Career vs. motherhood - who will win?

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In this week's episode of the podcast, I'm tackling the real, unfiltered challenges that ambitious working moms face at the crossroads of career and family. 

I share surprising stats and heartfelt client stories that might feel all too familiar, plus practical, real-life strategies you can actually use to manage both worlds.  

From navigating the “mom identity crisis” to building confidence and staying on track with your goals, this episode has everything you need to feel empowered and clear on your path forward. Trust me, you won’t want to miss it!  

Topics in this episode:

  • Why motherhood can feel like a career crossroads. 

  • Real stories from moms navigating the balancing act. 

  • The “motherhood identity crisis” and how to find your true north. 

  • Powerful daily exercises to build resilience and confidence. 

  • The importance of strategic support to reach career goals while prioritizing family.  

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Hey, working moms. Today we're talking about the intersection of motherhood and career advancement. We have more data today than ever before on the impact of motherhood on women's careers. But deciphering all of that data and research is challenging. 

And so, I'm going to share with you a lot of statistics today to help you better understand why career advancement is so challenging for us as moms. I will end the episode with three ways to help you make the intersection of motherhood and career advancement easier. I can't wait to dive into this. Friends, you ready? Let's get to it.

Stories of Real Working Moms: Jessica’s Career Struggles

All right, working moms, we're gonna start this episode out with a few stories. I want to tell you about my client, Jessica. She had been in her job and her company for about 10 years when she got pregnant with her first. And after maternity leave, she returned to work and continued to be loyal to her company until her second came along. Balancing life just became a bit more challenging for her with each child. She ended up having a third. 

And then she told her company that she was quitting. Right. She just couldn't manage her workload anymore, along with the household and three young children. It was just too much for her, and thankfully the company loved her and negotiated a part-time role. She was able to remain at the company until all of the kids were a little bit older, at which point she bumped up her hours, but she remained part-time. 

And now she's starting to have these conversations with herself about what she really wants to do with her career, kind of in the latter half of life here. But it's harder than it was before. She's thinking about making a large career pivot, but it almost feels too late to do that. Right. Her key skill development years and opportunities for advancement were back when she was having kids. Right. It's almost as if she's past the prime, the prime time in her career where she would really make big advancements.

Emily’s Shift to Entrepreneurship for Flexibility

Then there's my client, Emily. After she had one kid and returned from maternity leave, she found herself just in an inflexible culture. There was too much demand on her time. She just wasn't wanting to give to them what they wanted back from her anymore. 

And so she told her company that she was leaving. Of course, they made a counteroffer because they thought she was absolutely invaluable and wanted her to stay. But she refused, and she went off to ultimately start her own company that would afford her more time, more flexibility, and an opportunity to have more kids with a bit more ease in her schedule. 

Now, at this point, she wouldn't trade her business for the world. She absolutely loves it. It was sort of a secret dream of hers. And yet the company and the workforce lost a highly trained and talented employee at a very crucial point in her career due to the demands of motherhood.

Jamie’s Struggle with a Male-Dominated Workplace

Let me share another one with you. My client, Jamie, had really high goals for herself, wanting to work her way up in her company that was mostly run by white old men who had wives that stayed at home when their kids were young. 

The microaggressions, the inherent bias, the unreasonable work hours, expectations on her just left her in this constant state of exhaustion and questioning if she really wanted to remain, if she really wanted to stay there. And the idea of sort of being a stay-at-home mom and taking a leave of absence from work became very, very appealing to her as she was on the verge of burnout seemingly all of the time. 

She is in the most pivotal moment in her career. But the good old boys club and the work as many hours as possible and the schmooze-your-way-up-to-the-top culture just doesn't align with the life and the values that she's identified for herself.

My Story: Leaving Corporate to Create Flexibility

Then there's my story. Now, I left corporate world because it felt like the direction I took in my career, no matter what I did, wasn't going to allow me to have the motherhood experience that I wanted. 

And so I went out on my own to create the flexibility and the meaningful work life that I had been longing for. And since then, I've actually learned that 40% of all businesses are in fact owned and operated by women. Most of them, like 90% of them, are just solo businesses, just like my own, where you are a contractor or you're the only employee, if you will, in your business, right? It's, it's a route that many, many women take.

