A couple of weeks ago I did a Father’s Day blog on dads. While I was writing, I had a nagging feeling that the picture I was painting was missing something vital. It was; my mum. The role my mum’s played in my life is best summed up like this: I’m pretty sure that without her guidance I’d still remember to walk, talk, think and breathe, but I can’t stake my life on it.
Whether single or one half of a couple, being a parent is a full-time job which superheroes juggle alongside life’s other demands, ably abetted by external childcare, nurseries, schools, activity clubs… the list goes on. Working mothers already tend to take on what Duncombe and Marsden coined a ‘triple shift’ in the home, combining paid work with emotional and domestic commitments. Now add lockdown to the mix. Having a school timetable to teach at home (with deadlines!) or coping with strong-willed teenagers caged indoors only scratches the surface of potential added mum stresses.
This week, friend and Head of The O2, Rebecca Martin let me peek-behind-the-curtain to understand her lockdown experience. With over 12 years’ in the sponsorship industry, she’s a professional force to be reckoned with. She’s also the mum of two young children, 3.5 years and 11 months old whose post-maternity leave childcare was due to start on March 23rd so she could head back to work. Does that date ring any bells?
On the evening of the 23rd, the UK was put into lockdown. I pushed back my start date in the hope that things would return to normal. I was avidly watching the news with alerts pinging on my phone every half an hour, but the inevitable happened. Lockdown got stricter. So I returned to work with no childcare and both my husband and I in full-time jobs.
My first day back at the office, well, my new ‘office’ at home, was interesting. Welcome back Zoom calls with children running in and out of the room (without trousers) preceded ‘diary offs’ with my husband each morning and roughly every hour thereafter as we debated whose meetings were more important. CBeebies and Paw Patrol were being played across every possible device, my house looked like it had been burgled by 9am every day and my Amazon basket was filling up by the minute with children’s toys.
A report published a month ago by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the UCL Institute of Education tells us that working mothers manage only one hour of uninterrupted paid work in lockdown for every three hours completed by fathers. It also reveals that mothers in England are more likely than fathers to have lost their jobs, adding to concerns that the pandemic will increase inequality and potentially the gender pay gap. Even in that context, Becks counts herself as one of the lucky ones albeit she’s had to master new levels of juggling and compromise. Fast.
After a couple of weeks, we started to find our groove. We split the day into morning and afternoon taking one each as primary child-carer. That plan, however, didn’t stop the constant feelings of guilt, failure and frustration. I felt guilty when I was upstairs working because I thought I should be with my kids. I felt guilty when it was my turn to look after the children because I thought I should be working. I felt like a failure for not doing either very well, and frustrated about not being able to focus on my career having chosen my family over it for the previous three years.
When you chat to Becks about her children, she glows. She couldn’t be a prouder mum or happier with her choices but finding the right balance between work and life is challenging. What’s reassuring is when others are open and honest like Becks was when she described the insecurities clogging her mind during her first maternity leave:
Should I be having children in my career at this time?
Will it hold me back from progressing?
Will all those more junior than me catch me up?
What if my maternity cover does a better job than me?
How will I cope with the return to work with a child?
Will I still want to return to work as a new mother?
What if I want a second baby? How long should I wait?
As an outsider, it’s baffling that this strong, smart, successful woman might have any doubts. Meanwhile, happily sitting inside your own head, you have a front row seat to the technicoloured extravaganza that is your own worry loop. But to acknowledge, share and confront your demons, before coming back stronger, is inspiring:
I suffered massively from ‘Imposter Syndrome’. I started to doubt all the work I had delivered and couldn’t help but think whilst I was gone everyone would prefer my maternity cover and feel they were doing a much better job than me. No one should feel like that. My best advice is to tell this inner thought to “go away” as it’s simply not true. Remain confident in your own ability and trust your colleagues to support you.
