When i run workshops on careers and children, or just talk to people socially about the work, I get asked what I learned and what we’ve changed in our house in response to this research.
Q. Why are parents with careers finding it so hard?
A. Essentially it is all the issues covered in the stories here. The mismatch between how our workplaces are set up, our separation from other groups in society and many long-standing social expectations of gender roles – plus the judgement and guilt that goes with that. The mismatch between the working day and the school day, which is getting worse and worse for those who engage with work online and on their phones in the evening. The mental ticker-tape-of-mum, which adds stress throughout the day and night. And the financial pressures everyone is under due to rising house prices.
There is one other thing that I’ve touched on but not dug through, which is the ‘masculine’ work culture of many organisations. Be that in terms of abrasive interactions, success being judged on visibility and assumptions that everyone has a partner at home to pick up the slack. It’s these cultures that perhaps go some way to explaining why senior women are, on average, more stressed than senior men.
Q. But some professional mums are thriving, right? I mean I know a woman with four kids who works 60 hours per week and she loves it…
A. Yes. If someone is driven, determined and well supported – I often find that women with strong working role models (e.g. their own mother) do better – you can have kids and career and thrive. But it won’t be smooth all the way and there is still stuff that you can do to improve that experience. I heard a FTSE CEO at a conference saying she had no life aside from home (by which she meant only her partner, kids and pets) and work and I felt quite sad for her: for me lacking friends and any sort of social life isn’t a great way to live. But this is my personal take, she seemed very happy with her situation and, if people are thriving, then good on them.
Q. Who are the happiest working parents?
A. Those who have the right foundations: families who have enough money to survive and get along and support each other and have good support networks. Having local family really helps. Having local friends is, as I say too often, critical.
Beyond that, two big types do well. One: those who psychologically adapt, embracing the new role of parenting, thinking hard about how to enjoy and have a great relationship with their children. This includes being able to continually change to meet the needs of family life. Two: those who make active choices at each point about the practical stuff. They don’t accept the way that work/school or housing is, they make choices about it with the whole family’s welfare in mind. Especially on childcare: one mum said that before she had kids she thought that childcare was something you sorted once and it worked, but she has had to adjust to the idea that childcare is an ongoing problem to sort. Adapting to manage working hours very well is also key.
If employed, this means putting boundaries around your availability. There are lots of ways to do this: from three- or four-day weeks to working at home some or all of the time, to doing two long days and two short days, working school hours, job shares and so on. This also includes managing your email and social media usage. Turning phones off after certain hours and at weekends, being clear in your decisions. It also includes a holiday-contact policy whereby you decide how and how often you will – or will not – engage with work while you are away.
But shortening the working week isn’t a panacea. You have to be sure it’s what you want and make it work for you.
The four-day week is a particularly risky area. Many, many women complain that they take a 20 per cent pay hit and get put into a ‘mummy track career path’ but are still expected to be available and do a full week. This – understandably – breeds deep resentment. This escalates if it upsets your benefits; some get downgraded pension plans. One lawyer said:
‘Over the years, I’ve also seen that most people who do a four-day week are essentially doing a five-day week for 80 per cent of the pay. Even worse, I remember a lawyer who did a four-day week but one year, in absolute terms, was the highest billing lawyer (so had done about 2,000 hours plus); however when it came to her bonus, they then only gave her a 80 per cent bonus. No thanks, not for me – because I know I’d be the muggins who’d be working a full week for part-time pay. Similarly with a three-day week, it is too part time and if you take it, I think you are really considered as someone who has checked out of career/ambition.’
A CEO said he’s up for pretty much any option other than a four-day week because it always seems to end in bitterness and the woman leaving.
Those who do make it work are the most disciplined about it: the ones who refuse to be drawn into emails on their at-home day and use the time well. For the very ambitious, it may not (always) be the best way to go. Some have found that working a full week but being based at home for one or two days of it works better. They get to stay connected but also fully paid.
Another mum who stepped out of well-paid and high-status career job put it like this:
‘Whether it is old age, wanting to spend more time with my family/husband/have a life, I’ve decided I would prefer to have flexibility and time, rather than a big job. I am not sure it’s worth it – the demands on one personally are too taxing and when I look back to the company I left after 14 years last summer, I just can’t think of too many genuinely happy leaders. Those that do seem to enjoy it often have a stay-at-home partner – by which I mean a wife. I’ve taken a role that pays a quarter of my previous salary but allows me to have a life at home and, although it may not last forever, I think this is the right way for me. But I appreciate that, because my husband has a decent job, I have more flexibility than most.’
