September 28, 2023 • 59 mins
You know the saying, "It takes a village to raise a child," but what happens when that village is also juggling a career?
Join me in a deep-dive conversation with Claire Holmes, founder of Mama Collaborative. Claire's journey from corporate consultant to entrepreneurial advocate for working moms is nothing short of inspiring. We learn about her own struggle to balance her career with motherhood and how this led her to create a platform to support and guide other working moms through the complex transition of maternity leave.
In this episode, we explore the present state of parental leave policies and the steps that can be taken to make these more supportive and sustainable. We discuss how employers can nurture a healthier work environment, prevent resentment, and help parents smoothly transition back to work. We also delve into the hard-hitting realities of motherhood and its reverberating effects on women's careers.
Claire also gives us a look into the services offered by Mama Collaborative. From one-on-one coaching to online courses, each resource is tailored to empower new moms in their journey back to the workplace. We discuss the importance of intentional planning and staying connected with other parents during this crucial phase. You'll gain practical insights and tangible advice whether you're a working parent on the brink of transition or an employer seeking ways to better support your employees.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
- Candice
If something you heard today brought a smile to your face or a spark to your heart, and you’d like to connect with me, here are a few ways you can do that.
One is my newsletter, it’s where I put most of my time and energy when I’m not working with clients or on this podcast. Sorry social media! It’s a mix of real life stories, tips and tricks and of course updates on what’s happening with the podcast. Whenever something is going on with me or in my business, it always comes out there first.
Another resource that I have for you is my Guide to Doing Work Differently. The guide takes you through four inquiries into how you can build a more sustainable and equitable work environment for yourself and your team. It's a great place to start.
Last, if you’ve got a burning question, a comment, or a situation you’d like my eyes on, you can email me at candice@fortressandflourish.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
The hearth is for you if you're a business leader
with a team.
Here we have conversationsabout how to keep growing.
When you feel you've reachedyour capacity, when what you're
doing is working but you'restarting to see the cracks, when
there's a gap between whereyou're at now and where you want
(00:26):
to be, here we find ways totransition through the struggle
of survival toward creating athriving business that supports
you and your team as wholehumans.
Your host is me, candiceElliott.
I'm a business strategist andmentor who specializes in
(00:49):
working with business owners whoare going through periods of
growth.
Especially when you're addingmore people to your team, the
practices and systems thatworked when your team was
smaller just don't seem to fitanymore, and when you're caught
in stress and reaction, it'stough to reimagine the way that
(01:14):
you created your world of work,both your own personal one and
the one that you created forothers.
I help people align theirvalues and business practices to
build practical, sustainable,thriving work ecosystems and no,
(01:35):
this isn't just some workutopia talk.
To do this, I bring forward mydecade-long professional
background in human resourcesand organizational development,
working with growing businessesacross many sectors, and my
decades-long search for meaningand wholeness, which includes
(01:59):
researching the history of workand how it came to be what it is
today, practicing atrauma-informed approach to
business and integrating work,life and spirituality into a
meaningful whole.
Let's take this journeytogether.
Welcome to the hearth BraveSoul.
(02:27):
I'm excited that Claire Holmes,the owner of Mama Collaborative,
is joining me today for aconversation about parental
leave.
Claire is a proud mom of threeboys, the CEO of her household
and also has a professionalcareer.
Each of these roles is afull-time job in itself and,
(02:53):
just like for a lot of workingmoms, there just don't seem to
be enough hours in the day.
I can definitely.
That resonates with me for sure, and Claire created her
business, mama Collaborative,dedicated to helping working
moms set themselves up forsuccess in personal and in their
(03:15):
professional lives.
So I hope you enjoy ourconversation.
I'm so excited to be welcomingClaire Holmes onto the show
today.
Claire and I have been workingtogether for a couple of months
now on my own maternity leaveand I have just felt this sense
(03:38):
of relief around it.
I have had a mental blockaround even starting to think
about how to do a maternityleave.
We're recording this inspringtime, before my son is
born, and it's just been such ajoy to work with her and I knew
that when I was doing thisseason on redefining work that I
(03:59):
really wanted to have aconversation with her about
parental leave.
So welcome to the show, claire.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Thank you so much for having me.
I love that we have this toconnect about, in addition to
working together on your ownmaternity leave process, me too,
me too.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
So can you tell our listeners a bit about your
background and how you came tobe doing the work that you do
today?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yes, absolutely so.
I am a maternity leave coachand the founder of Mama
Collaborative, which aims tosupport working moms kind of
through all the seasons ofworking motherhood, from when
they first find out that they'reexpecting or adopting and are
kind of looking down the longline at what that might look
like to be a working mom through, kind of, you know, with early
(04:46):
age children and kind ofclimbing back up the career
ladder if that's what they wantto do, or being a successful
entrepreneur.