Some of Becks’ concerns come from more than a nagging inner critic. They’re reinforced by gendered employment patterns. An October 2019 study by the Universities of Bristol and Essex on how childbirth affects employment and career progression found that 26% of men are promoted or move to a better job in the five years after childbirth, versus 13% of women. Of the 12% of couples where the woman was the main breadwinner prior to a birth, in only 46% did she maintain this status three years later. Individual choices impact these statistics, but so too does the environment created by the employer:
Maternity packages vary significantly from company-to-company. Even within the sponsorship industry, I’ve had friends who have been offered between zero- and two-weeks full pay from their employer on top of their statutory maternity allowance and had to fight for more. That’s made them consider when to have children or whether to move jobs before they do.
At O2, we were one of the first companies to match paternity with maternity so now all fathers and mothers get 14 weeks paid leave which I think is a brilliant and bold move that will hopefully nudge others to follow suit. To be able to enjoy those first few months together, adjust to new routines, the lack of sleep and just be is needed and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Cue: lockdown. 13 weeks in, we’ve all had to adjust to, or at least accept, new routines. The calm – although occasionally stark in its inactivity – has given time for pause, reflection and learning.
I’ve found positives from this tedious, monotonous, stressful, never-ending situation. Companies have spoken about “flexible working” for some time, but have they ever really meant it or truly understood that it can be done successfully? The answer is probably no.
This pandemic has forced many of us to be home-workers, so companies have had no choice but to trust their workforce to still get the job done. The right products and technology have been available for years, yet it’s only now we seem to have mastered the art of video calls for meetings, writing presentations at home (and managing to email them via our internet), working just as productively wearing our slippers as in heels… With advances in technology being rolled out across the country this year, 5G will enable even more to be done from our homes.
Suddenly it’s a whole new list of questions front of mind for Becks, who works at the coalface of technological progress…
Could the rush hour be a thing of the past?
Could our commute be to our home office?
Could parents see their children before school and get to help them with their homework?
Could there really be such a thing as work-life balance?
Could our capital city suddenly start to be a little less frantic?
Could commercial properties be left empty?
Could there be more opportunities for those who can’t afford to live in cities?
For frontline mums, lockdown working choices have literally been life-threatening. For others, while lockdown initially seemed like an unsettling emergency stop, it may actually be a welcome pause on a long journey offering a chance en masse to regroup and course correct. It’s given new perspective on what we take for granted that only a few months ago would have seemed beyond believable reality.
The day-to-day stresses of work pressure, conference calls, deadlines and office politics pale in comparison to our health being on the line. I hope that our ‘new normal’ involves us all remembering to take life a little slower, be a little more understanding and a little kinder to one another and, just as importantly, to be a little kinder to ourselves. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to look at our life with different eyes, stop, breathe and understand what matters.
Sometimes we have to choose to let ourselves off the hook, because we can be our own worst, and most destructive, critic. Not easy when irrational fears cause us to freeze in our tracks. What’s easier is to help one another, to encourage, support and motivate friends, family and colleagues, to be their ally and an advocate for them to them.
My advice for any mother who’s had a break from work be it maternity leave, a career break or redundancy is to talk to people as much as possible. Keep in touch with those at your workplace or within the industry so you feel like you’re not missing out and, when returning to work, be clear on your working parameters as a parent. Too often we hide behind our fears and listen to the voice inside our head telling us we aren’t good enough or can’t ask for what we want or need, but we can. Be confident, be bold and just ask. Especially now, companies will be more flexible and supportive so don’t be afraid to speak up. There can be balance.
There’s a groundswell of hope that work-life balance will change for the better post-lockdown. Could the community spirit that has built up last, encouraging collaboration and shared learning in place of competition and resistance?
Against the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis both physical and psychological safety have become more vulnerable. Does the endless multitasking that mums are doing leave them space to look after themselves? The pandemic has been calling the shots until now, but what if we strip that power away from it by working with our organisations to take back control?
The virus doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, but that should galvanise us, not inhibit us. More mothers and fathers than ever are working efficiently and effectively from home while simultaneously caring for children. That proves we have options. We can learn to flex our lives and our work to complement one another, while also delivering top quality output for our employers. We may feel like our choices have been removed in lockdown, but in reality perhaps they’ve been blown wide open.
Katie Traxton is an ESA Board Director and Chief Communications Officer at Formula E. She was previously Managing Partner at WeAreFearless, ESA’s Pan-Europe Sponsorship Agency of the Year.