Working mothers’ dilemma: career or family?

By Lionel Wijesiri

If you are a working mother, you will naturally be confronted with tough choices every single day.

Take three simple examples: “Should I go to my company annual outing or to my 12-year old son’s football final where he is captaining a team?’

“Should I cook a healthy meal even though I am exhausted or order pizza (again)?” “Should I spend time playing with my children on Saturday or tackle the laundry, grocery list, and clutter consuming your home?”

No matter which choices you make you will be consumed by guilt, the silent stalker that hovers over the daily lives of working mothers everywhere.

While working mothers can pretend that everything is spic and span and that these little decisions, hundreds of them every day, don’t take a toll, the truth is they do. Women have fought for their right to work with men and with equal rights and, of course, will continue to do so - but at what cost?

How should a working mother sustain her role for the long haul? She doesn’t just have one full-time job, but three - as professional worker, wife and mother.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately as to whether working mothers should lean in or lean out, be more mindful or take an anxiety pill and zone out! But how do working mothers stop wrestling with this constant guilt?

Set goals

If you are a working mother, you do not need to worry. There are a number of ways to embrace your short-falls as a mother, and refocus your preciously finite energy on what truly matters: ensuring that your children know they’re wanted, loved, and loveable, no matter what - and that they benefit from having you as a role model on how to live a rewarding life.

First, you have to set goals according to your priorities. Look at potential blind spots. Where we tend to get into trouble is that we have priorities, yet we don’t live according to them. In turn, we get out of balance, stressed, anxious and are ultimately unhappy. You must set your goals around the priorities that matter most and live by them at all cost.

I know of a working mother who is also a top class professional speaker on Business Management. She could speak up to 10 times a month and make much more money, but she chose not to. It was not in line with her priorities. Her limit was three speaking engagements a month and that has been her rule the past seven years.

She said, “I can always make more money, but I’ll never get this time back with my children who are eight and 11. Being true to my priorities is what allows me to be happy, energised and live a less stressed life.”

What about you? Do you see a conflict between the priorities you hold dear and the way you are living your life? Do you seek change in your life?

Get your girl back

This phrase - Get your girl back is about helping working women get back to the girl who had big plans for her life; the one who wanted to experience fun, adventure, passion and raise a happy family. Life is so short and if you don’t evaluate where you are right now, when will you?

Ask yourself. “Is my current job consuming my life? Is my family my priority yet I find myself working ten hour days, rushing everywhere, consumed by guilt, unable to get caught up and literally feeling as if my whole life is passing me by?”

“If so, what action can I take to foster change?”

The first step is to decide to change your life. The second is to brainstorm ideas and action you can take that will move you toward a resolution. If you are in the private sector, you can ask for a salary increase enabling you to hire a housekeeper to clean and do laundry weekly so you can spend quality time on the weekends relaxing with your family.

You can also re-evaluate your job and contemplate if it’s still the right fit for your life, right now. Is there a better job that could utilise your gifts and talents, pay you more and provide flexibility? Could you start your own business? If you are not the breadwinner, can you stay home and manage the home front?

There are many choices. The important thing is to take a stand for your life. What you must do now is find a solid balance between work and home that allows room for life to flourish - not to just survive; but to live.

Good-parent traditions

A mothers’ guilt was not always a mother’s lot. Ruwini, a Chartered Accountant by profession but a working mother, once told me, “I cannot recall my own parents ever coming to a netball game or reading me bedtime stories.

Truth be told, I never gave it a second thought - until I found myself feeling guilt-ridden when unable to attend one of my children’s games or too tired to read a bedtime story. Why? Because I had unwittingly taken on board a mother-load of ‘good-parent traditions’ that my own mother never did.

Our good-parent traditions are a melting pot of social expectations, family pressures, and often unspoken ‘rules’ we often buy into without even realising it. These are shaped by our environment.

Ruwini adds,” I enjoy being involved in my children’s activities and in their lives. But I also know that they don’t need me cheering at every game, creating scrapbooks for every milestone, or welcoming them home from school with fresh baked pancakes to feel loved and to grow into secure and well-rounded adults.

While they are central in my life, my world does not revolve around them. Nor, do I believe, would it serve them any better if it did. So when I find myself using the two words, good-parent traditions, I add an alternative option. Doing so takes the judgment out, and allows me give myself permission to do what actually works best for me and my family - minus the guilt.”

Don’t dilute your presence with distraction

Parents can be with their children 24/7 and yet never be fully present to them. While ‘turning off’ from work and other distractions is easier said than done, it’s important to be intentional about being fully present to your children whenever you are with them by minimising the multi-tasking as much as humanly possible.

Here is simple advice. Take your children out for a snack at a local café as a ‘special treat’ - for you as well as them - which removes you from the magnetic pull of your home office. Some may believe this is going to great (or perhaps even unnecessary) lengths just to avoid distraction, it’s not about what other people think, it’s about what works for you - and by default, your family.