This is a really potent article, thanks so much for sharing!
A friend tagged me to read it because this terminology is something I'm nearly constantly thinking about because of the nature of my work.
I'm a holistic career & burnout coach who specializes in supporting women, most of whom have kids at home. From my personal experience (and as evident by much of the research that you cited) moms often face additional stressors that women without kids or fathers don't, like an imbalance of domestic and caregiving labor which makes it impossible for them to rest and recover because they're burned out at work AND at home. This is where the holistic nature of my work comes into play, because Ive found that you really can't address stress and burn out and just one area if you're also experiencing burnout in another.
So for me, it becomes a tricky jigsaw of trying to figure out how to address a real phenomenon that we all wish wasn't real at all. The unfortunate reality is that "working moms" do have a different experience than women without kids or even fathers... But we all wish that that wasn't true, especially not quarter of the way through the 21st century, then we're tired about talking about it. I feel a lot like this situation about how I feel when I write about gender bias at work or give advice for how moms can avoid the motherhood penalty when they're negotiating salaries. I hate that I have to write about this at all... But since the problem still exists, it seems like a necessary evil.
I suppose it becomes a tricky chicken in the egg situation... Words have the power to create worlds, and I think it's important for language to progress as our society does, and perhaps even advance before change so that way our language is a driver behind the change. That being said, we still have to have some way to talk about the very real problems while they still exist so that we can drive the change that we want to see and support the people suffering in the meantime.
Interestingly, I think the language is evolving already, and many women don't really connect with the term working mom anymore. This became clear with some recent SEO research I've done, where I discovered that " working mom" it's just not that frequently googled (unless you're looking for the TV show!). I realize that a lot of women separate those two pieces of their identity. For instance, when I write a bio, I write "Coach. Mom..."-- with a period between my work identity and my personal identity.
This is a really long way of saying that I don't have the proper language and I don't know if it really exists (at least not in a short and concise way... But maybe the attempt at simplification is the root of the problem). I completely agree with you, that the fact that working mom is a label that still exists is pretty ridiculous... And I feel like it's important for a population that has a unique set of struggles to have a label that they can coalesce behind and find others and support.
Where that leaves us... 🤷♀️. As far as language around my business, the best I've come up with is to use a longer description, such as "supporting women juggling big jobs and little kids"... But that is also imperfect.
Thank you for this! It is SO tricky. I really like the idea of using longer descriptions - sometimes, more words need to be used to describe something to get it right.
When I left my first job out of law school a year after I got married, co-workers of mine audibly wondered if I was leaving because I was pregnant. I had gotten another job working full time after working part time for nearly 2 years and yet in 2015 there was an assumption I would quit because I was pregnant?! Civil litigation at that particular firm ended up being a very bad fit and now I practice law with my dad after taking a few years away from law while my kids were born. But I always felt like a working mom even when I was home full time, and I don’t feel like my motherhood can be extricated from my job nor do I want it to be.
I completely agree with all of this! But also we can’t ignore how the workplace punishes mothers more than fathers. Perhaps the solution should be gender neutral: working *parents* need better workplace policies (but also, this is sort of depressing because mothers need those policies most, simply because we do the biological labour of reproduction. And we should be able to receive them without erasing ourselves with the term “parent”).
This is so interesting to me! Thanks for this nuanced take on the linguistics and history of the term. For me, "working mom" is an important part of my identity--one I'm proud of, in part because my work is really meaningful to me, and in part because it links me to my own mom, who, for most of my childhood was a single mom and one of the only working moms we knew in our suburban part of Pittsburgh.
Your points about the racial and class assumptions the term conjures are interesting--but I wonder if that's part of the problem that's baked into AI and our culture. What happens if you ask chat gpt to just show you a mom? Or to show you a stay at home mom or a single mom? Wouldn't those images also reflect our cultural biases?
