recently, I spoke with Tim Carney.The author of “Family Unfriendly,” he discusses how corporate life and culture in America make it difficult for families, especially large families, to thrive.
This paper stayed with me and changed the way I thought about the work-life dichotomy. Following this thought, I went to meet with Founder and CEO of Regina Bethancourt. Tenuto Consultingis a company that provides research-based branding solutions for higher education institutions and mission-based organizations.
Regina told me: She organized her life and her business to accommodate her large family, and the reason for this is She believes that to be true. With a little courage and creativity, it is possible to be a stay-at-home mom and still work professionally.
Helen Roy
“You can’t have it all” is a common objection to sharing my goals for my personal and professional life trajectory. You have to choose: pursue a career path that limits the number of kids you have (or abandons the idea of motherhood altogether) or settle for a stay-at-home life, usually complete with homeschooling, gingham dresses, and sourdough bread.
Both paths can be rewarding and deeply satisfying in their own right, especially for women who feel a special calling to embody both lifestyles. But many women find their options too limited. Career-oriented women often lament the lack of time they would like to spend with their children, while many stay-at-home moms crave professional or intellectual outlets to expand that side of their personality.
Job options for middle-class mothers are nearly nonexistent. They often take jobs well below their skill level and salary range, hoping for a little flexibility and a boss who won’t blame them for staying home to look after a child with an ear infection. They also get caught up in pyramid schemes that specifically target them, and end up exploiting rather than supporting them.
It took me starting my own branding and marketing company to find the flexibility to pursue a rewarding professional life while still being able to spend time with my kids. As my company took off, I realized I could extend this opportunity to other women by inviting them onto my team and allowing them to experience the same flexibility I was able to create for myself.
Now, as a team, we are on a mission to change the way mothers approach work: internally, by expanding our client portfolio and employing more mothers in the mid-level, and externally, by inspiring other CEOs and employers to implement policies that work for mothers.
Here are some tips to open doors of opportunity for moms.
Don’t tie your compensation to the hours you work
Nothing is more limiting than the common belief that the value of our work is determined by the amount of time it takes to complete it. In our field of branding, sometimes the idea for a logo will suddenly come to us and be completed in 10 minutes. Other times the concept will take longer to develop, the inspiration won’t strike, and it may take a week or two of trial and error before the final logo begins to take shape.
Is the second logo more valuable than the first?
If employees’ compensation is determined by the number of hours they work, it naturally favors employees who work the most hours. Mothers will naturally work fewer hours because of the demanding physical and material demands of motherhood.
But research shows that mothers Greatly improved productivity Moms spend more time at work than other moms, so by offering them work that is tied to deliverables rather than hours (say, 10 social graphics and 5 flyers a week), moms have the option to be properly and accurately compensated for their work while also spending less time at work and more time with their kids. A win-win.
Full-time doesn’t mean 9 to 5 Monday to Friday
Related to the time culture of the modern workplace is the idea that work must be done at a specific time and in a specific place. Sure, some scheduling is necessary to make time to discuss projects and ideas, either in person or virtually, but the idea that work should be done between 9 and 5 is a relic of a bygone era.
At Tenuto, we require you to set aside a minimum of 20% of your free time during your regular working hours just for client calls and internal team meetings. The rest of your free time is up to you to manage according to your own convenience and schedule.
Some of our team members work only evenings and weekends. Others work long hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then don’t work the rest of the week. As long as we get our deliverables met, we’re free to set a schedule that works for you.
Build backups into your team structure
A major challenge working mothers face is how to deal with the reality that, with multiple children’s schedules and health needs, things often don’t go as planned.
Employers have tried to solve this problem with subsidized backup child care, which helps but is often not ideal since it means inviting a stranger into your home or leaving your toddler in an unfamiliar place and hoping for the best. It’s fundamentally not ideal because there really isn’t an equivalent backup for a mother. Just ask any kindergartener with a fever.
Instead of a backup for childcare, our team needs a backup for work projects. If something happens to Sarah, Catherine will take over her deliverables, and vice versa. Everyone needs help sometimes, so we jump in to help others, knowing they’ll feel the same when the inevitable stomach flu hits. We’re human beings, not production machines, and we treat each other that way.
Kid-friendly should actually mean kid-friendly
A child-friendly work culture often means that children are accommodated as long as they are quiet and well-behaved and there is enough advance notice so everyone else is prepared. We define a child-friendly work culture as one where babies are regularly fed while on the phone with clients, where the messy head of a toddler escaping from the babysitter pops up in the corner of the video screen, and where urgent “I need to call back in 15 minutes” calls are commonplace.
We don’t expect moms to work without support. All of our team members have some form of child care, whether that be school, family, babysitter or daycare program. But we don’t believe moms can or should erase their kids to be more successful at work. There’s always a break for a kiss, a lunch picnic, or a story before naptime.
