Balancing Motherhood With Career – 8 Tips For Working Moms

PuneNow, July 13, 2023: Balancing motherhood with career has never been easy and many women across cultures compromise with their careers due to obligations towards their family and children.

It all starts very well in the beginning with a romantic relationship but the moment the partners decide to have children, the onus comes on the woman to sacrifice her career to first give birth and then to be available during the child(ren)’s upbringing. All this while, the man obviously assumes the role of the breadwinner, which is also critical, and things are more or less smooth with each of the partners contributing to their fullest.

The real trouble starts when the children grow up and start getting independent. They get busy with college, friends, and other activities. The partner is still busy with his career. The only person who is left without anything to do and starts to feel left out is YOU. You were highly qualified and equally successful in a career, that you gave up so willingly, for your family and now no one needs you, literally. Not that your family members love you any less or anything, but now with all the time on hand, you somewhere start searching for your identity beyond the family, which you yourself gave up some 15 years back.

This starts taking a toll on you and you frantically start searching for some engagement to keep you busy, pay you enough for your pocket expenses, and do justice to your abilities. That is not easy. At this age, after a gap of nearly a decade and a half, all that you get are some petty assignments you are not willing to take up. You try your hand at entrepreneurship and if you are lucky your venture kicks off but in most cases, due to a lack of market orientation for the past 15 years or so, the entrepreneurial venture ends being a short lived flick. Millions of women face this midlife crises and often slip into depression due to a sudden melancholic routine of life.

However this is not the right approach women should take. They should never give up their careers completely to make themselves available for their maternal duties. I am not disputing the importance of a mother in raising children, if fact, no one can take a mother’s place there, all I am saying is that with some minor adjustments and a little understanding from your partner, it is easy to save the best of both worlds. You can very well cherish the pleasures of motherhood and keep your career alive as well!!

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Here are the 8 simple adjustments that will help you to strike a balance between your career and motherhood, so that both of them remain a source of extreme satisfaction and self esteem to you.

1. Divide Responsibilities – When you are expecting your child, engage in conversations with your partner and express your desire to continue working even after the arrival of the child. Make it gradual, if your partner is not comfortable initially. Dividing additional responsibilities after the arrival of the child is the easiest way to start. Depending upon the requirements of either of your jobs, you can work out some sort of an arrangement.

2. Job Role Shift – In anticipation of your child, start exploring the possibilities of shifting to a job role that is less demanding, while still keeping your job. This might slow you down a bit in your career but it is better than a no career and you can always build it back once you are fully available. Start this, much ahead of your child’s arrival, so that your organization has enough time to figure out alternative roles for you.

3. Adjust Timings With Partner – The two of you can reschedule your job timings in such a way that you work different timings as far as possible so that at least one of you is with the child at any point of time. Ensure minimum overlap of the office timings between the two of you.

4. Explore Work From Home – If there are possibilities, explore work from home options for a few years till your child is ready to go to school.

5. Use Daycare – Daycare centers have evolved a lot in the past decade and they take good care of children. They are pretty safe and hygienic as well. Use the services of a daycare if none of the above options work out.

6. Use Domestic Help – Enhance the usage of domestic help to assist you with daily chores as much as possible. You are continuing to earn and can easily afford the additional cost of domestic help! This will make things look more manageable.

7. Automate Household Chores – Try and automate household chores as far as possible. A dishwasher is a good option to start with. Other devices like robotic vacuum cleaner, baby monitor etc. can come in handy.

8. Build Freelancing Portfolio – If your circumstances are such that you will not be able to continue working after childbirth, start looking at freelancing options in your area of expertise and build a network before you say goodbye to the corporate world. Your network will be fresh and active at that time. Trying to do the same after a gap of a few years will be an uphill task, sometimes impossible, because the world would have move on. Build your freelancing business before you become too busy with the rigmaroles of starting a family so that all you will need to is to just maintain it when you are in the thick of your maternal responsibilities. Once you are done, you can always scale it up which is much easier as compared to starting something totally new.

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It is easier said than done though and I am absolutely certain that not all the points listed above are possible for everyone. Every woman’s situation will be highly subjective and contextual, but even if some of the points listed above seem possible, go ahead and implement them and save your career while you soak in the subtle pleasures of motherhood.

One thing though, none of the suggestions mentioned above can be executed in a haste. You will require to start planning for the transition well in advance, lets say around the same time you started planning your family. That way, you and the people around you, will have sufficient time to create a smooth transition.

Finally, a piece of advice. Don’t give up on your career due to the arrival of the child(ren) as far as possible, because it is something for which you studied almost 20 years of your life and your parents invested huge sums of time and money. Your career is the reflection of your & your parents’ hard work & commitment and it gives you self esteem. What are you going to do when you are done with your maternal duties and the partner is still busy with his career? Your occupation will come in handy at that time.

“There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” —Jill Churchill