"Winging it" is the new normal for working parents

I was only three months pregnant the first time I learned there's no foolproof plan for juggling parenthood and career.

My boss quit and I was interviewing to backfill her position. I thought needing maternity leave would be a dealbreaker so I didn't mention that I was pregnant and obviously, no one asked. The whole time it felt like this huge, unspoken thing that took up space and gave new meaning to “the elephant in the room” as I danced around it.

I didn't get the job.

When it was my turn to meet with the woman who would become my new boss, one of the first things out of her mouth was “by the way, I’m five months pregnant!” ??

That was the first time I learned there was no point in hiding the fact that parenting affects your career, but it wasn’t the last.

I wasted countless hours trying to control the uncontrollable, attempting to shape my career around the demands of motherhood. Even now that I’ve left, as I send another email that starts with “sorry for the delay,” it’s clear that I’m in year 7 of an identity crisis where I write about my freedom as if my son doesn't impact it.

It gets old, doing this dance around disclosure. Constantly calculating whether being honest about your responsibilities at home will come back to bite you in the performance review. But that's the game, isn't it? We pretend like our lives don't extend beyond the 9-5, even though our roles extend way beyond just being employees.

Wednesday was my son’s last day of school, and this week’s podcast episode is about our plans to have an unstructured summer.

I was inspired to record it after I read a Census report that said 61% of American parents don’t have any formal childcare arrangements. In other words, most of us are winging it.

We have this system, a patchwork quilt of relatives and good intentions where grannies, aunties, and even the occasional college student are all stepping up to the plate. It's a beautiful thing, but let's be for real – it's also a heavy burden.

Those family members, often juggling their own careers and responsibilities, are stretched thin. Meanwhile, the parents are drowning in guilt, constantly trying to juggle schedules, and feeling indebted to their families for bailing them out.

This isn't just a summer problem, but summer break presents a unique opportunity to really grapple with it. When something is this widespread and the solutions are this unsustainable, change has to happen at the top. Policymakers need to prioritize care work instead of treating it like a side hustle, and employers need to create more flexible environments so we can take care of our families.

In theory, none of this is a big ask. Studies have shown that childcare benefits more than pay for themselves. In practice, parents don’t demand it because they’re worried that prioritizing their kids' needs at work will make them seem "unfocused" or less committed to their jobs.

One reason this stigma still exists is because we measure parenting by minutes logged when it’s really about the quality of interactions. Research backs this up. A study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that the amount of time parents spend with their kids has almost no effect on how they turn out.

There’s obviously room for nuance, but the point is being omnipresent isn't the goal here. What parents need most is the freedom to carve out quality time to make memories with their kids. The problem is that a lot of them happen during standard working hours, when children are at school. And this disconnect between school/work schedules has been a source of unnecessary stress for too long.

We’re in this weird limbo where companies still uphold impractical standards about what it means to be a good employee, while parents are left trying to contort their calendars to keep up. It's exhausting, and frankly, it's delusional. Just as work and life are changing dramatically due to advances like AI and automation, companies need to change along with them.

Everyone says the modern workforce is in a period of transition with millions of people who need to learn new skills to stay relevant. As established business models get disrupted on what feels like a daily basis, re-skilling must be a two-way street, where both employees and employers learn how to adapt. For companies, this means rethinking outdated assumptions about where and when work gets done.

The average lifespan of S&P 500 companies has shrunk to just 21 years, about the same age as a college student right before they have their first real existential crisis about what adulting requires from them. The continued decline in corporate longevity underscores how quickly they have to evolve their mindsets, policies, and practices if they want to survive.

So we know that the quality of time parents spend with their kids matters more than the quantity, but our work and school schedules often put quality interactions out of reach. We also know companies are struggling to adapt to this changing environment, so you'll probably live longer than most of them. What can we do about it?

The good news is, we're not helpless victims of circumstance. As companies restructure to figure out what it means to be “AI-first,” we should be learning how the digital revolution can support us in whatever choices we’ve already made and the things we already care about.

In times like this, the best thing we can do is focus on maintaining a steep learning curve. If we're smart about it, we can use all these gadgets and apps to adopt an asynchronous mindset and schedule our work dynamically. Instead of waiting or making excuses, we can meet this moment with small changes - automating one task here, scheduling one email there.

Each change, no matter how slight, helps you rise to the demands of your life. The understated part of AI’s promise to handle mundane and repetitive tasks at work is that it creates more room to handle the more important mundane and repetitive tasks at home.

So enough about “balance”. We have to stop treating childhood and adulthood as competing interests. Adopting tools like AI assistants, automated scheduling, and transcription is about learning how to delegate your priorities, not achieve some idealized notion of “balance”. As long as we're getting it done, who cares if we do it at 10am or 10pm?

This type of flexible, human-centered way of working is the future. Companies that support employees in customizing their workflows around things like parenting responsibilities will have an advantage in attracting and keeping talented workers.

In the right hands, the same technology that’s reshaping workplaces can also disrupt the cultural norms that make our caregiving responsibilities a constant professional and political crusade.

Until then, the choice is ours.

Listen to episode 163 now or watch it on YouTube below