The other approach – which is what I have done – is to become a freelancer and/or run your own business. After leaving agency life, I looked at lots of jobs. Finding nothing that suited, I realised that I had to start afresh. Jericho is a communication and leadership consultancy in London that brings together experienced consultants to work on projects that we believe are in the interest of the wider good of society. Part of what works is that we have an entirely flexible working arrangement with no fixed hours or holiday allocations. We get paid for what we work on. It allows everyone to work flexibly whatever their interests. For me, it allows me to speak and write and to work a short office day with a lot of time around home to engage with our family, as well as time to exercise in the week.
But again, this decision is not a cure-all. In fact, quite the opposite as some research suggests freelancers and small-business owners can end up so stressed about earning enough and meeting client needs that they work longer and less social hours than anyone else. There is no ‘minimum wage’ protection for the self-employed. Turning down an assignment the week you planned to be off for half-term won’t suit if you just need the money to get by. Another downside is that tax becomes more complicated and, if you are as useless as me, you spend a fortune on other people to help you sort it all out.
My husband Chris has also gone the self-employed route and runs a travel business called www.villas4kids.com. As the name suggests, it provides holiday villas for families with kids. The advantage is that, like me, he can work from wherever he is and he has spent the last eight years primarily based at home being a very hands-on dad to our three girls. This has made what I have done possible. The disadvantage is that he has to engage with it every single day, come holiday or birthday or weekend away.
The truth is that happy parents have taken and stuck to clear-headed decisions about how they want to live. They’ve accepted compromises (money, promotions, status, new kitchens) and got on with it. There aren’t perfect solutions. The key is to be clear about what you are seeking to achieve and figure out how to get there. Yep, easier said than done.
Q. Who are the least happy?
A. Putting aside individual challenges (failing relationships, poverty, family problems, unwell children and so on) those working in large companies, often law firms or consultancies, that bill by hours and appraise people largely on their ability to network and bring in business are often stressed. Very often this packs a triple punch of long in-office hours, an always-on mindset and long ‘non-office’ hours at networking drinks, breakfasts and dinners. It is very hard for parents who want to be engaged at home to thrive in these circumstances unless they are unbelievably driven and/or unbelievably disciplined.
I observe that the women who do continue to do well in these environments are those like American TV supremo Shonda Rhimes (check out her brilliant TED Talk), before she learned to switch off and play, who still get their buzz – she calls it ‘the hum’ – from work. Those who find home life boring compared to work. Who find it easier to connect to their colleagues than their kids. Who pride themselves on being above the fray of their daily lives. If well supported by a partner and/or other supporters (grandparents, nannies, au pairs, etc) this can work well for years and some never regret it. But others do. Especially if their kids get into trouble in their late teens and early 20s. One said to me recently, ‘My 19-year-old son was so shockingly selfish at the weekend that I shouted at him. I was disgusted. I thought “how could I have brought up a child that is so selfish?” and then realised that I haven’t really brought him up. I’ve been at work.’
In terms of outcomes, some kids will grow up with parents who work like this and be totally fine and tell you that they were inspired by their parents’ work ethic and success. Others say it damaged them and they needed more support. Some will say that they will never live like their parents and are planning careers that will enable them to be at home for their kids. Others tell you they want to be a lawyer just like their mum. At some point, many of us will go through the adjustment that Shonda talks about. When our energy moves from being driven by work to being driven by life beyond work. The question – for men and for women – is if and when we allow space for that.
The thing I hold on to is that if you’re are exhausted, depressed, alienated from your kids and/or partner, restless at night, drinking to self-medicate or otherwise emotionally and physically depleted by the demands of work, you need to think about making changes. And, however impossible those changes may seem, not doing them will have long-term detrimental consequences for your health, your relationship, your kids and, ultimately, your career. A woman told me yesterday that she had an email from a Chinese colleague that said ‘Of course there are always problems but there are always more solutions than there are problems’. I can’t tell you if that’s true but I can tell you that a lot of working parents are absolutely certain that it is ‘impossible’ to do anything about the way they work right up until the moment when they do make changes. It’s a shame that the trigger for this is often something negative – unwell children or parents, a health problem or other major life event – and that only afterwards do they realise it was their own psychological barriers holding them back.
