My personal mission is to help mothers in IT to thrive both in their professional and private life, so I work and talk a lot with them, but I still wanted to understand deeper the challenges of working mothers and what type of support they would need to live a more balanced life. So I created a survey back in December 2022 which had been filled out by 141 working mothers, giving me an unbelievably detailed insight into lives full of challenges and dreams, joys and problems, each one of them telling the story of a fantastic woman who is trying to figure out on a daily basis how to manage and align work and family life. Now I would like to publish a high-level summary of what I have found and learned from these remarkable individual stories behind the survey results.
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A little bit about statistics: everyone filling out the survey was a working mother, 62 % of them being employed and the rest being entrepreneurs or both. They are based mainly in the UK, Spain and Hungary, however, there were quite some responses from most European countries and from USA and Australia. 80 % of them have kids somewhere between 3-12 years old.
Hereby I would like to thank all of them for taking the time and filling out the survey!
So, what did I learn from the responses?
Support system
It is an extremely high number, but 10 % of working mothers have no support system to help them out at all (meaning they don't have help from their partner or they might be single parents) nor from friends, family or any paid support like a babysitter or cleaning service.
84 % can count on their partners, 27 % on the grandparents, so their own parents or their in-laws and 3,5 % get additional help from other family members. Friends are also part of the support system for 7 % of the mums, and some of them pay for some support: 18 % use cleaning services and 15 % pay for babysitter help from time to time.
The main struggle
As a working mother myself, it was very interesting to read about their main struggles. The number one problem is not a surprise at all, it is the lack of time that working mothers need to deal with, desperately fighting to fit in so many things into 24 hours a day and trying to avoid transmitting the tension and frustration to colleagues and family.
The second biggest challenge is to align motherhood and work, including the questions on how to be equally present and involved in both, mothering and work or how can you align your work with the school schedule and school drop offs/pick ups.
What came to me as a surprise is how relevant and serious problem is when the kids are sick and parents need to find a solution, especially as in most countries parents have to take their paid holidays if they stay at home with a sick kid or somehow align work and childcare - that situation won the 3rd place, together with the heavy workload of household chores, home and school related project management tasks and time management related challenges.
The difficulties of having a healthy work-life balance, spending quality time with kids and husband, lack of energy and sleep problems, and the never-ending logistics and money problems are worth mentioning. Lack of adequate childcare support and lack of flexibility at work is also a significant issue, not talking about the intentions to cook and feed the family with healthy food.
For me, there were surprisingly few comments about the unequal division of workload between mothers and fathers and about the challenges around being the primary caregiver, but it did come up a couple of times.
Solutions
There were some funny answers to the question of possible solutions including alcohol, a magic wand, winning the lottery or if kids could simply grow quicker, however, what most working mums need is very straightforward: more help from their support system, including the more active involvement of their husband.
They also need better organisation, planning and time management with a smooth working routine - it is not shocking to hear, knowing how many tasks they have on their shoulders.
I really welcomed the third category of possible solutions, as it was about different options that support working mothers' mental well-being. I was pleased to see that they did prioritise themselves when seeking possible solutions to their challenging situation, including mindfulness and meditation, healthy boundaries, self-prioritisation, managing better expectations and more social life for them.
There were quite a lot of comments about the need to work part-time and in a more flexible work environment, and it was also crystal clear that parents would need more support not only from their employers but from their countries' governments in terms of parenting benefits.
Time
As 46 % of working mums have only somewhere between 0-30 minutes a day for themselves, I asked what they would do with more time. Doing some sort of exercise was the most popular answer, approximately half of them would like to dedicate more time to sports.
What else would be wonderful if time allowed? The most frequent answers included reading, meeting up with friends, sleeping, studying, practising some hobbies or dedicating time for self-care and resting. Some literally wanted to have time just to do nothing, which is also understandable when you never have the luxury to stare out of your head.
Some of the mums wanted to have more time to work and to accomplish more household chores like having time for healthy cooking.
There were some answers mentioning spending more quality time with family and kids, dating or having more sex.
Happiness
Clearly, aligning motherhood and work is challenging as it is a never-ending juggling between work, kids, husband, tasks, and things to remember, but I was really glad to see that 81 % of mums actually marked themselves somewhere between rather happy than unhappy and extremely happy.
I also asked them what could add to their happiness, and the answers were quite aligned with the previous trends: having more time, working less, more money, enjoying more quality time with their kids and having a good relationship with their partner. More support from their environment, less stress, more social life and more success at work were also listed often.
What are my conclusions from this?
I am passionate about working mothers' situation and my mission is to support them to find balance in their lives. I see too many sad stories unfortunately about stressed and anxious mothers on the edge of burnout, and homes full of tension, conflicts and resentment, and I do believe there are some pretty simple ways to improve this or even turn around by creating a life that enables corporate mums to not only have it all but on top of it, enjoy their everyday life.
There are several ways I provide support:
Follow me on my YouTube Channel for regular tips on the most common struggles and challenges of working mothers
Join my Facebook group to be part of our safe community to help each other
Check out my coaching programs for individual, customised, 1-to-1 support