Post-Pandemic: What Life Could Look Like For Working Parents
By: Jane Hoffman
Tags: Covid 19, Motherhood, Work Life Balance, Parenting, Family

Post-Pandemic: What Life Could Look Like For Working Parents

Maybe our normal work culture was wrong all along.

Photo by dima_sidelnikov on Canva

It was the beginning of March when the word coronavirus really made its way into my regular vocabulary. Life was already complicated enough and filled with hectic days of bustling the kids to daycare, rushing off to my 8–5, only to close the day much like it started — in a hurry. Yes, hurry back home to begin the evening routine of dinner, baths, and bedtime just to wake up and do it all over again. I felt like I was in a rat race, going through the motions and stressing about everything I was missing. Surely this couldn’t be what “having it all” really feels like, right?

Enter COVID-19. As the disease spread across the United States, I pulled my kids from daycare and started working from home. “I’ll figure this out until it blows over,” I thought to myself. Not long after, it seemed like the whole world shut down. I don’t think anyone expected life to be completely altered for the better part of a year…and counting.

As the weeks turned into months, I realized the coronavirus wasn’t going anywhere. What seemed like a temporary adjustment now seems like a new way of life as we know it. I felt like I was failing at everything and even though that’s a familiar sentiment as a working mother, I was lost for answers. How was I to be present for my children under the same roof, during the same hours when I’m also responsible for excelling at my job?

As a side effect of the pandemic, it seemed like I was part of a social experiment to see if I could survive motherhood, working, and home life all at the same exact time. Most days turned out to be a disaster.

I wondered how long I could go on bouncing between emails, changing diapers, taking phone calls, feeding the kids, conducting meetings, getting outside, making sure I’m available online and so on. It was downright exhausting. I wondered if my kids could feel the stress pouring out of me and if I was doing a good job at physically and mentally protecting them from what the world was going through.

Enter my mini meltdown. During one of my regular weekly check ins with Mark, my boss, I didn’t have the energy to slap on a smile and pretend I was fine. When he inevitably asked me how I was doing, I blurted out overwhelmed, tired, and stressed. I confessed that I felt like I wasn’t putting in enough hours a day towards work but that it left me feeling like a bad mother when I forced a full 8 hours.

What he said to me has forever changed my perception and shed light onto a new path for the working parent: “Stop counting your hours. That’s ridiculous. I pay you to do a job, not to clock hours. If you can figure out how to do your job in two days, good for you.” As his words rang into my ears and sank into my cerebrum, I felt a sense of freedom, like he was letting me out of a cage I couldn’t unlock. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

We live in a culture that ties success to the amount of time you put into working, which automatically puts parents at a disadvantage. In an office environment, there’s a silent pressure to be the first one in, last one out every single day — regardless of workload or job duties. When I was single, it was a tactic I used pretty often to climb the corporate ladder and it worked until I had my first child and realized that daycare charges by the minute for late pickups. I had set a precedence with all of my co-workers, boss and employees that I was available anytime, all the time. Once my kids entered the picture, I found it impossible to maintain and unfortunately, that boss was not as understanding as Mark. It actually led me to leave the workforce for 18 months so that I could focus on just one role — being a mom to my newborn and two-year-old.

I’m not the first woman, and unfortunately I won’t be the last, to struggle with balancing a family and a career. Anne-Marie Slaughter has written and spoken about this topic for years and so much of what she’s said still rings true today. In her famous article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” she says:

The culture of ‘time macho’ — a relentless competition to work harder, stay later, pull more all-nighters, travel around the world and bill the extra hours that the international date line affords you — remains astonishingly prevalent among professionals today.

This article was published in The Atlantic in 2012, but the validity of the statement still has a ton of weight even now. This mindset to “work” more is toxic and truthfully, does not yield the results one might think.

It’s been a few weeks since my epiphany with Mark and a lot has changed. I’ll admit not every day is smooth sailing, especially ones filled with meetings, but I work smarter. When I know I only have an hour to tackle work projects, I buckle down and rip through. It’s made me more productive and less stressed. I also know that when my son or daughter need extra snuggles or are having a rough day, that I can make the time up as I see fit. The flexibility and trust that my employer has given me has been imperative to my sanity, health and family. It’s actually made me a better employee too.

I only wish that everyone was granted the same flexibility, but I know not all jobs, especially collaborative or service-industry ones, can work this way. It’s been refreshing to see a lot of major tech companies announce plans to adopt the work from home model for the foreseeable future; but there is a huge opportunity for all employers to reassess what the workday might look like.

In this new environment, there are too many people who are trying to juggle being a teacher, a parent, and an employee all at the same time. Never have our separate roles in life been so merged before and maybe that’s the mindset we need to force change.

In her Ted Talk titled “Can We All Have It All” Anne Marie Slaughter talks about the necessary steps to have a more balanced life. She says:

And to get there, we have to change our workplaces, our policies and our culture. In the workplace, real equality means valuing family just as much as work and understanding that the two reinforce each other. As a leader and as a manager, I have always acted on the mantra, if family comes first, work does not come second — life comes together.

As we come out of this pandemic, whenever the hell that may be, I hope we can evolve and realize that life doesn’t have to be like it was before. The adoption of giving employees the option to work remote with flexible hours could be a huge advantage particularly for working mothers, who often feel they must choose between family and career. The work will get done and our families will be stronger. It would mean that at least something positive has come from all the awful that’s happened this year. I don’t know about you, but I could use a bright side to all of this.