Strong as a Mother

This year on Mother’s Day, I got two cards: one from my husband and one from my kids. When I opened the first, I immediately smiled. Across the front it read: “Strong As a Mother.” When I opened the second, I was moved. With surprise, I realized it was the exact same card. On the inside it said, “Your love is a force for good, not only for our family, but for the world too.”

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While I loved what was written on the cards and how aligned it was to my work, it was what my family wrote on the inside that really got to me. They described the things they most admire about me. They said I help them grow so much. They talked about how strong they think I am. They thanked me for always being there for them. They told me that I help them feel confident. And they said that I am an amazing role model for them. As I choked back tears, it hit me that maybe it was time for me to reconsider my working parent guilt.

Like many working parents, I have spent plenty of time worrying about the impact that my work has on my family. When I am gone for travel or work late, it’s easy to fall into the trap of wondering if I’m giving enough of myself at home. When I snap at them because I’m stressed or when I hurry them along because I am out of patience, it’s easy to tell myself that I’m just not cut out for this whole parenting gig. But my Mother’s Day cards were an important reminder that the stories I sometimes tell myself are just that: stories. They’re usually not a reflection of my reality or of how my family sees things. In the moments when I feel like I’m being pulled in competing directions and sinking in a sea of chaos, what my family sees isn’t failure — it’s strength.

This poignant experience left me wondering how many of us as working mothers, fathers, and caregivers are telling ourselves stories that aren’t serving us. I thought of my colleague who recently shared that she had stayed up until 4am the night before a work trip making meals for the week because she didn’t want her family to feel inconvenienced by her absence. I thought about the story of a working mother distressing store-bought cookies to make them appear homemade for a school bake sale. I remembered the commitment of a working dad who dedicated every moment of free time he had in the month before Halloween to make elaborate costumes for his kids. I reminded myself of all of the ways it’s possible to feel (and tell ourselves) we’re never enough. And in the process, I found myself thinking about the very opposite: how so many of the things that can prompt intense guilt for working parents in fact allow us to model incredibly important skills for our kids.

Glancing at those matching cards from my family, I felt connected to my values. And proud of being a mom AND a woman with a career. I was reminded that our strengths in our working lives can feed our strengths as parents and caregivers if we let them. By noticing the skills we use to overcome challenges, we can share important lessons with our families and our communities.

Strong at Home

So what skills can working parents look to as a reminder of their strength in the hard moments? And how can we draw on them to raise the next generation of leaders?

Resilience

Working while also parenting or caregiving can quite simply be really hard and exhausting. As anyone who’s done so knows, the overall weight of responsibility is sometimes difficult to bear. But when we do difficult things, we build resilience. Overcoming challenges, discovering new capacities in ourselves, and persisting despite the inevitable obstacles are critical life skills. By developing resilience in ourselves, we can model it for those around us. Resilience in the face of difficulty is what allows our kids to learn in school, to overcome social challenges, and to be the best versions of themselves that they can be. And when we role model resilience at work, our teams learn to thrive as well.

Agility

There’s nothing quite like switching from an afternoon work meeting to overseeing toddler bath time when it comes to building the skill of shifting seamlessly between roles. As workers and caregivers, we are many things to many people. Navigating these different identities encourages us, and those around us, to be flexible, adaptable, and agile. And as most working caregivers know, the best laid plans rarely go as hoped. The ability to roll with the punches, manage through chaos, and embrace the figurative and literal messiness of life can’t be underestimated either at home or in the workplace.

Managing Trade-offs

Balancing competing responsibilities means making hard choices. Trade-offs are an inevitable part of life and we can’t be everything to everyone at all times. Knowing when and where to say no allows us to build and model the skill of setting boundaries. Making tough choices sometimes also requires accepting less-than-fun consequences. The next time our kids choose between joining the school soccer team or having an extra afternoon a week with downtime, they’ll have a model for how it's done, and how to sit with the result.

Independence

There are a lot of controversies in parenting. But here’s one piece of research that is crystal clear: kids who have chores at home from an early age have higher self-esteem, a greater sense of responsibility, and improved ability to cope with frustration. Working parents have less time for housework that often feels ideal. But families thrive when everyone — including kids as young as 2 or 3 — share in household responsibilities. Remind yourself of it when your pre-teen next grumbles about being reminded to empty the dishwasher! And remind yourself at work that when you willingly delegate, you are giving team members a chance to learn and grow as well.

Letting Go of Control

We can only instill independence if we are willing to let go of control. When we try to do it all, we prevent others from stepping in and gaining new skills — whether that’s tying their shoes or taking on greater responsibilities at work. When we let go of control in areas where we’re less needed, we can also refocus our attention where we’re most valuable to others in overcoming challenges and getting things done.

Self-care

Working parents and caregivers are undeniably under a lot of pressure. It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling selfish for taking time out to take care of yourself — especially for working mothers. But modeling self-care teaches our kids, our communities, and our employees to take care of themselves, too. Every bit as important as modeling how to set boundaries is knowing how and when to ask for help.

Asking Smart Questions

Great leaders ask smart questions, and this is as valuable at home as at work. When we ask thoughtful questions, we avoid making assumptions and help ourselves and others get to the bottom of things efficiently. Don’t assume you need to do it all. Next time your kid has a choir concert, ask them whether it’s important to them for you to come, and decide accordingly. Maybe they don’t care about the choir concert as much as you suspected but will be devastated if you missed their soccer game. Whether you’re trying to understand a colleague’s performance, or making choices at home, asking smart questions is powerful.

Strong at Work

There are times as parents and caregivers when we bend over backwards and do frankly ridiculous things to reassure ourselves that we are not failing. But we don’t have to stay up late into the night baking to feel confident that we’re giving our kids and communities exactly what they need. By being strong and empathetic leaders ourselves, we are showing others how to be their best selves, too.

If caregivers have to challenge themselves to let go, employers also have an important role to play. The skills required to get toddlers out of the bathtub, to get pre-teens to unload the dishwasher, to relate gracefully to our partners, and to make all of the pieces work with some degree of harmony, are also the skills required to be a great leader at work. And smart employers know it.

Employees who have the space and support to be the family and community members they want to be also do their best at work. When we stop seeing the worlds of work and home as a site of conflict, we can instead appreciate their synergies. And by doing so, everyone benefits.

When it comes to raising future leaders and building the kinds of communities we want to live and work in, the stakes are high. Next time I find myself wondering whether I should cancel an important work trip to make my kid’s soccer tournament, I’ll think back to my Mother’s Day and the resounding support from my kids to be “Strong As a Mother”. I hope you do, too.

By Teresa Hopke, Contributor