Q. What parental work/home time split works best if the mother has a career?
A. The truest answer is the one that works for the people in your house: if one parent has a burning drive to be the CEO then a three-day week will never be any good to them. If both parents are highly status-conscious, striving for the best house, car and schools, then part time won’t work for anyone. But if forced to make broad generalisations, I would tend to rank them like this. Albeit with a thousand caveats about couples that don’t sit within this norm:
1) A reasonable parental balance is a very good option: both parents, say, working a curtailed week or mixing up their hours to cover when the kids are at home. The benefit of this system is an overlap of life experience and perspective. Both parents get to be engaged with their kids and tend not to idealise or demonise either work or being at home. One risk to watch for here is that the work is split like this but one partner (usually the mother) does the vast majority of the housework or admin. This can create a running parental fault line. Another risk is that the budgets are so constrained – perhaps by the cost of childcare – that the parents never get to spend time alone together and the relationship suffers.
2) Next up, the alpha/beta model with the mum with the big job and dad largely based at home. If both sides are happy and have realistic expectations, this can work very well as long as chores are felt to be equitably split as well. It comes with some social judgement that everyone has to manage, and requires awareness that our systems were not set up to work this way. But if you can keep mutual respect for what the other contributes and the mother is able to have local relationships as well as working this can be a great course of action.
3) The hardest option, as I see it, is the alpha/alpha option where both parents have big jobs. This can have the advantage of having resources to pay for support and usually is quite a high-status household (the most likely to have the kids in private school, for example). But it is also the most stressful and one where parents can become disconnected from each other and family life and the kids can fall through the cracks. It may work for short bursts but, for the long term, this is a hard way to run life as the day-to-day stuff (cooking, dry-cleaning, dentists, haircuts, fun) can all get lost in the mist of work as whole weekends are given over to sorting out the detritus of the week.
One additional thought – and this is depressing and you’ll hate me for it – is that the traditional dad breadwinner/mum largely at home or with ‘less important’ job still often seems the easiest to manage if it suits you and your partner. Kids and schools get it, it fits with how our world is currently set up and households often run smoothly according to precedents set generations before. Bloody irritating, eh? It doesn’t work at all though if the mum is like a caged lion at home raging to get out and get back to work, or if the dad resents being out working while his partner ‘luxuriates’ at home.
I don’t put solo parents into this list because their welfare seems to be so dependent on their own sense of well-being, their networks and their incomes. A well-supported solo parent with a solid income could easily be at the top of the list. A hard-up and lonely one could be at the bottom. Similarly, same-sex couples with clarity of who they are and how they parent could come at any point in the list, while a same-sex couple fighting over how they parent and feeling socially excluded would be in a bad place.
Q. What are the biggest mistakes people share with you?
A. The first is to assume that what worked yesterday will work today and tomorrow. For every career parent who has a baby and flies back to work full of vigour there is a parent, two or three years in, just wishing they could have a bit of time at home. Getting stuck in any fixed sense of who we are and what works is a common mistake. Much as we shape our children, I am more and more convinced that they change us just as much. The saddest parents are perhaps those who do not allow this process to happen because they are so busy working. The happiest are those who adjust as they go, responding to a mix of their own needs and their kids’ needs.
The second mistake, which is linked to that, is creating a cost base that demands both parents to work full time. As time goes on, either parent may want to upshift or downshift and having a life that enables that is key to being happy. All the boring stuff about not being too good a consumer and saving money is, I increasingly think, absolutely essential. Not just for us to know. But for us to pass on to our children.
Asking parents what they felt pressure to spend on and then regretted unleashes a long list of stuff you can cut back on: new musical instruments the kids quickly give up (rent them, get second-hand ones, even borrow); electronic toys that are noisy and annoying and take up loads of space (electronic sit-on cars are top of the list); brand-new school uniforms (the second-hand stuff at school will easily cover most needs); highly branded days out/trips (queuing all the hours of daylight with bored and hungry kids when you could have gone camping for a week on the same budget); new kids clothes generally (let people know you love second-hand stuff and thank them generously, even though you know they are just as delighted to clear stuff out); new bikes/scooters/skateboards/playhouses/bunk beds (all stuff that, with a bit of planning, is easily found second hand and it therefore less of worry when they break or lose and/or lose interest); and even kids’ books, which are so easily found at charity shops (I assume that, as an author, I will be shot for this advice). All of this does require a ‘not keeping up with the Joneses’ mindset. Something I’ve had to learn a lot about from my much more down-to-earth husband.