Now, I wanted to start by sharing these stories because I want you—I hope that you can pick one and sort of relate to the situation. Right? 

This podcast community is made up of mostly women that truly want to work and remain dedicated to their career progression, while at the same time feeling like their family is not getting the short end of the stick. Right?

In essence, this community is all about living priority first, where you and your family are at the top of the priority list, but not at the sacrifice of your career. That is what I want for you, and it's ultimately why I started this podcast.

Career Opportunities Aligning with Motherhood

But there's something that I find absolutely fascinating when I think about the struggles that we all face as working moms. And it's this: advancement in our careers, like ramp-up, the opportunities really, really begin to present themselves at a high level, and recognition begins to happen in a significant way at the exact same time we start having kids. Right? 

Think about that. No wonder there are so many challenges that we face at the intersection of career and motherhood. And that was what I wanted to give you in my examples—several different stories of how that intersection of career advancement and motherhood sort of changes the course or creates a lot of conflict for us as we move forward as moms.

Statistics on Working Moms Leaving the Workforce

Right. So today I'm going to share with you a lot of statistics. I'm going to link my sources to that in the show notes so you can see the kind of studies that I'm reading on this. 

There's really three that I'm leaning into that I'm going to be quoting. One was, is compiled by McKinsey. That's a very well-respected company that researches and surveys and compiles, you know, all sorts of results like this. 

Another one was done by LinkedIn. And I know, you are probably mostly all active members on LinkedIn. That's definitely one of your communities. And then one of my favorite organizations that I follow right now, Parently, they came out with a data-driven report on parental leave. And I'm going to be using some statistics from that too.

So we're going to talk a lot from a statistical standpoint about the challenges that happen at the intersection of motherhood and advancing our careers. 

But I'm also, at the end of this episode, I'm going to give you a couple of different ways to take back some control over this intersection, if you will, to kind of lessen the impact that advancing our careers and motherhood has on us. Because as a coach, I never want you to just sit in the problem. Right. I want to offer you a way forward.

So we're going to talk though a lot about the challenges that women face as they advance their careers in motherhood. But we're also going to talk about what you can do about it at the end of this.

73% of Women Considering Quitting

Okay, so I want to start with one statistic that is probably one that I'm all over all, like all the time these days. It's such a big one for me. It's a hot, it's like a hot topic for me in my mind. Okay, here it is. It's one in three women leave their job within 18 months of having their first child. 

Now, the majority of those women are leaving to find another job, another company, probably a company that is more flexible, has a bit more family-friendly culture. And, and, or they're kind of going out to start their own business or they're going to work part time. 

And then of course there is a small percentage of them that plan to leave the workforce or take sort, of a leave of absence with no intention of getting back into the workforce.Right? But one in three women leave and do one of those things, right?

73% of Women Considering Quitting

I want to start with this statistic. 73% of women surveyed indicate that they at least occasionally think about quitting their job. That is, three out of four women, once they have children, start to occasionally think about leaving their job. Right? It's just too much. Balancing life and work is just too much. 

One in three women leave their job in the first 18 months after having their first child. 

Now here's another statistic that goes along with that. One in three women in the first 18 months after having their first child do in fact leave one in three. Now, of course, the majority of these women go out to find another job, right? They're not just quitting the workforce altogether, though. Some do in fact do that. Either do that temporarily or do that permanently. Some go start businesses like myself. Some go to part-time and kind of reduce their hours. Right? But one in three actually leave their job.

Now this particular statistic stands out to me for a couple of reasons. The first is that it normalizes the experience that so many women have, right? This feeling of like, I can't, I can't do this, this is too hard. Like, what's wrong with me? Something's got to change here. Like this just feeling like I can't manage all of this going on.

Yeah. It turns out 73% of people are at least occasionally thinking that they can't handle it. And one out of three feel that way so much that they end up quitting.

Losing Women in Leadership Roles

Now another thing that stands out to me about this statistic is how many women we are losing in the leadership funnel because of motherhood and career advancement and how those things are happening simultaneously. Right? 

