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It’s March 2020, a few days before a global pandemic turns the entire world upside down, and I’m sitting backstage in the green room of CBS This Morning.
With a cup of lukewarm coffee in hand, I strike up a conversation with the guest who appears in front of me. A travel expert discussing skyrocketing airfares asks me what my segment is about.
“Working moms,” I reply. “And the stigmas they face returning to work after maternity leave.”
“Oh, how interesting,” he says. “How many kids do you have?”
“None really,” I say. “I just talked to a lot of working moms and we did some research on that too.”
He looks at me for a while before being called by a producer to go to the set.
People often think I’m a mother. And the assumption makes sense. I’ve spent the last decade as a business journalist talking to some of America’s most powerful and desperate working moms.
I spoke with Melinda Gates, Indra Nooyi, and most of the recent Fortune 500 female CEOs about managing children alongside multibillion-dollar businesses and philanthropies. I interviewed Sheryl Sandberg in the height of her Lean In days about how she climbed the corporate ladder while raising her family. And in 2014, I launched Fortune’s The broad tablea daily newsletter for and about the most powerful women in the world.
All of this work can be summed up in one big finding: The odds are heavily stacked against working mothers in America, especially those who take time off to care for a child.
“What struck me about this issue is that this is not a niche issue,” I told Gayle King that morning in 2020, referring to the more than 70 percent of women in the workforce who have children. “Why do companies still stumble?”
As I prepare for my first maternity leave, here are six lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Root yourself in the facts
Reflections on the state of working motherhood reveal countless disappointing and irrefutable facts.
The widespread gender pay gap across industries widens for mothers. In addition to pay, working mothers are constantly being passed over for long assignments and promotions. All of this was exacerbated by the pandemic, when 1.8 million working women, mostly mothers, left the workforce.
And taking time off work to care for a new child—a life milestone I’ll be embarking on in a few weeks—results in even greater career sacrifices for women. More than 60% of working mothers I surveyed with LinkedIn said they had a hard time re-entering the workforce after a career break.
Information is where many journalists find comfort and peace. It is the foundation of our stories and informs our perspective. Yet, 39 weeks pregnant and expecting my first child, I look back on my countless interviews, articles and notes on the subject and feel none of these emotions.
For the first time in my career, I think about my work and feel fear.
Face your frustrations and fears
These fears are rooted in the many hopes and dreams for the little one growing in my belly.
If we are blessed with a girl, I worry about the workplace she will enter even in 20 years, given the lack of progress thus far. And if we are lucky enough to have a boy, how can I raise him to see his female peers as equals when there will be so many external signals to the contrary?
But I’d be lying if I said my fears weren’t also firmly planted in the dreams I have for myself.
As my own mother would tell you, I had high aspirations for my career practically from the time I came out of the womb. My work has always played a crucial role in my identity and happiness.
And I know I’m not alone: Millennial women are probably more ambitious about their careers than any generation before. Around 42% earn equal wages as their partner or spouse – and almost a quarter are the main earners in their relationship.
It makes me ask the question that women on the precipice of motherhood have probably been asking for millennia: What happens to me when you, my baby, come into the picture?
Reframe the meaning of motherhood in your own home
All the dreams I have require all of us—my husband, my child, and me—to work together.
My husband has always taken the lead in tasks like cooking, laundry, home repairs and more.
But most women take on a huge share of household chores and childcare, even when they are the main breadwinners, leading to burnout, stress and sometimes leaving work altogether.
Influential women in business have been calling on us to disrupt this reality for decades.
When I asked Melinda Gates in 2018 if she agreed with Sheryl Sandberg’s famous dictum that the most important career decision a woman makes is who she marries, her answer was short and sweet. The most important career decision anyone makes, regardless of gender, is who to marry, she said.
I took this belief to be a direct reflection of the inevitable intermingling of our work and personal lives.
In 2021, former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi took the concept even further. “We’re at a point now where men and women need to work together,” she told me in an interview. “Don’t just equate the woman with the family.”
This means having conversations early and often with your partner about who should do what after the baby arrives. These discussions can never be too specific: Talk about anything from big responsibilities like getting up in the middle of the night to comfort a crying baby to small tasks like emptying the dishwasher.
It also means figuring out what will be disturbed in both of your lives. While women often take the lead in sacrificing personal passions once a family grows, having a partner who does the same has been shown to improve the mental health of working mothers.
Change the way you discuss the demands of parenthood with your colleagues
Choosing the right teammates and colleagues will be more important now than ever in my career.
Having a supportive boss and team means everything to working parents: just being able to talk about the demands of parenting at work reduces the stigma of being a working mum.
“I’ve had some great bosses and some terrible ones. I’ve only come close to being a great mom when I’ve had a great boss.” a single mother aptly said.
Despite the external impact the pandemic has had on working women, paid leave in this country is declining. Yes, companies are canceling policies that are meant to support working mothers.
I work for a female-led and managed organization that does the exact opposite, not only welcoming a pregnant woman like me to join the leadership team at an early stage, but also giving her industry-leading time off to bond with her child . Working for like-minded leaders who understand the demands of parenting goes a long way toward ensuring your long-term success in an organization.
If working with a supportive team and a manager who offers enough maternity leave isn’t an option right now, consider other options.
What are the communication expectations from your manager while you are on leave? More than 50% of working mothers told us they engaged in work-related activities while on leave.
If you need to stay plugged in while you’re on vacation, can you limit the number of channels you’re expected to check and narrow down the project you need to stay on top of?
Also, when you return to the office after maternity leave, could you initially return part-time before returning fully? This arrangement allows women to easily return to work without feeling the full demands of the job on the first day.
Fight like hell to make it better for those who come after you
I know that all of this—demanding equality as a working mom both inside and outside my home—isn’t good enough for me yet, and it’s certainly not good enough for my future child.
In my review of hundreds of interviews with experts and countless data sets about existing gender differences, I realized that there will be no progress unless we culturally change the way we think about all of this.
Author Eve Rodsky celebrated this reality with her debut novel-turned-documentary, Fair Game, urging women and men at every stage of their careers to change the way they think about home life and parenting.
“Too many people focus on equality in the workplace. We’re not going to change anything until we change our personal lives,” Rodsky told me. “However, corporations are afraid to touch it. Personal life is like the third rail.”
Embrace the unknown
“You have NO IDEA how much your life will change,” has become a common refrain my husband and I have been hearing since we announced our pregnancy in June.
And it’s true. Despite my life’s work, I enter motherhood like everyone else: not knowing anything.
But I know all of the above. And suffice it to say, one of the first lessons I will teach my child is that information is power. And when that information isn’t exactly what we hoped it would be, it becomes even more important to share it, and share it widely.
Let’s all touch that third rail together.
Caroline Fairchild is Editor-in-Chief at BFF, a startup working to promote women working and earning on the Web3. Previously, she was editor-in-chief of LinkedIn’s global news team, leading editorial programs on professional women and diversity in the workplace. Her work has been featured in Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times, CNBC, CBS This Morning, CNN, Politico, Forbes, USA Today, HuffPost and Recode.
These are just the facts. Sacrificing financial gains and economic growth for politics only hurts taxpayers and their pensions.
Gavin Newsom is the governor of California.
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