I'm thinking also about the work of black sociologists like Patricia Hill Collins, who have found that for many black mothers, work is an important part of their identity--actually a way of being a good mother. I don't know, though, within that body of research, if the term "working mother" is specifically taken up or interrogated in the way you have here.
Thanks again for this post--you've obviously given me a lot to think about!
Thanks, Nancy. Thank you for taking the time to read my essay so thoroughly and compose such a thoughtful response. It means a lot. I will definitely look up Patricia Hill Collins and her work.
I love how you are able to create a connection to your own mom through the term. I wonder if my own mom would have considered herself a "working mom" (she was first a secretary, then a research assistant, then a pastor).
I think your response and other responses to this essay also show how personal language is: What a term means for me will never be the same as it means for you. And then there is the fact that the meaning of words can change over time - and we can reclaim them, changing them from within. Language truly is wild, and complicated.
Aah thank you for writing this!! I have just been thinking about this recently as I am trying to make a career change back into full-time work now that my kids are older. I feel like my identity has been so caught up in my kids or motherhood or being "at home" (ha!) that it is hard for me to imagine being a "person with a job." I have never NOT worked for pay, for the record, but I have freelanced, been a consultant, homeschooled 4 kids, and also volunteered a lot over the past 13 years (not to mention teaching myself an entirely new set of skills for my career change), abd sometimes all of those at once.
For a couple of days I tried the mantra "I am a working mom" to pump myself up, then quickly realized it feels imbalanced and gross and 1980s, as you pointed out. I don't know ANY "working dads" even though most of the men I know have jobs and also children. And WOW how amazing they get to be for dropping off kids at school AND receiving a paycheck! All that to say, I don't know how to think of myself or what to call myself in order to feel okay about this new identity of "woman with kids who also needs and wants to work."
This is a really potent article, thanks so much for sharing!
A friend tagged me to read it because this terminology is something I'm nearly constantly thinking about because of the nature of my work.
I'm a holistic career & burnout coach who specializes in supporting women, most of whom have kids at home. From my personal experience (and as evident by much of the research that you cited) moms often face additional stressors that women without kids or fathers don't, like an imbalance of domestic and caregiving labor which makes it impossible for them to rest and recover because they're burned out at work AND at home. This is where the holistic nature of my work comes into play, because Ive found that you really can't address stress and burn out and just one area if you're also experiencing burnout in another.
So for me, it becomes a tricky jigsaw of trying to figure out how to address a real phenomenon that we all wish wasn't real at all. The unfortunate reality is that "working moms" do have a different experience than women without kids or even fathers... But we all wish that that wasn't true, especially not quarter of the way through the 21st century, then we're tired about talking about it. I feel a lot like this situation about how I feel when I write about gender bias at work or give advice for how moms can avoid the motherhood penalty when they're negotiating salaries. I hate that I have to write about this at all... But since the problem still exists, it seems like a necessary evil.
I suppose it becomes a tricky chicken in the egg situation... Words have the power to create worlds, and I think it's important for language to progress as our society does, and perhaps even advance before change so that way our language is a driver behind the change. That being said, we still have to have some way to talk about the very real problems while they still exist so that we can drive the change that we want to see and support the people suffering in the meantime.
Interestingly, I think the language is evolving already, and many women don't really connect with the term working mom anymore. This became clear with some recent SEO research I've done, where I discovered that " working mom" it's just not that frequently googled (unless you're looking for the TV show!). I realize that a lot of women separate those two pieces of their identity. For instance, when I write a bio, I write "Coach. Mom..."-- with a period between my work identity and my personal identity.
This is a really long way of saying that I don't have the proper language and I don't know if it really exists (at least not in a short and concise way... But maybe the attempt at simplification is the root of the problem). I completely agree with you, that the fact that working mom is a label that still exists is pretty ridiculous... And I feel like it's important for a population that has a unique set of struggles to have a label that they can coalesce behind and find others and support.
