becoming a parent in the first place. You think it’s hard enough when they are little, and then you realise it gets worse when they learn to talk, and they count how many times you are late home, or they ask you not to travel again, because they’ve missed you…Their needs change. You want to work real flexible hours – and you know you can do so successfully – but many bosses say no or willfully fail to understand that 9 to 5 simply doesn’t work (or worse… they make it hard for you to survive in the workplace at all). I do need to say that this lack of understanding is not in my experience gender-specific.
at school, or on a sports ground, and you will share the highs, and sometimes the lows, of watching them grow up together.
You acquire new skills on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. You become more resilient (even if you might not realise or feel that at the time). A bit of reality check at this point - going back is hard initially, and for some, it will actually feel worse than you’d pictured in your head, especially when you realise that when you get home after a full day’s work, you can’t just stop and relax! This is when many mums give up on working, as work is often not as flexible as advertised on paper, and “Mother’s Guilt” soon kicks in, and it’s harsh. You know you could do more to finish that last bit of the important presentation, but you want to rush back to your kids, as it’s nearly bed-time. You’re acutely aware that they’re growing, and changing every day, and you’re not there to experience it fully, so you question what the point was of 28
Education Choices Magazine | Winter 2021
The default option is to stay at home, so you can focus 100% on the kids, to ease that sense of guilt that comes from having work competing for your attention. But, whilst this deals with the problem short term, that’s not good for you if you want work, and it’s not good for the kids either, as they will lack the independence that having time away from Mum builds, and most importantly, the notion that mums can work (if they choose and want to), will be alien to them as adults. It’s a real Catch-22. Barbara, when are you going to join the dots between the podcast and being a mum? …I can hear you asking… The podcast has 3 messages which resonated with me (I clearly wasn’t running fast enough!):
1 Leadership is like taking care of someone else’s kid – what you learn at home is not deskilling, but true up-skilling, and there are many applications for these skills in the work place.
2 We – as parents – need to teach our kids the emotional side of life, they don’t always get taught at school nor at work.