A new mom becomes a working mom
Every day looks different to me now that I'm a working parent.
Before finally landing a spot in day care for my daughter, it was juggling an infant, meetings, walking the dog and my husband’s work schedule. Sometimes that meant startwhile ing work before the baby woke up and finishing after she fell asleep.
Now there are days we have a full workday with the baby in someone else’s care. Other days, the baby has stayed home – due to her own sickness or day care closures. One recent week, I edited stories with my laptop on my knee my feverish baby girl slept on me.
Balancing working and parenting at the same time is not a new concept. But as a first-time parent, it’s been a relationship I’ve been navigating for several months now, as Julia nears her first birthday. I never feel like I completely nail both roles at once. It’s a plate-balancing act that I perform better some days than others.
There are a lot of positives in my corner, I recognize. While it’s a big expense, we can afford day care for the baby. I am able to work from home, which means those days when day care isn’t avail
able, it’s not as much of a scramble. My husband also can work from home – and is an equal partner in just about everything. We’ve got supportive coworkers and family nearby in case of emergencies. We still have our jobs two years into a global pandemic. I know how lucky we are.
The percentage of mothers in the workforce has been on the decline, particularly during the pandemic when parenting while working has also butted up against virtual schooling and child care facility closures. The participation of women with children in the labor force – meaning those working or actively looking for work – dropped to 71 percent in 2020, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That reflects a decline of 1 percentage point from the year before.
During that time, the percentage of fathers actively in the labor force also dropped 1 percentage point to 92.3 percent. Women with children younger than 18 were less likely to be engaged in the workforce than men.
Statistically and anecdotally, women take the brunt of the child care burden – that’s no surprise. It’s widely reported that working mothers have been more impacted than their male counterparts regarding work-life balance over the last two years.
In the first few months after my maternity leave ended and we couldn’t find a day care spot, it was a lot — caring for an infant on top of a full shift at work felt like doing two jobs at once (because it was). And we didn’t even have to factor in math homework or virtual play dates. But between meetings and during interviews, we chased around a just-starting-to-crawl intrepid explorer. I'm thankful for video meetings where I didn’t have to turn on the camera or coworkers would have been watching me feed the baby or distract her with stuffed animals.
There were a lot of times when I thought, to myself and out loud, how do single parents do it? Of course, I knew the answer to that question, as a child of divorce.
I was a latchkey kid for a lot of my grade school years, with my mom driving a school bus and getting home after our own bus driver dropped us off. When I was even younger my mom bartended, and my twin sister and I would spend afternoons in a side room from the main bar eating unsauced chicken wings and watching cartoons while my mom pulled taps for a couple hours.
My dad, an electrician, would sometimes bring my sister and me to jobs, mainly newer construction projects. We’d go with him to the big-box stores while he bought light bulbs and fixtures, and I loved looking at the pendant light displays. When we were on site, we’d stay in the truck or stay out of the way.
It’s what worked for us.
I don’t always feel like I'm on even footing, balancing working and parenting. I feel like I can’t spend enough time with my child, with work in the way. But for many, work is a necessity, a way to pay for all the expenses of living, to make it a little easier when there is time for family.
So we forge on. I will too, even though some days I would rather snuggle my baby all day and listen to her babble. But then I answer another email, edit another story and remember how valuable the time is that I do get to spend with her.