What I notice is that since we chose to buy a crap car, rejected ever considering private schools and stopped spending anything more than we earned, we feel happier and other people ask us how we have time to spend together and with the children (let’s not kid ourselves though, I still want a new kitchen). One additional thought on financial planning is that my mind was very much put at rest by creating a long-term financial plan whereby we looked at our incomes and ran the numbers through to a (rather aged) retirement. Although it doesn’t change what you earn, it can make it feel more in control.
The third mistake is to allow no time for yourself or your partner. If between work and home you never have time for a workout or a film or lunch with a friend, then you’ll be miserable and burn out. The boring old aeroplane advice to put your own mask on before helping others is surely as true here as anywhere. If we’re at breaking point, we’re shit parents: distracted, petulant and exhausted. And we know what kids are like when they are in that state – we shouldn’t be matching them in our own lack of control. Part of the job of parenting is to take care of ourselves – mentally and physically – as well as our children: whether that is as small as making sure you have a run with the buggy around a park or doing some lengths when you take them to a swimming lesson, or booking a weekly evening class after dinner. It also includes adjusting your expectations of what socialising looks like when you have kids: adding parental drinks to the pick-up time of a kids’ party or having friends over for kids’ tea at 6pm and adult dinner at 7.30pm, and knowing everyone will be on their way by 9pm. So many people I’ve talked to have emphasised the damage that not making time for your partnership and friends can do and it is surely worth putting thought and effort into your relationship.
Q. Are there particular moments when things go wrong?
A. Emotionally, the points when we change our identity and reference points are always difficult.
The first child is, inevitably, the biggest gear change. It can really take time to catch up with how much has altered. There is a lot here about identity and the sense of (not) being in control. I see some parents trying to live life as it was before their baby: eating out, staying in hotels for weekends (the evenings of which end up being spent with one or other parent hunkered down in the en suite while the baby sleeps in its cot in the darkened bedroom and their partner drinks alone at the bar), drinking, partying, working long hours. I relate to them. That first year of staying home can feel an endless prison if you’re used to being out and doing things all the time. Not having ‘proper’ weekends when you can do what you want and relax is miserable until you stop noticing. This period may also change the way you feel about things: a number of mums have reported that, after kids, they became afraid of flying in a way they never had before. Others have said they feel their personalities have evolved: they are kinder or more compassionate than before. These changes can feel disconcerting and need adjusting to.
The second child can also be very difficult. Partly people describe the transition from being wholly focused on their first child to transitioning their emotional energy to the second. Some describe going from being adoring of child one to irritated with him or her if they in any way threaten the well-being of the new baby. Many see then a big shift in family life: from parents dedicated to raising a child to a whole-home mentality. It can also be a moment when people who thought they were doing pretty well as parents question their skills as what works for one child often doesn’t work for the next. My observation is that riding one horse, metaphorically, is a very different prospect to riding two. Strangely, once you’re used to two, transitioning to ride three and four horses often doesn’t seem quite the same dramatic leap, unless you have additional complications (special needs, illness, disability, etc). That said, a few women have told me that their third or fourth was the thing that broke them!
The other increased difficulty with the second child, especially if they are close in age, is the huge financial pressure of childcare between birth and the school years. Pretty much everyone finds this period oppressively expensive unless they have extensive family help. It can help to remember that this is a uniquely expensive few years and it does end. If in that time you’re saving nothing, not paying into your pension or settling debts, perhaps give yourself a break. It will get better.
