All Mothers are Working Mothers

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Moms 👏 work 👏 hard 👏

The phrase “working mother” is redundant. Being a mother might be the toughest job you will ever have. But, thinking about how you’ll balance your career before the stork arrives can make taking on the job as mom go more smoothly. Now that you’ve written down your 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10 year family goals, let’s see how those goals align with your career goals.

To work or not to work?

The choice of whether to go back to your pre-baby job or focus on your new full-time position as a mommy is such a personal one—and it’s a financial one, too. Former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer kicked off an international debate on parental leave when she opted for a brief maternity leave of two weeks after she gave birth to her twin daughters in 2015, giving her employees the heads up that she would be “working throughout” her absence. Other women opt for the full maternity leave offered by their employer. Some women leave the workforce until their kids enter the K-12 system, choosing to be at home with them until they are at school all day. Some take the leap to work from home, either negotiating this arrangement with their employer or going into business for themselves. And still others leave the workforce and take on another full-time job—being a mom—permanently.

Don’t wait until you’re pregnant to ask yourself these two questions to help narrow it down to which options might be best for you, your family, your finances, and your career:

1. What’s our household cost-benefit analysis for each form of child care?

2. What’s the shelf-life of my skill set?

These questions are best taken together, as they inform each other and your career moves post-baby. The first one can really be simplified as: How much money do we, as a household, have coming in versus how much money would we have going out for each child care option? And the second one is a question of which skills are available to you now, and how on top of your game you will be after stepping out of the workforce for one, three, five, ten years—maybe more.

Let me share two examples from two friends who have taken slightly different routes in this regard. My friend Abby lives in San Francisco and has worked for years as a teacher at a private school. Her husband is an advertising executive, and they own their home. All of this is to say, hey— they’re doing pretty well! When they had their first child, Abby took the full twelve weeks off (it was summer vacation, so it turned out to be perfect timing) and then started the school year back at work full-time. Because nannies in San Francisco are so expensive, they opted for a “nanny share” with three other families in their neighborhood. But the money they were spending on child care quickly outpaced the money Abby was bringing home from work, and soon they were underwater. After that first school year, Abby decided to leave her job and care for her daughter full time—a move that actually saved her family money.

With another child now on the way, it makes even more sense for Abby to stay at home rather than shelling out for day care times two. However, she plans to go back to work once both kids are in the K-12 system. As a teacher with years of experience (not to mention tons of time spent around kids every single day!), she feels confident that she’ll be able to jump back into the classroom, maybe a bit rusty but still on top of her game.

Now, let’s look at another friend, Emily. Emily and her husband are both high-powered accountants making a great living in Chicago. When they had their first kid, Emily took her full twelve weeks off too, and then, knowing that child care would be expensive and also planning on having another kid right away, decided to leave the work force temporarily. However, as an accountant, Emily has to get recertified regularly, stay on top of new policies, and interface with clients. After two full years out of the workforce, she felt herself falling years behind . . . and she and her husband agreed that the amount of money they were saving by having her at home to watch the kids wasn’t worth her taking ten steps back in her career, only to jump back into the workforce down the road at a lower paygrade. So they opted for a regular nanny so she could go back to work full-time (albeit working from home on Fridays, for which she successfully negotiated with her employer). Now back in the swing of things, she recently got another promotion, which will cover the nanny and allow them to save for baby #2. Talk about super mommy!

The main takeaway here is that family planning does not and should not occur in a vacuum. You need to take the long view, leaving extra time as a buffer for things to go wrong (which, inevitably, they will). Want to have three kids? Well, it can be difficult enough getting pregnant the first time, and if you have to repeat the process three times over you could be looking at a decade-long process of building out your family. The same goes for child care; don’t just think about the next year (although hey, when we’re talking about having a newborn baby at home I don’t blame you for thinking about life one. day. at. a. time). I’ll say it again: this should be more of a long-term strategy, as opposed to a short-term one.

xo,

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