25 Years As A Working Mom — Three Things I Would Have Done Differently In The Work And Family Juggle

Our oldest turned 25 recently – yikes, we have a kid old enough to have a quarter-life crisis! That milestone, as well as Mother’s Day just around the corner, put the work and family juggle back on my radar. (Speaking of yikes, our youngest turns 20 in a few months, so soon both kids will be in their 20’s!)

The pandemic has made things particularly challenging for working moms – the Wall Street Journal reports that there are 1.5 million fewer working moms as of February 2021 than this same time last year. However, juggling work and family has always been difficult even pre-pandemic – this Moms Rising post is a good explanation of the “second shift” (i.e., the other work of running a household that often falls disproportionately on moms).

With our youngest away at college and our oldest living on her own, I don’t have nearly the same juggle that I did when we were all living as one household. That said, there will always be issues to resolve – you don’t stop being a parent as your kids age. How much support do you give after college? (See my post on boomerang kids.) How much support do you give for college? (See my post on college v. FIRE.) We recently updated our estate plan, which is looking after our kids in a different way.

I don’t feel the same crush of busyness and sheer overwhelm from when the kids were younger and my career was more than full-time. Now that I’m on a slower schedule, with time for self-care and introspection, I can look back at the work/family juggle with some nostalgia. If hindsight is 20/20, what would I have changed to make my life saner, bolster my career and be a better parent?

1 – I would have bought the “expensive” maternity set

When I was pregnant with our oldest, I was 24 and barely into my very first job at a strategy consulting firm. I loved my job and have only wonderful memories of the company, but consulting is a Type A career — long hours, volatile schedules and a lot of stress. My practice area was investment banking, so attire was the exact opposite of today’s dress casual. I not only needed maternity clothes, but I needed really nice, investment banking-appropriate maternity clothes.

One of the first things I saw, while shopping for my expanding size, was this capsule wardrobe of high-quality maternity clothes, with the price tag to match. I balked at spending that much on clothes that I would use for maybe a year. I ended up expending time and energy I could have directed elsewhere to cobble together various pieces that I never liked as much as the set I passed up. By the time I bought everything else, I couldn’t justify spending yet more money to add that capsule wardrobe I still wanted. So I never bought it, and I never felt as put together as I could have felt. In hindsight, I would absolutely have pampered myself more and realized that the “expensive” cost was really an investment — in my career, in my self-care, in my executive presence.

2 – I would have hired an executive coach

This may seem self-serving since career coaching is what I do today, but one of the reasons I do what I do, and why  I’m so passionate about it, is because I know how valuable it is. I was totally overwhelmed by the work/ family juggle and could have used an expert to support me with strategies and techniques to better manage the overwhelm.

When I coach working moms (and dads) today, we confirm priorities, improve time management and productivity and negotiate for better schedules or compensation or scopes of responsibilities. If I had that level of support in my early career, I don’t know that I would have stayed in that strategy consulting job (ultimately I do love the HR space more than banking) but I would have had a smoother, more enjoyable transition.

3 – I would have made different friends

I still have a lot of my friendships from my 20’s, so I don’t mean I would have ended relationships. Rather, I would have added additional, different friends,. Since I had our first kid at age 24, it was a time when most of my friends weren’t even married, much less having kids. I didn’t have anyone around me in the same life stage, and it was incredibly isolating.

I also didn’t have ready examples of working moms where I could see light at the end of the tunnel or glean a best practice or two. Remember that I was working in investment banking/ management consulting – there weren’t a lot of women around and certainly not working moms. In hindsight, I would have joined professional associations and sought out working moms as mentors. At the very least, I would have read books about working moms and gotten mentored vicariously. (One of my favorite books about a working mom is actually called MothersWork about Rebecca Matthias, the founder of the Mimi Maternity clothing line. Unfortunately, I discovered this book well after my second child was born.)

If you look at the three adjustments I would have made, they are all around getting support

Whether it’s investing in clothes that make you feel good or professional services to bolster your career or simply friends and role models to provide camaraderie, the only advice I would impose on my own daughters is to get as much support as they can if/ when they go through the work/ family juggle. It seems expensive because you’re spending so much on everything else, but it’s definitely an investment, not an expense. Don’t go it alone, whatever you do.

One thing I did get 100% right is not second-guessing my choices

I actually only revisited the above issues for the sake of this blog. I don’t second-guess my choices generally, and this is something that really helped me get through working parenthood.

There is so much pressure on working parents, moms especially, to be a superhero – power job, model family, pristine house. I never bought into that and never felt guilty about doing more take-out than home cooking or sometimes missing family events for work (and vice versa).

My natural philosophy is that I make the best decision based on what I know at the time and what I feel is right at the time, and I accept what comes from that. Did I change my approach and choices from kid 1 to kid 2? I absolutely did for some things, but it still didn’t make me second-guess how I raised either child. I hope my own daughters have inherited that trait and never second-guess their own choices on work, family or both.