Make your job work for you
Pregnant and working? Thinking of returning to
your job after your baby is born? Or finding that facing the office
is harder and harder now that you have a child to look after?
Katherine Granich shares ideas to help you banish those
back-to-work blues.
I'm a working mum, and I have been from the moment I found
out I was pregnant with my daughter. Because, contrary to popular
opinion, the unique challenges faced by working mothers begin with
the inevitable nausea that comes upon you, quite without warning,
in the middle of an important meeting when you're nine weeks
pregnant and haven't told anyone in the office yet. All at once,
your mind is overwhelmed by questions: "Should I tell? Have they
noticed how pale I am and how I can't stand the smell of the
lunchroom fridge any more? How much longer can I get away with
avoiding afterwork drinks on Friday? Can I hold out until 12 weeks?
If I 'fess up now, will people think I'm not pulling my
weight?"
That was me, a little over four years ago. I blurted the truth out
to my boss one afternoon when she'd just pulled me into he
boardroom to talk to me about something totally unrelated. I hadn't
planned on announcing it to her that way - I hadn't actually
figured out how to announce my pregnancy at all. I was the sixth
woman caught up in a wave of pregnancies that had swept our office
during the preceding few months, and instead of being excited about
my baby news, I dreaded the "Don't drink the water!" jokes and the
ignominy of being Last in Line.
At the time, I had no idea that a few years later, I'd be making a
living as a working mum out of writing about being a working mum.
Because, let's face it, the term "working mum" is almost redundant.
What mother doesn't work? We all work, all day long, but for mums
who work at a paying job, whether inside the home or out, the
struggle to achieve balance between work and home is fraught with
complications and difficulties.
There's no guilt like that of a working mother. Over the past four
years of being a working mum, I've learned a lot about guilt. I've
also learned a lot about how to cope with those feelings that
you're somehow never going to get it together or have any kind of
balance between work and motherhood and life in general. Here are
my best tips for coping.
Redefine your image of the deal working
mother
Before I became a working mum, I would have said the ideal working
mother was meticulously groomed, regularly works out at the gym, is
never late to drop her baby off at childcare, has homemade dinners
on the table every night, lives in a spotlessly clean house, and
still has time to host a book club once a month. Basically, the
exact opposite of myself.
Think about the "ideal working mum" picture you have in your head,
then compare it with reality. Is that kind of perfection really
something you can achieve? Is it something anybody achieves? If you
can't achieve it, why are you beating yourself up over it? We need
to redefine what it means to be a working mother, and the
definition needs to be something realistic, achievable, and just
plain "good enough". If you're always trying to accomplish the
impossible, you're just going to keep feeling more and more
terrible about yourself when you can't reach those crazy
goals.
The key when defining what working motherhood means to you is those
two words TO YOU. Everyone's idea of what it means to be a working
mum is going to be different. So I can't give you some kind
of universal definition. All I can say is that the definition needs
to be something that works for you, in your situation.
Stop comparing yourself to a false ideal
That non-existent perfect mother might sound like somebody you
know. My sub-editor Ellie bakes bread and has this cute, quirky
house and these two gorgeous daughters. When I met her, I actually
decided I was going to hate her, because her life seemed just a
little too perfect and I was jealous I couldn't be like her. But
then one day, I was over at her house working at her kitchen table,
and one of her daughters came into the room screaming bloody
murder. Suddenly, I realised that Ellie is just like me. She
sometimes rings at 10pm to talk about work stuff because she works
from home and finds it a tad bit difficult to get anything done
when the children are around and screaming bloody murder. She's
amazing, but she's not perfect, either.
Ellie's house is always, always clean, and every time I came home
from her house, I'd look around my own messy place and wonder why I
couldn't have a clean house like Ellie. Then I had another
realisation - I have about six times more stuff than Ellie does.
Her house is clean because she doesn't have that much stuff. She is
one of those minimalist people. So there' s my choice - I can
become a minimalist person and have a clean house, or I can keep
all my crap and have a messy house. I'm just going to live with the
mess, thank you.
Don't you hate it when your in-laws compare your kid to one of
their other
grandchildren? You know in your heart that your child is as special
as the other grandkids, and it's not fair to compare kids anyway
because they're all unique in their own way. Well, newsflash - that
is exactly how your family feels about you. Stop comparing how you
handle things to how your friends handle them. Stop wishing you had
what other people have. I know, it's human nature, and you can't
put a stop to it in every area of your life. But stop it in the
motherhood realm.
Remember what balance really means
If you want a balanced life, remember "balance" does not mean your
commitments, obligations, responsibilities, and tasks
suddenly disappear, leaving you lying on a beach, cocktail in hand.
That is not balance, that is a nice dream. Balance means all areas
of your life have healthy relationships with each other.
Relationships are about give-and-take. There is always going to be
something or someone screaming for your attention. Your job is to
figure out what balance looks like to you. This is hard for women,
because we are very used to picking up all of the slack. You need
to overhaul your way of thinking about how working mums behave and
what their lives are like.