It's not that women don't want to work actually in surveyed, it's like 97% of women surveyed say they actually want to work. Only about 3% of women never return to the workforce. 97% say, yeah, if I could figure out how to make this work, I want to make this work. They want to work. They're just leaving the workforce to find some better situation for them in order to help kind of manage their family. Right? 

And the problem with that is that when women either pull back or go part-time or make a lateral move into another company, right? They go sort of back into the bottom of the pecking order in some way and they lose out on the more, the career advancing opportunities because they're shifting roles, shifting jobs, shifting companies, reducing their hours. 

And so they're not being given the kinds of opportunities that are going to advance them further in their career, which makes the funnel go more and more and more smaller, smaller at the top. Which is why we see less women at the top. Right? 

Women are making these strategic decisions for their career within these first 18 months after starting to have kids, and it is inevitably increasing the gap between men and women at the top of the leadership structure. 

So what this tells me is that if we want to see more women leaders at director-level roles, at vice president roles, at C-suite roles, right? If we want to see more women at the top, if you want to be one of those women at the top, you cannot be leaving the workforce or changing jobs at this point in your career. Right? It's not career suicide, but it's just making it infinitely more difficult for you to advance and stay on a leadership trajectory.

Let me offer you the next statistic then. Right? So for every woman that is promoted into a director-level or above role, right. 1.8 men are. Okay, that's within the first decade of, work. So basically the first 10 years of your working life, 1.8 men are promoted into director-level or above roles for every one female. Okay? Now that statistic changes in the second decade of work. It actually goes up to 2.1 men that are promoted into director-level or above roles for every single woman.

The Impact of Family Planning on Career Progression

And then the average age that women start having kids with a college degree. So let me give it that caveat. So women that have college degrees, the average age that they start having kids is 30. And then of those women, one-third of those women actually wait until they're 34. Okay? 

So most women are coming to the end of their first 10 years of working that first decade or are definitely into the second decade of working. And that is the time that you are most likely statistically to get promoted and like, work your way up into higher level positions. But men have the competitive edge. Right? 

Now we all know that unilaterally men are not better at their job than women. So there are other reasons at play that keep women from being promoted.

42% of women believe that they have been discriminated against due to their gender at work.

Let me just give you a couple of statistics around that. Okay? So 42% of women believe that they have been discriminated against due to their gender at work, in specific. Okay? 61% of women indicate that motherhood has held them back from opportunities. In other words, opportunities have not been given to them in their workplace to advance their career due to being a mom.

Gender Bias and Motherhood Discrimination

And here's the last one for you. Four in ten senior-level women have seen biased interactions and comments towards other women at work. Right. In other words, gender and motherhood play a part in the advancement or the lack of advancement in your career. Okay? 

So my takeaways from these statistics are, you know, once again, you're not alone. If you feel like you are not advancing in the way that you deserve, it's likely true. If you feel like you're not being given the opportunities, it's likely true. If it feels harder to advance your career for whatever reason right now in this season of life when you have young kids, it's likely true. Right. 

You're not alone. 

You are facing an uphill battle. The playing fields are not equal. Okay? And while that sucks, and I want to be a part of shifting that culture for women, I want you to participate in shifting the culture that is required. That is going to take decades, decades of work. 

So if it feels hard, it is because it's hard. Right? Statistics show that it's hard for you. 

And if it feels like you need more support than your male counterparts in order to get the same results that they get, it's not because you're not as good as them. It's because you have more barriers in front of you than that. Right. They are on this, well, a very clear paved path. And you, like, have your machete out just trying to get through the trees to get yourself to the other side.

The average woman has unpaid caretaking duties. 

All right, let's shift a little bit and let's talk about unpaid work. Okay, so the average woman has unpaid caretaking duties for 4 hours and 25 minutes a day on average. Okay. 4 hours and 25 minutes a day. The average woman has unpaid caretaking duties. Now, that is in comparison to 1 hour and 23 minutes from men. It's no wonder that women are feeling burnt out, right? 

We all have the experience and feel that, as statistically shows, women are simply doing more as it relates to caring for children and family members and aging parents and taking care of other people's needs.

And if women are faced with the choice, like if they simply can't manage both sets of duties for their own mental health or for whatever reason, they simply don't want to have two full-time jobs, which is sort of what it takes in order to be that full-time-ish caregiver and have a full-time job, right? 

