My Best Tips for Balancing Work and Mom Life
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Being a working woman is a challenge. It seems like you have to fight for everything, especially if your career places you in an ordinarily male-dominated field. Adding motherhood to that carefully balanced scale might threaten to tip it over. How can you balance your work life and your life as a mother? Here are some tips and tricks to help you find a balance between being a perfect employee and being an ideal mother.
Step One: Ditch the Idea of Perfection
Step one, before you can start balancing your scales and figuring out how to
SelfishMother.com
2
be both an employee and a mother, is to banish the idea of perfection.
It’s not possible.
Humans are inherently flawed. It’s part of what makes us so lovable, and thus capable of learning from our mistakes. Perfection is something that is consistently out of reach for flawed beings such as ourselves. Besides, who wants to be perfect anyway? Perfection is boring because once you attain it, you’re no longer growing, learning and changing.
Look for a Flexible Company
It can be challenging to find a flexible company,
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particularly if you work in a high-stress industry. If you want to balance your work and mom lives, you need to find one that is willing to work with your new responsibilities, instead of punishing you for having them.
Look for companies that offer expanded — and paid — maternity and paternity leave, sick leave you can take when your little ones are ill or even the flexibility to work from home when necessary to take care of someone who’s feeling under the weather.
Other things to look for might include comprehensive health insurance,
SelfishMother.com
4
family-friendly facilities or in-house daycare. Also, take a look at how the company treats their breastfeeding mothers. Even if you’re not currently breastfeeding, you don’t want to tie yourself to a company that won’t let you take breaks to pump, or will make you pump or breastfeed in the bathroom.
Your career is essential, but so is your family — the latter being your higher priority. Find a company that knows and accepts you will always put your family first.
Let Go of Mom Guilt
We all have it — that mom guilt that
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nags us when we forget to do the dishes, or we aren’t home in time for bedtime because of an important work meeting.
Ditch it.
If your kids are healthy, happy, fed, clothed and have a roof over their head, the occasional missed bedtime or dusty shelf is nothing to feel guilty about. Mom guilt is only going to stress you out and keep you from being able to enjoy the little things — like watching your toddler wear spaghetti instead of eating it.
Make Time
We’ve all said it, at one point or another: ”There just aren’t
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enough hours in the day.”
Don’t blame the fact that there are only 24 hours on the clock on your inability to make time for the essentials. Guess what — dishes, laundry and dusting aren’t more important than reading your little one a bedtime story while they’re still young enough to want you to read to them. Dishes can wait.
Food prep is your friend. Try prepping things like veggies, fruit, and hard boiled eggs over the weekend for a quick grab and go snack or throw together dinners and stress less about getting food on the table.
Being
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a working mom isn’t easy, but it wouldn’t be worth it if it were. The trick is to stop trying to be perfect, ditch your mom guilt and set aside time for the things you value most. Your kids won’t be little forever, and it won’t be long before they trade bathtime and bedtime stories for makeup and cell phones.
Building a career is a lot like being a mother. It takes time, strength, perseverance and an infinite amount of patience. The two states do not have to be mutually exclusive, though. You can still be the most significant part of your
SelfishMother.com
8
children’s lives while climbing the corporate ladder. It just takes a bit of strength, a lot of patience and just a smidge of balance.
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Jennifer Landis - 29 May 19
Being a working woman is a challenge. It seems like you have to fight for everything, especially if your career places you in an ordinarily male-dominated field. Adding motherhood to that carefully balanced scale might threaten to tip it over. How can you balance your work life and your life as a mother? Here are some tips and tricks to help you find a balance between being a perfect employee and being an ideal mother.
Step One: Ditch the Idea of Perfection
Step one, before you can start balancing your scales and figuring out how to be both an employee and a mother, is to banish the idea of perfection.
It’s not possible.
Humans are inherently flawed. It’s part of what makes us so lovable, and thus capable of learning from our mistakes. Perfection is something that is consistently out of reach for flawed beings such as ourselves. Besides, who wants to be perfect anyway? Perfection is boring because once you attain it, you’re no longer growing, learning and changing.
Look for a Flexible Company
It can be challenging to find a flexible company, particularly if you work in a high-stress industry. If you want to balance your work and mom lives, you need to find one that is willing to work with your new responsibilities, instead of punishing you for having them.
Look for companies that offer expanded — and paid — maternity and paternity leave, sick leave you can take when your little ones are ill or even the flexibility to work from home when necessary to take care of someone who’s feeling under the weather.
Other things to look for might include comprehensive health insurance, family-friendly facilities or in-house daycare. Also, take a look at how the company treats their breastfeeding mothers. Even if you’re not currently breastfeeding, you don’t want to tie yourself to a company that won’t let you take breaks to pump, or will make you pump or breastfeed in the bathroom.
Your career is essential, but so is your family — the latter being your higher priority. Find a company that knows and accepts you will always put your family first.
Let Go of Mom Guilt
We all have it — that mom guilt that nags us when we forget to do the dishes, or we aren’t home in time for bedtime because of an important work meeting.
Ditch it.
If your kids are healthy, happy, fed, clothed and have a roof over their head, the occasional missed bedtime or dusty shelf is nothing to feel guilty about. Mom guilt is only going to stress you out and keep you from being able to enjoy the little things — like watching your toddler wear spaghetti instead of eating it.
Make Time
We’ve all said it, at one point or another: “There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”
Don’t blame the fact that there are only 24 hours on the clock on your inability to make time for the essentials. Guess what — dishes, laundry and dusting aren’t more important than reading your little one a bedtime story while they’re still young enough to want you to read to them. Dishes can wait.
Food prep is your friend. Try prepping things like veggies, fruit, and hard boiled eggs over the weekend for a quick grab and go snack or throw together dinners and stress less about getting food on the table.
Being a working mom isn’t easy, but it wouldn’t be worth it if it were. The trick is to stop trying to be perfect, ditch your mom guilt and set aside time for the things you value most. Your kids won’t be little forever, and it won’t be long before they trade bathtime and bedtime stories for makeup and cell phones.
Building a career is a lot like being a mother. It takes time, strength, perseverance and an infinite amount of patience. The two states do not have to be mutually exclusive, though. You can still be the most significant part of your children’s lives while climbing the corporate ladder. It just takes a bit of strength, a lot of patience and just a smidge of balance.
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