The other big change is when kids leave home. Although many working mums seem to reassure themselves that at-home mothers get it worse, I’m not convinced this is always true. One told me she felt depressed and purposeless for two years, unsure what she was for without her children at home. This was despite, or perhaps fuelled by, a very successful and enormously time-consuming career. Talking to her, she seemed to have nostalgia for her children being young and at home. Based on her own description of her working life, I almost wondered whether that time had ever existed. Sarah Jaggers, MD of Managing Change, agrees this is a risky moment:
‘Another stress point we observe is the phase when people combine older children, perhaps teens, perhaps flying the nest, with ageing parents. That can lead to questions of identity and “what did I achieve?”. We see that as an opportunity to think about what’s possible now and what comes next. It’s really important not to suppress your own needs in this situation because it can build into resentment: your children are heading off into their futures while you feel you have missed out on your own opportunities as you’ve been caring for everyone else.’ A woman who has recently become a grandmother says that she and many of her friends are relishing another chance to enjoy small children because they feel they missed it themselves the first time around.
Q. When you talk to people, what flags worry you?
A. References to disturbed sleep and extreme tiredness, people who mention crying frequently, people who have aches and pains or recurring illness and people who talk a lot about drinking. Plus tension in relationships – how they describe their partner, kids and co-workers. Ongoing financial pressure is a big flag also – people who feel their lives would utterly collapse if they lost their jobs or didn’t get their bonus or pay rise.
Unsurprisingly, feeling you have to lie or conceal the truth is often also a worrying sign. Those people doing different hours than they agreed with their boss but trying to hide it – like working from home but actually picking up the kids at 3pm and pretending they are still working or pretending they have meetings when they need to leave early – often seem to cause themselves a huge amount of angst.
Q. What reassures you they are OK?
A. When they tell me positive, happy things about their kids or family life. Not status show-off things but things they do and enjoy, funny things that they say, bits of art or photos that make them laugh. Ideally involving their partners if they have them. When they talk about work positively but also show they have a life at home and interests outside of both work and home. Ideally including some exercise and the kind of complexion that people who eat decently, sleep and move about regularly tend to have.
Q. What should employers do?
A. Let’s start by acknowledging that the current system is bleeding critical talent in the form of accomplished women. That, at the very time when we need better thinking and more diverse perspectives to get there, we are still favouring men called John over half of the population. What we need is a seismic culture change along the lines of #metoo where we come to collectively realise that having senior women in work isn’t a nice-to-have luxury, it’s a massive economic opportunity and one we cannot afford to ignore because it is, as the head of diversity at a City firm once explained to me: ‘a boring subject for Guardian-reading-liberals that will never interest the men in their 50s and 60s who run this place.’ It’s not, he clarified, that they are anti-women as such, ‘they’re just not very interested in the subject at all.’ Although the move to publicising pay gaps does seem to have done a good job of increasing senior interest in the subject. Whether this is motivated by a desire for better PR of HR remains to be seen, perhaps it doesn’t matter as long as it gets addressed.
In practical terms, managing hours is critical. Karen Mattison, joint CEO of Timewise Jobs, a recruitment organisation that specialises in part-time and flexible work explains:
‘Our research shows that this assumption that it’s just mums who want fewer hours is wrong: men, Gen X, Gen Y and women – a lot of people want to work less. Over 8 million people in the UK work part time and, of those, 80 per cent choose to. They are not “underemployed”, they choose having more time over earning more money. Furthermore, one in four of those working full time now say they would actually prefer to work part time, and wouldn’t mind earning less, as long as it didn’t affect their career progression.
‘Our view is that we have to move beyond the request/response approach to part time and flexibility [by which she means that you have to ask for flexible work and then your employer decides if it’s possible for not] – and make flexibility part of our working culture. That is the only way we will move beyond the career progression gap we currently see for many who do work flexibly. The good news is that the evidence shows that companies that embrace flexible working do better.’
She sees two ways this move might happen:
‘The first is to say that, although the working day was designed for an era in which men worked and women ran the home, mothers are welcome at work. This is conveyed through, for example, returner programmes after maternity leave and supportive women’s networks. For me, this is limited as it keeps the workplace as it is and simply asks women to fit into it.
‘The second is a structural change to how we work, that recognises that flexibility is as important as salary. Because those that can’t progress through flexible working will leave and take their talent elsewhere. This is why we see the arrival of what we call “disruptor models” (organisations that compete with existing firms on different terms) emerging in so many fields – in law, with those creating flexible and short-term working models, in advertising, in communications, like what you have done with your consultancy. These are models that enable professionals to work at senior levels on their own terms.’