Where that leaves us... 🤷♀️. As far as language around my business, the best I've come up with is to use a longer description, such as "supporting women juggling big jobs and little kids"... But that is also imperfect.
Thank you for this! It is SO tricky. I really like the idea of using longer descriptions - sometimes, more words need to be used to describe something to get it right.
Also, your work sounds FASCINATING.
Thanks Nora! Yours does too! If you ever want to get a virtual coffee and talk shop, I'm all ears.
When I left my first job out of law school a year after I got married, co-workers of mine audibly wondered if I was leaving because I was pregnant. I had gotten another job working full time after working part time for nearly 2 years and yet in 2015 there was an assumption I would quit because I was pregnant?! Civil litigation at that particular firm ended up being a very bad fit and now I practice law with my dad after taking a few years away from law while my kids were born. But I always felt like a working mom even when I was home full time, and I don’t feel like my motherhood can be extricated from my job nor do I want it to be.
I completely agree with all of this! But also we can’t ignore how the workplace punishes mothers more than fathers. Perhaps the solution should be gender neutral: working *parents* need better workplace policies (but also, this is sort of depressing because mothers need those policies most, simply because we do the biological labour of reproduction. And we should be able to receive them without erasing ourselves with the term “parent”).
This is so interesting to me! Thanks for this nuanced take on the linguistics and history of the term. For me, "working mom" is an important part of my identity--one I'm proud of, in part because my work is really meaningful to me, and in part because it links me to my own mom, who, for most of my childhood was a single mom and one of the only working moms we knew in our suburban part of Pittsburgh.
Your points about the racial and class assumptions the term conjures are interesting--but I wonder if that's part of the problem that's baked into AI and our culture. What happens if you ask chat gpt to just show you a mom? Or to show you a stay at home mom or a single mom? Wouldn't those images also reflect our cultural biases?
I'm thinking also about the work of black sociologists like Patricia Hill Collins, who have found that for many black mothers, work is an important part of their identity--actually a way of being a good mother. I don't know, though, within that body of research, if the term "working mother" is specifically taken up or interrogated in the way you have here.
Thanks again for this post--you've obviously given me a lot to think about!
Thanks, Nancy. Thank you for taking the time to read my essay so thoroughly and compose such a thoughtful response. It means a lot. I will definitely look up Patricia Hill Collins and her work.
I love how you are able to create a connection to your own mom through the term. I wonder if my own mom would have considered herself a "working mom" (she was first a secretary, then a research assistant, then a pastor).
I think your response and other responses to this essay also show how personal language is: What a term means for me will never be the same as it means for you. And then there is the fact that the meaning of words can change over time - and we can reclaim them, changing them from within. Language truly is wild, and complicated.
Aah thank you for writing this!! I have just been thinking about this recently as I am trying to make a career change back into full-time work now that my kids are older. I feel like my identity has been so caught up in my kids or motherhood or being "at home" (ha!) that it is hard for me to imagine being a "person with a job." I have never NOT worked for pay, for the record, but I have freelanced, been a consultant, homeschooled 4 kids, and also volunteered a lot over the past 13 years (not to mention teaching myself an entirely new set of skills for my career change), abd sometimes all of those at once.
For a couple of days I tried the mantra "I am a working mom" to pump myself up, then quickly realized it feels imbalanced and gross and 1980s, as you pointed out. I don't know ANY "working dads" even though most of the men I know have jobs and also children. And WOW how amazing they get to be for dropping off kids at school AND receiving a paycheck! All that to say, I don't know how to think of myself or what to call myself in order to feel okay about this new identity of "woman with kids who also needs and wants to work."
Ah Nora this piece speaks to me so much and words and labels in this sense is something I have been thinking about a lot recently.
🙌🏻
Thank you! It's lovely to see that this essay resonates. Less lovely to still see all the labels out there.
This topic has been on my mind of late. There is so much food food for thought here to help process it!
Thank you!!!