How organizations can support working mothers

Balancing professional and parental identities can be challenging. This has particularly been the case over the past year, as a pandemic has turned family life on its head. During this time, working parents have been navigating school closures, remote working, and social isolation. As the boundaries between work and home life have become even more blurred, professional and parental identities have also blurred. With working parents often wearing multiple hats at the same time – worker, parent, and teacher!

Numerous surveys of working parents during the pandemic show that a disproportionate share of the burden is falling on women. And the impact of the pandemic has already been seen in the number of women leaving the labor market. There are fears that COVID-19 is reversing not only progress towards gender equality but also stunting economic growth. As we come out of lockdown, and the workplace becomes whatever the new normal is, it is vital that working mothers’ voices be heard – by managers, leaders, and organizations. We need working mothers to be retained, to help them feel supported and enable them to contribute productively. It is not just about the practicalities of juggling work and home life, but also about supporting the psychological shift too – helping to balance professional and parental identities.

At Hult International Business School, we are conducting the ‘Working Parents Shift’ research project. This project explores the psychological challenges and experiences when making the shift from worker to working parent. The project aims to provide recommendations and practical changes that organizations and individuals can make that go beyond flexible working practices, to ensure that working parents feel supported and organizations retain motivated employees.

Over the last year, we invited working mothers to share their stories and provide examples around the reality of how they are struggling to manage their maternal and professional identities whilst working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 200 working mums responded. Some of the key findings from their stories are provided below:

• The stories were dominated by working mums wanting to have a professional identity and the importance of being “more than just mum”. Mothers described how having a work identity made them feel fulfilled and provided them with a purpose.

• Several mums talked about either needing or wanting, to hide their parental identity when working. They did not want people at work to see them as a mother and so often put on a front.

• Most of the mothers described the importance, and challenge, of trying to balance identities. And when things do not work in terms of balancing, mothers described feeling conflicted and guilty, and at times like a failure.

All mums agreed that the pandemic has exacerbated the challenges they face.