Photo by Xavier Mouton Photographie on Unsplash

Sorry you haven’t heard from me for a while. We are entering our sixth week of lockdown here in Greater Sydney and Wollongong and, like a lot of working parents, I am struggling to keep my head above water. I know I’m not the only one. Lately I have heard from clients who are putting their job-hunting plans on hold and employers who are struggling to fill vacancies as everyone focuses on getting through current difficulties.

It has been a stark reminder of how much work and life is intertwined, especially for mums. When I talk with mums about their career and how to navigate their career change or return to work, family life looms large in discussions. Working mums, or mums who want to work, will often agonise about how much they can work. They worry about whether their kids will suffer if they’re not around as much, whether they will find it too tiring to go to before and after school care, fall behind with school work if mum isn’t there to push them to do their home work or feel neglected because mum isn’t there for every assembly, sports day or music recital.

I’ve never coached a working dad but I do wonder if I would have similar discussions with them …

The reality is that some Mums will put their career on hold for years, perhaps indefinitely, so they can prioritise family. If they do work, they often accept lesser positions, less pay, jobs with less responsibility and hours, jobs that are less fulfilling sometimes, so that they can prioritise parenting.

Some mums are ok with this. Others aren’t. And a lot don’t realise that they aren’t until it is too late.

I don’t judge any mum for putting family before career. I currently work a lot less than I’d like to because my youngest son is at preschool part-time (I am literally beside myself with excitement about him starting school next year).

But I do caution mums to watch out. Five years can easily stretch into ten, and that can easily stretch into fifteen. Before you know it, your kids are grown up and don’t need you so much. It’s very difficult, though not impossible, to relaunch a career after fifteen years and it’s highly probable that study would be needed to get new, relevant skills.

So, what’s a woman to do? Can you have a fulfilling career and a happy family? This is what I’ve learned over the years:

Decide on your priorities

I almost entitled this paragraph “lower your standards” but that felt wrong. Really this is about priorities and knowing what they are at a given point in time. Right now, my kids are young, and my business is young. They are both important to me and they both need an investment of time.  My house is a mess (not as important) and my social life is almost non-existent (even prior to lockdown). My friends know I am useless at remembering birthdays and organising presents. My mum knows that my sister-in-law is much better at sending her photos. I beat myself up about these things but at the end of the day I am realistic about what I can achieve with my time and what is most important to me. I skype my mum and we have a good chat, and she sees the kids goof around then. I send pictures when I remember.

If you want to have a fulfilling career and a happy family you need to decide what your priorities are and say no, or lessen, other things. You are going the drop the ball a lot and it’s better to decide in advance where you want that ball to be dropped. This is not necessarily forever and changes with the ebb and flow of life. But deciding on your priorities is important otherwise you will get swept up in everyone else’s and that is not realistic.

You can and should lower your standards

Sorry I do still need to say it. I remember seeing a talk once with Denise Duffield-Thomas to female entrepreneurs and she said on the topic of juggling a business and kids (again something that men are rarely asked) “your kids are going to be ok, you know” and that has stayed with me. I think the fact that we are even worrying about our kids means they are going to be fine.

So, you might have to send your kids to after school care, big deal. I felt shitty about sending my son because he was quite vocal about the fact that he didn’t want to go. Now that he is home schooling, due to lockdown, it’s the thing he misses most. You might miss the odd assembly or not be able to do reading groups. Big deal. Your kid is not going to end up in jail because of it.

It’s fine to be there for our kids. I try to be as much as possible. But we can’t keep putting ourselves last. What sort of an example does that set them anyway?

It’s not all about you

Not everything in your household has to be done by you. I know you think you fold clothes the best way and only you can make the kids the healthiest of lunches (probably true) but what’s the worst that’s going to happen if someone else does it?

Again, decide on the things that are really important like booking medical appointments and see what other jobs can be divvied out. Can your kids unstack the dishwasher in the morning, hang washing, make their own beds … give it a try.

Get help

This is linked to the above in that you need to recognise not everything has to be done by you because this is the first step towards asking for help. If you can afford a cleaner, get one. If you can’t make sure others in the household are pulling their weight.

Get better at organising your time

When I returned to work after having kids, my time management skills went up a notch but now that I have a business they have gone through the roof. Still there are a lot of things that I forget (but that’s going back to the point I made earlier about priorities). If you want to have a fulfilling career and a happy family then you need to get better at managing your time. That means planning your days and weeks in advance, deciding on your most important tasks, batching like activities together and minimising distractions (social media scrolling and Netflix I mean you). I could write a whole article on this and in fact I have. Here’s a link to it.

Accept it might take longer

I guess I’m a little bit in this camp. I’m a big believer that you can have it all but not at the same time. Sometimes family will take centre stage, other times career, other times travel and hobbies (who am I kidding!) While my kids are very young, I have decided that I can’t work as much as I’d like but as they get older I plan to rev things up a bit in my business. It’s very frustrating but something that I have personally made peace with.

I think women can have a fulfilling career and put family first but I don’t think it is easy. However, I do think it is worth fighting for. But, of course, only if it’s a priority to you.