have a family, as so many women had to in previous generations. I’m always very upfront about my caring responsibilities during interviews (they can’t ask but I can certainly raise it!) as it’s a very useful way to filter out those organisations and managers that will not support me when the inevitable crises do happen. I’ve been blessed with a few fantastic (and all male!) bosses who’ve been really supportive (as well as a few who didn’t get it!). Businesses being aware that they win massively when they support us is crucial. Thank you for raising this.
I hope you're all feeling LOTS better! When I've been ill has definitely been the hardest time to be a single parent, and even more so when my daughter was ill at the same time. Even if family were nearby, I'm sure that no one would want to put themselves into e.g. a norovirus warzone...when we were both struck down by that plague when my daughter was 7 months old, and the washing machine packed in at the same time, I will confess to having many an emotional breakdown! But we survived :-)
Head of Content at TriggerHub, Award-Winning Mental Health Content Creator
3 个月I hope you are on the mend, Jessica Heagren ??