Mum Guilt
- Jun 5, 2018
- 2 min read
Can we really have it all? Career, full on earth motherhood, wife etc etc the roles and titles just go on. As a Mum and a careerist, I often contemplate whether we can truly have ‘it all’ and be happy in our work/life balance. Nothing is perfect for sure, but is it a myth that’s pumped into us from a young age (shout out to Disney) that women can indeed nowadays can have a great long career at the same time as having a young growing family?
Perhaps it’s the image we are fed of ‘having it all’ as the problem. We should be free to paint our own image of what family and career success means to us. It’s easier said than done and I’m still understanding, shaping and defining my own definition of success in this area.
With childcare infrastructure and pricing in the UK one of the most expensive and archaic systems, there are huge challenges presented to parents that need childcare support to be able to go back to work and carry on with their careers post children. Unless you are fortunate enough to have a nanny 24/7 or family support nearby, this really makes going back to work very tricky indeed – a constant juggling act.
Being self-employed my days of working can change from week to week, making it almost impossible to plan-ahead in advance childcare arrangements. They often change last-minute and opportunities arise at the last second, which you can’t always re-schedule. These considerations did not ever enter my mind before starting a family.
In my experience the current childcare system is not fit for purpose. There is also a disconnect between employers and childcare providers – employers are only really just starting to accept ‘flexible’ working as being an option for parents (unlike our progressive Nordic counterparts) and childcare is just too expensive and often rigid in its operating hours and pricing models. On a positive note, it’s great to see fellow ‘Mumpreneurs’ setting up forward thinking companies like Flexperience (www.flexperience.co.uk) – a recruiter in the Cotswolds solely for flexible roles, hallelujah!
Thoughts on a postcard…
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This post is so refreshingly honest — the guilt is real and it never fully goes away, does it? The point about redefining success on our own terms really resonated with me. We're constantly benchmarked against some unattainable ideal rather than our own values and circumstances. It's funny, even in academic settings this pressure to "have it all" shows up — I recently came across a qatar airways case study exploring how organisations balance workforce demands with employee wellbeing, and the parallels to working motherhood were striking. The support systems just aren't designed around real lives. For anyone juggling studies on top of everything else, New Assignment Help UK has been a genuine lifesaver when deadlines pile up. Here's hoping…
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This really hits home! The juggling act of career and motherhood is something so many of us silently struggle with, yet feel too guilty to admit. You're absolutely right that the "having it all" image we've been sold is the root of so much unnecessary pressure — we're constantly measuring ourselves against an impossible standard. The childcare costs alone in the UK are enough to make you question whether going back to work is even worth it financially. It reminds me of how students feel when they take on a New Assignment Help resource — sometimes just having the right support system in place makes all the difference between drowning and thriving. What we really need is for employers, childcare…
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