I remember when you sat the team down for your first meeting. We all started chatting and the conversation quickly turned to family. You stared at us all and said: “It just isn’t possible to do our jobs well and be committed with young children.” You explained that this is why when your kids were younger you had employed a nanny.
You were clearly setting the expectation that we should put our jobs first. A few of my colleagues who worked part-time because of family found your speech unsettling. We were in high-pressured and demanding roles, and thought we had a boss who knew what it was like to walk in our shoes. Little did we know that you were not interested in being flexible or understanding.
My time with you was challenging. You had a way of assigning tasks so it was difficult to work from home, or for me to go to my kids’ after-school activities. I missed out on a lot and constantly felt guilty. Once my son innocently asked why I hadn’t made it to his school play, saying “all the other mummies had been there” and I felt terrible.
I wish I had spoken up. I wish I had told you after your speech that because I have children, it sometimes means I may have to leave meetings early to pick them up. That sometimes I will have to take time off work because they are ill, or I have to go and watch them in a performance. That if you understood the pressure of rushing through traffic to do a school run in another town, before you get slapped with charges for extended childcare, you would be sympathetic.
I wish I could tell you that despite the challenges with childcare I put in more effort than others with less challenging situations – and that effort was not recognised. If anything you penalised me for making the most of my hours and getting on with things while I was at work instead of joining in with office gossip. I wish you could have measured my work output, instead of my attempts to plan work around my parental responsibilities.
One day I realised that motherhood wasn’t going away – and it didn’t have to be so hard. I decided I wasn’t going to carry the guilt of taking time off to look after my children because every boss, even those without kids, was once somebody’s child. The fact that you used my kids against me in performance appraisals is awful. You too were once a child and needed that support from your parents.
Work can wait but family won’t – and no one ever laid on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time at work. If someone does get ill they will be lucky to have family around looking after them. By contrast, the moment someone is seriously ill at work they are replaced without a second thought.
I’m a mum first and a project manager second. It doesn’t mean I’m any less capable or less ambitious, it just means I won’t have my children being the last ones at the school gate past closing time. It means I am capable of looking after my children, managing my time and delivering great results. What I cannot be is in two places at once – and if I have to choose one it will always be with my children.
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