If for whatever reason you don't want to do that or can't do that, you are going to choose your family, right? You're going to choose your family first, which is what you should be doing. Obviously, we want you to do that. 

But you're not going to get to the end of burnout. Like you're not going to get to the edge of burnout, I should say, and choose your job instead of your family, right? You're going to pull back and be with your family and take care of your family in the way that you want to. That's what you should do. It's what we all want. 

But because of that, more women go part-time or make work arrangements that don't then give them the opportunity to advance in their career in the same way. It is unfair.

So the last statistic that I want to offer to you and help you understand it pairs well with what I like to call the motherhood identity crisis. Okay.

The motherhood identity crisis.

So the motherhood identity crisis is that experience that many, many women have where they start asking themselves big questions once they start having kids, right? So big questions like who am I? What do I want? Am I on the right path? Do I want to keep doing what I'm doing anymore? 

I had my own very big motherhood identity crisis. Almost every client that I talked to also is asking some of these big esoteric questions once they start having kids. 

So while it's hard to find statistics specifically to that, there are a couple of numbers that really stand out to me. And the first one is 53% of women that feel like they have a clear career trajectory at their company, 53% of them stay through after 18 months of coming back from maternity leave, right? So a lot of the statistics we've been talking about of, what happens in the first 18 months after you come back from maternity leave that's the one in three leave. Right.

So in companies where you have a really clear trajectory path and you've had these really strategic conversations with your company, 53% of you stay. Right. That's a big difference. 

And that statistic pairs really well with the study that was done apparently around parental leave. And they found that the number one stressor for women coming back from maternity leave, in this survey, what they found, it wasn't work-life balance, it wasn't managing like how baby and family, which is probably what most of us would think on some level. 

Fear of missed opportunities and career advancement.

It was actually the number one stressor was fear of missed opportunities and career advancement. Right. The number one stressor for women that was identified was, you know, where is my career going to go from here? It's a big question. 

So it makes sense that if you're at a company that has actually helped you pave a really clear path forward and you kind of can see where you're headed and what it takes to kind of continue to move on in your career and not feel held back in your career, it's much more likely that you're going to stay.

The Importance of Developing Your Internal Compass

The motherhood identity crisis and that confusion of, you know, what do I want to do with my career? Where am I headed? These are the kinds of questions that I help my clients with in my one-on-one coaching program. Right. I develop with them what I like to call their internal compass or your North Star. Something that's going to help you identify what is really important right now in this season of life. 

And it's a vital part of the work that I do as a coach because it helps pave that clear path moving forward. If your brain has no idea where you're taking your career or what your next opportunities are and like, how that aligns with your goals and motherhood, of course you're going to feel confused, stressed out, and if your brain doesn't really know where you're headed, it's going to feel like you're just heading in circles. 

Or another kind of metaphor I like to use is it's going to feel anything you choose to do at that point is going to sort of feel like darts at a dartboard, where you're just sort of hoping that you get to this point where you feel like you're on the right path and you can kind of manage it all without any regret.

This is a good place for me to segue and start talking about how to combat these statistics that, that are very much against us as working moms and the intersection of work and home. 

What is truly important to you. 

And this is really the first one. It is developing your internal compass. I want you to take a step back from your career, from your duties as a mom, and consider what is truly important to you. 

  • What do you want to get to the end of your life and say that you did? 

  • What values do you want to instill in your kids? 

  • What do you want to really lean into? 

  • What do you want to let go of? 

Your internal compass is going to give you perspective. And perspective is what you need right now in order to move powerfully forward in advancing your career along with having young children.

Now, in coaching, I walk my clients through three very specific exercises related to developing their compass. We talk about their values. Those are the things that are most important to them. 

We identify their identity. That is, in essence, it's like, who you are and what makes you unique. 

And then we talk about your purpose. That's at the heart of that is simply, why are you here? Why are you here on this earth? Right. 

And I use these three exercises to really help re ground you, and it helps you determine whether you're on the path that you want to be on moving forward, or if it's time to make a change. And then it gives you a clearer picture about what change it is in fact you're looking for. 

