My Family and Other Globalizers | On the other side of working mom guilt

Balance is something to be achieved over the two-odd decades that children are the mainstays in their parents’ lives. (Representational image: Paico Oficial via Unsplash)

Note to readers: My Family and Other Globalizers is a weekly parenting column on bringing up global citizens.

What’s the hardest thing in the world to do? Resisting chocolate cake. Bungee jumping. Getting into medical school. Faking interest as your spouse tells you the same story he’s been repeating for the last 20 years. All of these are reasonable contenders. But none of them is the correct answer, for that badge of distinction and toil belongs to being a working mom.

Work-life balance for the mother who also works outside the home, is as chimerical as, well, the chimera. It tends to feel like every decision you make is a bad one. At work you feel guilty about ignoring your babe. When your child looks at you with saucer-round eyes and says, “Why are you always so busy, mama?”,  the sound of your heart breaking is so loud, you wonder why everyone can’t hear it.

At home, you worry about falling behind your peers. There was a time I had to cancel a trip to China the day before I was scheduled to give an address to a think tank, because our nanny abruptly quit. I let down the organizers who had already paid for all the logistics, and worst of all, I felt I’d let down myself by having had to forgo an important opportunity.

In short, mom guilt is about never feeling good enough, even as you run breathless, just to stand still.

I remember having to wean Nico off the breast when he was about six months old, so I could get back to my job as Europe correspondent for a leading Indian newspaper. He hated making the switch to the bottle and refused to eat from it for several days. It was possibly the worst week of my life as I battled the self-loathing generated by the idea that I was putting my career ahead of my baby.

The fact is that small kids do crave their moms. When my boys were toddlers, I had to pretend not to be in the house even when I was, so that I could write. The moment they got a whiff of my presence, I had to kiss goodbye to getting anything done other than being with them.

But now that the fog of early motherhood has cleared, it’s hard to overstress just how glad I am that I persevered in the seemingly impossible juggling act of career and kids. Prioritizing my career - not all the time, but on occasion - has made my boys more independent and resilient. They won’t always tell me to my face, but they’re super proud of my achievements. I’ve overheard them bragging to their friends about my work. Like their dad, I inspire them to be ambitious for themselves.

And they realize that they are not the centre of the universe; a fact more boys could do with awareness of. Children need to be educated into a belief system where the burdens and sacrifices of caregiving are not solely seen as a mother’s responsibility. Not just theoretically, but by the lived experience of having to step up and take on responsibilities when said mothers are otherwise occupied.

According to a 2018 study by Harvard Business School professor Kathleen McGinn that looked at 100,000 people across 29 countries, the daughters of working mothers were more successful in their own careers than the daughters of stay-at-home mothers, and just as happy. Even more interestingly for me, given that I have boys, the sons of working moms spent an extra 50 minutes each week caring for family members compared to those of stay-at-home mothers. They also held significantly more egalitarian gender attitudes - even more so than the daughters of working mothers.

And yet, a 2020 survey carried out by UN Women in India showed that 68 percent of female respondents and 69 percent of the men surveyed believed that children would suffer if a mother worked for pay.

I’m not sure what evidence these opinions are based on, but what I do know for sure is that the phrase “having it all”, which prominently features in the endless debates about whether or not women can successfully balance careers and children, is hopelessly misleading. No one can have it all. But everyone can have different bits and bobs of “all” at different points in their lives. What’s important is the arch of one’s life, rather than a snapshot at one point of it.

Balance is something to be achieved over the two-odd decades that children are the mainstays in their parents’ lives. During that time periods of imbalance, of having more of one thing than the other, are inevitable. But so what? We’re talking about parents, not trapeze artists.