Rewriting the Script on Stay-at-Home Motherhood

The author of ‘The Power Pause’ discusses stay-at-home motherhood © Fortune/Amanda Schumacher Co

Rewriting the Script on Stay-at-Home Motherhood

When Neha Ruch browsed bookstores, she saw many books about how to succeed at work or raise kids. As the founder of Mother Untitled, a community for women on career breaks, she noticed something was missing: a how-to book that spoke to women at the intersection of family life and ambition.

“There was nothing about how to walk through this unique stage of my life with a sense of financial dignity, confidence, intention, more support, and more tangible ways to grow my network and my creative opportunities on the other side,” Ruch remembered.

Her new book, The Power Pause, argues that stay-athome motherhood should be understood as an “enriching chapter” of life, one that can live side by side with career ambition. Ruch’s book makes that argument and also offers practical tips for moms who are out of the workforce right now—with advice ranging from how to answer the

question “What do you do?” to reminders to call a friend when feeling overwhelmed by life with little kids to guides for getting back into the workforce or handling finances with a working partner.

Ruch’s interest in this topic dates back to when she began her career break as a mom of two. She had worked for startups, including Zola, and suddenly found herself in the middle of an identity shift. When people asked her the question, “What do you do?” she was used to having a ready answer.

“‘I run brand at a startup’ seemed to convey so much. It conveyed leadership capacity, it conveyed creativity, it conveyed being ahead of the curve in technology,” she said. “Then ‘stay-at-home mom’ just felt so flawed.”

She encountered outdated stereotypes associated with being a stay-at-home mother—stereotypes that seemed more fitting to a bygone era than her own experience or the modern women she was meeting. She became determined to create the world's first collective of ambitious women on career pauses—or downshifts—to reshape the narrative around stay-at-home motherhood and give visibility to the gray area within which many women find themselves during a pause from traditional work outside the home. In recent years, she’s seen powerful executives rebrand career breaks another way—as “sabbaticals” with nothing to do with caregiving.

“As soon as you say ‘sabbatical,’ it has a different level of dignity and respect,” she shared. “‘Stay-at-home mother’ is so laden with tropes…We’ve made it seem so ordinary, and we’ve dumbed it down to diapers and laundry, as opposed to recognizing it as an eye-opening, mind-expanding, network-expanding, creative time for parents.”

Mother Untitled amplifies stories of career pauses and downshifts and affirms stay-at-home mothers, sharing the message that taking time out of the workforce can be its own form of ambition.

“Ambition is this determination to do a great many things throughout your life that you care about,” she explained. “That can be elder care, that can be mental health. We want to get to a place where career pauses as a whole are considered an enriching chapter where, while we may have shifted priorities, we are still growing, we are still learning, we are still connecting.”

—Fortune via Reuters Connect