Do you feel lost?

So obviously, I would love to support you if you are looking for a guide through that process. If you do feel, in fact, lost and you have no idea where you're taking your career and you want to make sure you don't make any big decisions that you might regret later, that is where I come in. That's my specialty.

Book a FREE breakthrough call.

So there's a chance for us to talk about that on a free breakthrough call. So definitely take me up on that. If that's you, you can simply go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to find a time directly on my schedule in order to connect on that. 

But the second strategy I want to offer to you to help you kind of combat this uphill battle that faces you as a working mom is to develop some daily exercises, and I truly do mean daily that remind you of how amazing and wonderful and valuable you are. 

I want you to think about your value from the lens of work and the impact that you've made there and the impact that you will make there. But I also want you to think about it from your home life as well. 

  • What makes you an amazing mom? 

  • What makes you amazing as a human being? 

  • Why should people at work promote you? 

  • What's the impact that you have on the people around you?

These are the sorts of intentional questions that helps fortify a really positive self image and combat a lot of that imposter syndrome. Right. Because when you're headed up an uphill battle, you got to have some sort of hope to lean on on some level.

Daily practices.

And so I have a few daily practices that I offer my clients that I think are really powerful and effective that don't take a lot of time. I've talked about them here on the podcast before. There's things like the daily work that's my six, six step daily exercise that takes about 10 minutes that really builds a positive mindset. 

I also talk about the work to home transition is another powerful one. I talk about affirmations. I talk about downloads, the journal prompts. These are all ways that you can build for yourself a really fortified mindset that's positive about yourself every single day. 

Your brain needs to remember how awesome you are because it's already focused on all the ways that you're failing and the ways you're missing the mark. Like, that's the way our brains are kind of meant to be wired. It has a negative bias. It's your job to intentionally refocus it in another direction.

Strategic support.

The last strategy I want to offer to you to combat all of the uphill battle and the statistics and all the things that are going against you in advancing your career right now as a mom. The last thing I want to offer to you is to get strategic support. 

If you want to go after a senior director role, vice president role, if you want to make your way into the C-suite, the odds are, in fact, not in your favor, particularly if you do it on your own. Right? 

Hiring a coach, whether you pay for that out of pocket or you use professional development money that your company offers to you, or at least a portion of it, to really equip you on this journey is going to make absolutely everything easier for you. 

I have coached personally over 200 women in these past seven years, personally guiding them through, building their compass through, getting crystal clear on the direction that they want ahead, and building for themselves a toolkit to really balance life and their goals with so much more ease.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel. 

That's what I'm here for, to support you, to make sure that you don't make decisions that you ultimately could regret later. You are likely in the most crucial moment in your career right now, where career advancement opportunities are at the highest and your kids are at the youngest, which means this moment is unlike any other moment where support is necessary for you, my friends. 

And obviously, I’m not the only coach out there. I know I can help you. I would love the opportunity to talk to you on that breakthrough call. 

But some of you have opportunities in your workplace, right? There could be internal mentors or coaches that you can lean into, friends or colleagues that are just a season ahead of you. I want you to walk away from this episode and realize that the support, the community is out there for you. 

And this is the moment. This is the most crucial moment that you could ever lean into it.

Friends, once again, if you are interested in speaking with me about coaching, the coaching process, developing your compass, and you're ready to invest in this crucial moment in your life, in your career, to make sure you don't regret and you keep your ambitious drive high towards your career goals, I want you to reach out and book that free call. You could do that by going to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book.

Ah, working moms. This was a difficult episode for me to record because so much of why I do what I do is found right here in these statistics. Right? 

I want to see more women at the top of the list, leadership structure. I want to see more equality. I want to see the gender gap filled. I want to see the pay gap filled. I want to see more women feeling empowered to go after and advance their career without feeling like they're sacrificing their family to do it right. 

I want women to believe in themselves and to eradicate imposter syndrome. 

It's why I do what I do. And yet I know how hard it is. I know this season of life is difficult, and you don't have to do it alone. 

I got you. I'm here for you. 

Please reach out. Let's talk about how we can get you going toward the career that you want without leaving your family behind.

All right, working moms, until next week, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson