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Monday, 15 December 2008 17:02 |
by Lydia Fernandes
Working mothers play multiple roles that bring both joy and overload. The two most prominent roles are that of “mother” and “worker”, the former usually outweighing the latter in a mother’s life. And why shouldn’t it.
According to a survey by Working Mother Magazine, family comes first for most employed mothers. Our desire to love and nurture our children and families is of utmost importance. But we also engage in work outside the home for a number of reasons that are unique to each woman. For many career-minded mothers, working is something more than just a paycheque. Having a career is strongly tied to our self-identity, our sense of accomplishment and our sense of purpose.
So why do so many career-minded mothers have a hard time fully realizing their professional potential? For starters, juggling work and family is hard work and can feel very overwhelming! And the workplace itself is one of our greatest and long-standing challenges. The stigma attached to mothers – that of not being ambitious, pre-occupied, not serious – haunt us to this very day. It is a seeming constant upward battle that many of us feel we cannot win, whether it is trying to advance in our career or seek out a more flexible work arrangement. But with a little creativity and a lot of self-awareness and support, we can demonstrate our value to a company’s bottom line and create an authentic image of ourselves that can move us up into the driver’s seat of our own career journey.
The second greatest hurdle is ourselves. Feeling torn between satisfying multiple needs from all sides, women tend to put other people’s needs ahead of their own. We often laugh at the term “self-care” as if it were part of an alien language. But the reality is that achieving balance and reaching our life goals requires active measures of taking our wellness into our own hands. Even in your career, by taking time to focus on your needs – a little bit of “healthy selfishness” – you can become more fulfilled in your work and feel more connected to yourself and the world we live in. And since our families are our top priority, we can be much better role models for our children in terms of what is possible when a person actively engages in self-care. It is a life skill.
What do you aspire for in your career? If you are a career-minded mother who is seeking greater fulfillment, control and balance in the proverbial “9-to-5 grind”, you need to begin by consciously shifting focus from others to self. There is much about you that you may have lost touch with, and bringing it back to the forefront will help you begin the process of drawing connections between who you are, the work you do, and your greater impact. The message is gold, and the discovery is invaluable.
Lydia Fernandes is a career impact strategist and founder of MotivMode, a company that energizes career-minded moms in their quest for fulfillment, advancement and flexibility in the proverbial 9-to-5 grind. You can email her at
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Careers & Education 
