My Ambition Just Has Different Boundaries Now

Becoming a mom changed the way I think about work, balance, and what a successful career is supposed to look like.

I’ve tried a few different things when it comes to building a career after having a kid.

I tried going back to work full-time for six months. I tried a part-time job and stayed home with my son on the other days.

Then I tried full-time again and eventually realized that five days wasn’t working well for my family or my health. Still figuring that one out.

When I was on maternity leave, I wrote a collaborative article where I interviewed other working professionals about balancing careers and kids.

There were so many great tips and pieces of advice that came out of that article.

But fast-forward a few years, and now that I’ve actually been doing the working-mom thing myself, I’m not sure “balance” is the word I would use anymore.

I don’t think balance is the target.

Some weeks, my job gets more of me. Some weeks, my family does.

I haven’t been able to show up 100%… okay, sometimes not even 50% for both at the same time. And I think accepting that has been one of the hardest parts for me.

Especially as a recovering perfectionist.

I spent the first few years of my career believing that if I wanted to get ahead, I had to give 110%.

Stay late. Come in early. Take on all the projects. Be a yes woman.

And that strategy worked when I didn’t have a son.

I learned immensely. I received amazing mentorship. I was given opportunities as a junior that I don’t think every junior gets.

But when I came back after having my son, I struggled.

That strategy didn’t work for me anymore.

I couldn’t just overcommit and then rearrange the rest of my life to make those commitments happen.

For a while, that made me feel like I was failing on both sides.

On one side of the coin, I wasn’t showing up as the version of the “best employee” I had created in my head.

On the other, I felt like the worst mom.

I felt like I was missing too many milestones. I couldn’t believe how much faster time seemed to move once I went back to work.

It felt like I looked up one day after finishing a few big projects and somehow my son was already half a year older.

That really saddened me.

So I decided to try something different.

I took a part-time job and changed fields, moving into an area I was still passionate about but that offered more opportunities for casual and part-time work rather than the traditional Monday-to-Friday schedule.

I loved that job.

The funny thing is, I loved it so much that I found a whole new thing to feel guilty about.

When childcare was cancelled, we were sick or had an appointment and I needed to call in, I felt like I was letting down people I genuinely cared about. It was a small organization without a lot of backup coverage, and I hated the thought of programs potentially being cancelled because I couldn’t be there.

If I’m being completely honest, I also missed some of the strategic work from my old career.

The job I was doing was really fun, but I had gone from work that involved constant strategy and the satisfaction of solving complex problems to something very different. As much as I loved what I was doing, I realized I missed that part of myself too.

Eventually, I decided to go back to my roots.

I found a job that wasn’t corporate but brought me back into an office environment and the type of work I had done before.

It’s been going well, but eventually I started feeling those five days catch up with me again.

It reminded me that the traditional five-day schedule doesn’t always fit neatly alongside caregiving and health needs.

I’m in the process of trying to work through a solution on that. So I haven’t given up yet.

But I still haven’t found the magical balance I thought I was supposed to find as a working mom.

And sometimes that has made me feel like I’m failing.

I’m starting to wonder if what I’ve been calling a personal failure is actually, at least in part, a structural problem.

So much of traditional full-time work still seems to operate as though someone else is available to absorb everything that happens at home during the workday.

The sick child. The specialist appointment. The daycare closure. The school event. The unexpected phone call that starts with, “Hi, this is daycare…”

Then, a few days after caring for that sick child, it’s your turn to be out of commission.

Rinse and repeat.

But in many families, there isn’t a mysterious “someone else.”

Both parents work.

And somehow, between those two jobs, families have to figure out who has the benefits, who has the better paid time off, whose schedule is more flexible, whose income can take the hit and who is going to answer when daycare calls.

I think we need to talk about that more.

Because the thing is, at least in my experience, my husband and I have tried to “evenly split the load.”

It hasn’t worked.

And through informal conversations with other working moms, I’ve realized it’s not just us.

One thing that comes up often where I live—which is a rural, smaller community—is how much benefits and the structure of each parent’s job factor into these decisions.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons women work: financial independence, career aspirations, mental stimulation, passion for what they do and countless others.

But I’ve also heard women talk about staying in particular roles because their family needs the health benefits attached to them that their partner’s job doesn’t provide.

That dynamic exists in my own family.

My husband works in the trades. His job pays reasonably well, but because he works for a small family-owned business, he doesn’t have the same health benefits or paid time off that I’ve generally had working in office roles.

So when our son is sick or daycare closes, I generally take the day.

Not to mention, my husband starts his workday at 6 a.m. By the time my son wakes up, my husband is already unpacked at a job site somewhere, and it’s not usually a quick turnaround to come back home.

I don’t do the mornings or the sick days because we sat down and decided they were inherently Mom’s responsibility.

It’s because when you look at the practicalities of our two jobs, it often makes more financial and logistical sense for me to be the one who stays home.

And I suspect there are countless versions of that calculation happening in families every morning.

Every job comes with different advantages and limitations. Every family has different resources, finances, childcare arrangements and support systems.

There probably isn’t one workplace model that will solve all of that.

But I do think talking more openly about the realities of working caregivers can move us toward something better.

The labour market will continue to ebb and flow. Sometimes employers have more leverage; sometimes employees do.

But regardless of where that pendulum happens to be sitting, families still have to function.

And I think it’s time we talked more openly about the fact that conventional workplace models simply don’t work equally well for every family.

That doesn’t mean everyone needs a reduced workweek.

It doesn’t mean everyone needs to work from home.

It doesn’t mean every employee gets to design their dream schedule without considering the needs of the organization.

Flexibility can start much smaller than that.

Maybe it means creating a safe space for employees to talk about when a structure isn’t working for them and exploring what alternatives might be possible.

Maybe it means approaching conversations about flexibility with curiosity about what might actually be possible, rather than starting from whether a change would cause inconvenience.

Maybe it means recognizing that the employee who can’t stay late or work every hour anymore isn’t necessarily less ambitious than they were before.

Maybe their ambition just has different boundaries now.

That’s something I’ve had to learn about myself.

I still care about my career.

I still want to learn.

I still want to contribute.

I still want to do work that matters to me and has an impact on my broader community.

But I also want a work schedule that reflects the reality of this stage of my life.

For a long time, I thought wanting those things meant I had become less career-driven.

Because there is still a message working mothers hear, sometimes explicitly and sometimes more subtly: having children will make you less committed to your career.

I don’t think that’s the message we should be giving women who want children. 

The message shouldn’t be, “If you have a kid(s), you’re out.”

Maybe the question should be: How do we welcome someone’s skills and experience back into the workplace without treating maximum availability as the measure of their commitment?

How do we focus more on output and less on whether everyone can provide the exact same inputs?

How do we protect legitimate operational needs while still creating workplaces that include people with caregiving responsibilities?

How can we share resources, cross-train, rethink coverage or structure work in ways that give caregivers more flexibility without simply transferring the burden to their colleagues or the organization?

I think there are answers to those questions.

But first, we have to feel empowered to ask them.

My definition of a successful career has changed since becoming a mom.

So has my definition of a successful structure.

It doesn’t mean I care about my career less.

I’ve just stopped believing that success has to require giving every part of myself to it.

I’ve also started believing that it’s okay to advocate and take up space as a working caregiver.

And maybe that’s where our conversation about “balance” needs to change too.

Instead of asking working parents how they balance everything, maybe we should start asking why we’ve built a system that requires them to become so good at juggling in the first place.