Make changes to your work
This is a scary thing for most of us, because we automatically
think that work is a no-negotiation zone. Instead of thinking about
what work wants from you, it's time to think about what you want
from work. What do you want to get out of your job? Is it the
money? The adult interaction? Why are you doing the job you are
doing? And are you really happy doing it? Is work working for you?
There is new legislation requiring employers to look at ways to
make their workplaces more family-friendly; is your employer doing
anything? Think about how much you want to put up with before it
starts putting a strain on your family. And think about your
options. Put your family first.
Think about what you love to do, and how to make that your
career. If your job isn't working for you, maybe you
can create a job for yourself that will work for you. Things like
flexible time, working remotely from home one or two days a week,
job-sharing with another mum in your office, going part-time,
signing on as a consultant. Most of us say, "Oh, my boss will never
let me do that." How do you know unless you ask? Tell your boss
that you love your job but it's not working for you, and give them
that list of alternatives. Say you'd really like to keep working
there because you know you have a lot to offer, but you want to
make some changes that will benefit everyone. And if your boss is a
jerk and says no, then you have to face that too. It's hard, I
know, but it's necessary.
Get a support group
I know what it's like to not have much in the way of support. My
family lives in
the US, and I have my in-laws here for support, but I didn't feel
comfortable
asking my mother-in-law questions about breastfeeding. I was on
maternity leave for eight months, six of which I spent entirely in
my pyjamas. When I went back to work, I felt isolated and alone,
until I started forcing myself to make friends who were in similar
situations. You need people who understand what you're going
through. Seek out other mothers at your workplace. Join a women's
group. If you can't do the whole coffee group thing, that's okay,
start your own thing. Host a craft night once a month and invite
every mother you know. Once a month is do-able. Schedule regular
Saturday-morning coffee dates with a friend. Support is good
for your soul.
Your support group, especially of working mums, is an endless
source of
ideas and inspiration for how to keep your priorities straight. If
there's another
working mum at your office, ask her how she gets balance. Chances
are she doesn't have it either. You can work on it together, it's
nicer to do things like this in groups! You're not alone, so don't
isolate yourself on purpose. Look for support.
Get help
Help comes in many forms, from paid help like a housecleaner, to
childcare.
Money is an issue here, but so is time. My one big concession is
the guy who mows my lawns every fortnight. It costs $20 a pop and
it's totally worth it, especially since we stand around and gossip
for ten minutes before he gets started. My other big concession
is childcare. Initially I sent my daughter to a PORSE in-home
caregiver two afternoons a week, and gradually increased this to
two full days, and now three. When I decided to work full-time, I
chose to send her to a preschool for two days a week, so she gets
in-home care three days a week and preschool the other two days.
There are a lot of options for childcare. In-home care is awesome,
and I highly recommend PORSE. If you have room for one, an au pair
is surprisingly affordable - around $150 a week. Nannies are
expensive, but what if you shared one with a friend? Or
speaking of friends, two of my friends both work part-time and they
swap childcare - one of them looks after the kids Monday-Tuesday,
the other one Thursday-Friday, and it doesn't cost them a
cent.
Figure out what you can afford, and what works the best for
your family, then do it. If you want a cleaner, look in the back of
the community paper for those little classifed ads. Or pay one of
your teenage cousins to do some stuff for you. Swap childcare for
childcare. Investigate the childcare subsidy and call up WINZ to
see if you're eligible for any assistance. You don't know unless
you ask.
Go easy on yourself
You're going to screw up. you're going to let things get
off-balance. Change is a wheel, it's not a continuum - you
make a change, you maintain the change, then something happens and
you relapse, so you get back on the wheel and you make the change
again, and you might maintain it for a bit longer this time before
you relapse. The periods where you're maintaining the change get
longer and the relapses get shorter.
The most important thing to remember is that you are a valuable
human being, and deserve to be happy - and if work is working for
you, then another important piece of the happiness puzzle will fall
into place.
Katherine Granich is the former editor of OHbaby! Magazine, mum
of an almost-four-year-old, and a bit of a workaholic, but she's
trying to reform that last part.
Further reading
* Equality and Human Rights Commission. "Working Better: a
Manager's Guide to flexible Working." 1 October 2009. Online:
www.equalityhumanrights.com/hereforbusiness
* Galinsky, Ellen, James Bond, and E Jeffrey Hill. "When work
works: a status report on workplace flexibility." Families and Work
Institute. 8 April 2004. Online:
familiesandwork.org/3w/research/downloads/status.pdf
* Kelly, Erin L and Phyllis Moen. "Rethinking the clockwork of
work: Why schedule control may pay off at work and at home."
Advances in Developing Human Resources 9.4 (2007): 487-506. Online:
http://adh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/487
* Parker, Kim. "The Harried Life of the Working Mother." Pew
Research Centre, 1 October 2009. Online:
http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/745/the-harried-life-of-the-working-mother
* Workplace Flexibility 2010. "Flexible Work Arrangements: a fact
sheet."
Georgetown university Law Center. 13 May 2009. Online:
www.law.georgetown.edu/workplaceflexibility2010/defnition/fwa.cfm
As seen in OHbaby!
magazine Issue 8: 2010
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