The mom resume.

Almost 3 years ago to the day, I wrote an article on LinkedIn called “the mom resume”. At that time I had already spent a year diving deep into the challenges that women face when motherhood & career collide. Today, at the tail end of the pandemic (fingers crossed), mothers are battling more than ever to be heard, to be understood, and are demanding changes in the workplace that have historically catered to an outdated model of men “providing” while women stay at home to do the “caring”. Pre-covid, the trends highlight the truth which is that the number of dual-earner couples is on the rise and the number of working mothers with children under 18 hit an all time high of 70%. On top of this, we have an increase in personal caregiving for aging family members, time spent parenting is on the rise (did you know that working mothers today spend more time “parenting” than stay-at home mothers did in the 1970’s? Uhhh yah. I know, right?), adult children are more often living with parents, the cost to raise one child continues to rise at an astronomical pace, and with 24/7 connectivity the number of working hours continues to be unbearable. Needless to say American mothers are on full overload and something has to change. The caregiving crisis was upon us before Covid, and now with almost 3 million women having left the workplace in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic (the majority of whom are mothers), the realities have smacked us in the face. Policies, structures, and programs within our country and within our organizations and institutions need to change. Women should not have to choose between motherhood or career simply because the work environment is ill-suited and unequipped to support the dual nature of caregiving and work. Almost every employee will be faced with caregiving responsibilities at some point during their work tenure and companies are losing $35 billion a year due to costs associated with employees’ caregiving because there are no structures in place to support. Somethings got to give, and unfortunately right now, its mothers.

More on this in coming posts but, for now, here is THE MOM RESUME…

It all changed when I became a mom. Certainly not my ambition, nor my desire to continue learning, nor my hopes & dreams, but what my resume would say and how (or if) it would even matter that my most recent formal job would have a finite end date according to my resume. On paper, I veered off my career path. I abruptly jumped out of an “always-on-an-airplane-travel-centric-work-lifestyle” kind of career in order to try to be the best mother that I could be, what society would deem a “good mother” … one always available to her children. Opt-in/Opt-out, Lean-in/Lean-out are all semantics that we could spend hours debating. For me, it was a simple choice at the time. I couldn’t do/be both. Corporate America offered nothing in the way of support and I had a beautiful baby to care for. It was very black and white.

But, it’s really not so simple. It’s not so black and white from both a practical and psychological perspective. It’s grey, yes, but its also mauve and turquoise, burnt orange and tangerine.

Being a mother, a parent, changes our dynamic with work. It shifts our focus in ways that offer us deep clarity and purpose. So why then does becoming a mother so often set us back when instead, it should propel us forward? We become more efficient, we become better at multi-tasking, we become more patient and more grateful and better at delegating and leading. We become humble and more human, we become a better worker, a better listener, and a better leader. We shouldn't have to choose between being a mother and pursuing career goals. Period.

Yes, I am a mother who has volunteered in classrooms, caught her child’s vomit in her bare hands when a trash can wasn’t nearby (gross yes), proselytized the reduction in homework for elementary aged children, managed appointments, activities and emotions not just my own, but those of my family and children. I am indeed a mother, a loving mother to her children, but society rarely looks past the mother part, the supposed pinnacle in a woman’s life.

But motherhood is not the last pinnacle, not an end point, and we are so much more than a label.

For me, I spent nearly two decades building an international marketing career that required a focus on the unique dynamics of growing business in markets where culture, language, demographics and local/global economics played a leading role in decision making. I lived in Africa and Latin America and led cross-cultural teams in those regions as well as within Europe and Asia for both public, and start-up ventures. All of this, combined with motherhood and my current work is the full and complete fabric of me.

I cannot compartmentalize my life into the "mother" or "other" bucket. I am a mother who puts every ounce of herself into whatever is in front, a woman who has "opted" and who has "leaned" both in and out and around. LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, Instagram profile, twitter profile; it’s all the same me.

And all the other mothers I know? Wow, they are incredible. They spent years in medical school fine tuning a life-saving craft, they learned the art of critiquing well known authors in their high powered Manhattan publishing career, they have learned second and third languages and negotiated cross-border deals, they have refined the art of speaking to terrified parents whose 2.5 lb NICU baby is barely hanging on, and they have developed non-profits from the ground up to help others less fortunate. They are photographers and lawyers, teachers and judges, scientists and athletes to name but a few. They are all of these things and yet more.

But so often, we only recognize them as mothers. The label with accolades and stigma attached, a veil hiding the fullness of who are as individuals.

So, let’s be real and stop penalizing the mothers who are raising our next generation of leaders by forcing them to make choices between careers and motherhood because work is not set up in a way to support mothers. We need these women, these mothers, forging new pathways at work and in life. We need their life experiences and perspectives to create a world that is better for everyone. This generation and the next will demand that they have flexible work schedules to accommodate critical times in their child’s life, they will demand proper family leave policies for both mothers and fathers, and they will demand equal pay and equal workplace rights.

THIS is what our generation can do now ... pave the way for our children so that they don’t have to make a career decision based on parenthood or a parenthood decision based on their career.

So together, let’s craft a generation of women who can be the full expression of their individuality embodying both work and motherhood. We have the right to be incredible and unlabeled.

My resume is me, all of me.

Adapted from original which was published by Kristi Rible Scobie on March 7, 2018 on LinkedIn here.