Karen would like to see a move away from fixed patterns of hours, fixed locations and also to mix up networking times so that more people can be included. When I co-founded a women’s social group, we set the meeting time as between 4.30 and 6pm rather than later so that everyone can attend and then get home at a reasonable time – or go out and do something else if they prefer. It works really well as people can add it to their diary as part of their working day.
The key is to release the sense that you have to be ‘brave’ to ask for flexibility because we know women are less keen to come forwards, seeing a choice between being ambitious and the ‘mummy track’.
Karen again: ‘We need to change that. Critical to changing it is workplace culture: leadership, trust and judging people on their outputs not their hours in a specific place. I see the journey of normalising flexibility in the workplace as something like the journey of a bad back. We could carry on with business as usual and eventually things will improve. Or we can take action and accelerate the process. That is what smart businesses are doing and the rewards to them in terms of employee engagement, talent attraction and improved brand are well deserved.’
The point is, we need equality of working hours at a more manageable, flexible level that means both adults in a relationship can work and have a life and not lose out professionally.
Part of driving this change is to ensure more people in the system understand how badly modern working practices sit with family life. To that end, it was fascinating to interview a newly solo dad recently and hear his huge frustration that being out of touch from the office between 5pm until 7pm every week day is profoundly damaging his career. This is clearly something he knew intellectually before, but when it had just affected the women around him he’d never really given it any thought. Now confronted with it, you can feel his sense of injustice being triggered. Which is why we need more men, doing more childcare, experiencing how this works so we can move this on from ‘a women’s problem’ to something much bigger.
Q. What is your biggest personal takeaway?
A. That my energy is finite and that I have to choose where to invest it. Collapsing through the door after a long and manic day, depleted of spirit, beyond coherent speech, and yet tripping on adrenaline leaves nothing for my kids or my husband, let alone my own peace of mind. I notice that on the days when I work to match our school day, doing both school runs plus an intense six or seven hours in the office, I find I am productive and get home still alert with good energy. This is partly enabled by us having a longer-than-average school day: founder and executive principal of Canary Wharf College (the state school our kids go to) Sarah Counter was inspired to set the hours from 8.30am to 4–5pm with extended day activities – to help working parents. Due to government budgets this does mean longer holidays but, on balance, we find it works well. Days when I charge out at 7am to get to a breakfast meeting and drag back in after dark leave me drained for days in a way they didn’t do before I had kids.
Being careful with my energy comes back to the old boring maxims. Setting boundaries around my time. Choosing where I invest time and energy. Eating well. Sleeping well. Exercising. Seeing friends and laughing a lot. Seeking out the kind of days that you can realistically emerge from with enough vitality that you’re happy to see your children and have emotional capacity for their triumphs and tragedies. And, after that, you can sit and chat with your partner rather than just bitch off every single thing that happened since you raced out of the door.
Q. But did you join the PTA?
A. Oh Lord, I did. I told our Chair right up front that with three kids and two jobs (consultancy and writing) there was only so much I could do and I was never baking a cake. Yet I still found myself on various Friday nights ineptly sloshing Prosecco, Fawlty Towers style, at school bar nights and being royally taken the piss out of for my incompetence.
At the point of giving up, the Chair (who, to be fair, said she never wanted me for my cakes in the first place) asked me to join a new committee to help get the school more involved in the local community and explore ways in which we might be able to supplement our government funding. Our school is near London’s Docks, which are often covered in floating plastic rubbish. I’d seen a video from Plastic Whale in Amsterdam where they took people on boats in the canals with nets to literally fish plastic out of the water and used the plastic to make boats for more plastic fishing. I suggested we brought the idea to the UK.
A year later, working with environmental NGO Hubbub, the world’s first boat made out of 99% recycled plastic has been built, launched by a government minister, the kids have been to Parliament to talk about the project, and plastic fishing is a regular school event and a fund raiser. However, although I’d love to tell you that the project has been plain sailing and a total pleasure, honestly, it’s been time-consuming, exhausting, frustrating, exhilarating, and cold, filthy and wet, often all at the same time. A year later, though, it’s one of the things of which I am most proud in my life. On the back of it, I would encourage anyone so inclined to find something they can contribute to their school or community. But, I’ve got to tell you, honing some fine bar skills would be a feck of a lot of an easier way to meet a bunch of parents who make you rock with laughter.