"Working did bring a certain feeling of guilt and I regret feeling guilty"
The Matriarchs talk balancing career and family, letting go of guilt, and playing the long game to 'have it all'
This article is part of a series called The Wisdom of the Matriarchs. If you missed the series introduction, you can catch up here. The Matriarchs are six special women who have agreed to share their life wisdom and reflections with the Womaning Wisely community. I remain very grateful to them for opening up and giving us the opportunity to learn from their experiences. Do leave a comment at the end - I think they’ll enjoy them!
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My generation of women feel we’ve got it tough. We lament the juggle of career and parenting, we complain about the costs of childcare, and we carry heavy the burden of so much being expected of us. When I wrote about ‘the juggle’ I was inundated with ‘Yes! I feel seen’ messages. There is no doubt that women today are managing a lot.
But if one message shone through from The Matriarchs’ personal reflections, it is this:
We are not the first to be juggling.
We learnt last week that The Matriarchs achieved their parenting goals and now we discover that many of them found personal fulfilment and success in their work life too. These women have some inspiring stories, but laced throughout them there is effort, resilience, and determination.
They did the juggle…it’s possible! Let’s explore how they got there.
It wasn’t really ‘different back then’
I am guilty of being a bit dismissive of the plight of the previous generation. It must have been simpler then because they didn’t have the same societal pressure to ‘do it all’ - the expectations placed on us now are much higher.
But I’m left feeling this sentiment is misplaced. It’s clear that The Matriarchs’ career ambitions were no less than we hold…and shared parental leave certainly wasn’t a thing then.
I can’t help but feel humbled by these stories…
I can't remember receiving any careers advice at school. Sadly, those of us who weren't really academics were left by the wayside. I studied for a degree with three young children. It was hard work but I divided my time into being a mum, doing a part-time job and studying when the kids were in bed. My self-confidence and self-esteem grew and I am glad that I achieved that.
Our babies were only 15 months apart, my husband was a Junior Doctor, he worked long hours and we moved frequently. It was a really difficult time, however, I knew when I married a doctor, it wasn’t a 9 to 5 job and this wouldn’t be our life forever. I didn’t have a job, but when the children were older, I ran a catering business with a friend. It was hard work, but great fun. Dealing with so many different people taught me a great deal, especially when to keep quiet! I had found my niche and to this day love entertaining and cooking.
As (my kids) got older…thoughts turned to returning to work. My interest had always been science but I had never really achieved anything in it. The first thing I had to do was pass a GCSE in maths…at the grand old age of 40. I then took an Access to Science course. I was working at Tesco in the evening and I applied for a job as a science technician in a school, which I got. I completed an Open University foundation year in science and…then moved on to a science technician post. I did a part-time HND in Chemistry and then converted it to a degree. This took 5 years and I still can’t imagine how I did it with a young family and full time job but you just keep plodding on and then one day someone says you’ve graduated. Once I had finished my degree I completed a teaching qualification, PGCE. Finally, after 12 years of study I became a fully fledged teacher. Something I had never set out to do but in the end I’m glad I did. I think this is an area of my life where I find most contentment - I certainly feel a sense of achievement.
When these women were juggling all these balls, I was a kid playing with their kids. If you were to ask me how aware I was of their efforts? Not. At. All. In fact, reading their reflections some 35 years later is the very first time I realised they had done all this.
I’m taking that as a positive. Perhaps our kids are way less affected by us juggling life around them than we might think. Which leads us nicely on to ‘mum-guilt’…
Letting go of working-mother guilt
It’s a thing, isn’t it? That idea that we aren’t doing anything quite well enough. Not giving work enough because we want to be there for our kids, and not giving our kids enough because we want or need to go to work.
And it seems we can’t win by just not working, as that may bring regret that we didn’t achieve more. (If I’m honest, in periods when I haven’t been working I’ve also struggled with a sense of guilt that I’m letting down ‘feminism’ and the women who came before me and fought for my right to do more.)
These two reflections from our Matriarchs capture the dichotomy:
Working did bring a certain feeling of guilt and I regret feeling guilty. I got into a situation where I was trying to please work and family life equally, but I should have tried to separate more effectively. As I have matured, I have realised that being a working mother allowed me to set a good example and I became a role model for my children showing them how, through my work, I could improve other people’s lives and bring about positive change in healthcare. It also meant that my children developed respect knowing that other people, rather than only themselves, were dependent on me being there.
I think I suffered (if that’s the right word) from a lack of ambition in my career and certainly don’t feel I achieved as much as I could have done. It wasn’t so common in the 80s for mothers to work full-time so I took maternity leave and then resigned from work. I was adamant that nobody would love my kids like I did so they were with me pretty much full time. Now, I look at the facilities my grandchildren enjoy at their daycare provision and think what a great opportunity they have to learn social skills and independence as well as enjoying facilities for painting, cooking etc. Now, I wish I had been able to take advantage of care outside the home in the early years. The obvious drawback is the cost – crippling unless you have a reasonably good salary. But never feel guilty about feeling you’re ‘abandoning them’ to progress your career.
So, we take the message that working is a positive endeavour and your kids will be just fine. Good, in fact. There’s no need to be carrying any guilt.
And yet, we should also take note of an implicit difference in the way The Matriarchs appear to have navigated the juggle.
You can have it all without doing it all at once
I wonder that one of the pressures our generation places upon itself is the idea that we have to manage a high-flying career and a young family all at once. I was struck that many of The Matriarchs’ career success stories included a qualifier along the lines of, ‘Once my kids were older…’.
It is generally that case that people are having kids later these days (my mum was medically considered a ‘geriatric mother’ at 26!). So, perhaps we don’t have as much ‘after’ kids time as The Matriarchs did, and perhaps we have got a bit deeper into our careers ‘before’. But somewhere there is a message for us to relax a bit and play the long game. Perhaps we don’t need to do it all at once to still end up feeling satisfied that we had it all.
I had, in many people’s eye, quite a high flying, important, well-paid career, but oh my goodness it caused me angst along the way and exhausted me. One interesting thing to note though is that I had many years only working a little bit, part-time in order to be with the children, as my husband travelled a lot. I went back to work properly when my youngest was 11. I realise I was lucky to be able to do this but my point is, don’t despair if you haven’t got there by your mid forties, I was only starting then!
Our lessons on working and juggling
Life demands a lot and the juggle can be hard, but we are not an especially hard-done-by generation.
Our kids are less affected by us juggling life around them that we might think they are.
Working-mother guilt is not necessary and does not serve you or your children.
Play the long game. You don’t need to do it all at once to feel like you got to have it all.