So kind of runs the gamut andthat's what I'm doing now.
But I am a recovering corporateconsultant who has turned
entrepreneur myself.
That's kind of a way I woulddescribe myself.
So you know, if we back it wayup, I graduated from the
(05:07):
University of Georgia and youknow I had a degree in
advertising.
I was so sure that's what Iwanted to do.
But my career has taken a few,you know, pivots since then and
now, after spending over adecade as a marketing consultant
, a project manager and atraining developer kind of in
the consulting marketing space,I, you know, and I leveraged
(05:30):
that in my personal experienceas a full time working mom, you
know, to help women embraceworking motherhood.
And the truth is that work,that Mama Collaborative, was
born from my own needs as aworking mom, which I feel, like
a lot of businesses are, kind ofborn from a need that the owner
has or has experienced.
You know, after I have I havethree kids who are now five,
(05:54):
three and one.
And after I returned to workfull time with my first son at a
job I loved, by the way, andfelt supported you know, great
situation.
But after I had my first son Ireally struggled to find my
footing, you know, like betweenthe pumping sessions around
client meetings and constantlygetting sick kid calls from
(06:15):
daycare and just like reallybeing exhausted.
I just found the transition tomotherhood and working
motherhood completelyoverwhelming and I didn't have a
plan.
I was flying by the sea in mypants, you know every day was
different and there was not,didn't feel like there were a
lot of resources at the time,five years ago, to help working
(06:36):
moms navigate the ups and downs,especially in that new mom
period.
So I ended up getting burnt out, exhausted.
My wonderful boss at the timerecognized that and told me to
take a week off, clear my head,got me a career coach.
So I had a coach and that madeall the difference, and so, you
know, I learned from thatexperience.
(06:58):
I really wanted to turn thatback and provide something
similar to other women in, youknow, similar situations, who
were new moms trying to be likewhat can I even do this?
Can I go back to work?
Do I want to?
What will it look like?
You know?
You know just, will it besustainable?
Can I ever enjoy myself again?
And so, again, that is what Ifocus on now, through coaching,
(07:23):
training, online courses,workshops, and I hang out a lot
on Instagram, where I have areally nice community of women
and I try to kind of do thingsthat incorporate getting
feedback from the community sothat we all just don't feel so
alone, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
For me that time after my first my son was born
was completely overwhelming, andI had my own business at the
time, which I wanted to do,knowing that I wanted to have
children, because I felt like Iwouldn't be able to fit being a
mom into a corporate or abusiness structure.
(08:02):
But it is such a it's the timeof life that I think is unlike
any other time of life thathappens and I can see how the
work that you're doing I mean itimpacts me personally because
it is helping me to do a bettertransition this time than I
(08:23):
think the last time I was ableto.
But I want to start and talk alittle bit like big picture
about some of the structuresthat are in place and the
assumptions that we have around.
This time.
There isn't federal support fornew parents.
Some states have some support,but how does not having
(08:48):
financial support, or limitedfinancial support, affect both
the new parent and then thecompany that they work for?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
To answer that very bluntly.
I think it's very hard right.
You know, in theory I thinkeveryone is supportive of
families and putting that intheir quotes Like that should be
a positive thing that ourcommunity embraces, whether it's
the CEO of a global corporationor an employee or anyone in
(09:17):
between.
But I think a lot of times itdoes come down to a question of
cost and financial support.
And if we had the rightfinancial support, all of this
could be a smoother transition.
There would be better resourcesin place, the cultures of
(09:37):
organizations just because therewere better resources, better
training, paid leave, thingslike that I think the cultures
would just benefit greatly fromit.
But, like you're saying, there'snot a standardized type of
financial support for parentalleave.
In our country.
The government at a federallevel, they are trying to push
(09:58):
through different legislationand we'll see what happens with
that.
And at the state level, certainstates do have some really
supportive options for families,both moms and dads, to take
leave, but others have literallynothing or almost, it feels
like, opposed to it, and sothere's just nothing consistent
out there where I feel likepeople, whether it's the
(10:20):
employee or the employer, canfind resources on what to even
do.
There's a stat out there.
The current stat is there are 8million new parents a year in
the United States, and thinkabout the trickle effect Each of
those parents potentially hasmaybe a manager, some employees.
(10:41):
Obviously some are not in theworkforce.
So if you have 8 million newparents a year, though, even if
you each, there's another 8million managers and colleagues
and companies that are affected,like you would think this would
be a bigger topic that we couldfind some way to help relieve
the financial burden right, yeah, and literally everyone was a
(11:04):
baby at one point.
Yes, yes, and literally everyonehas a mother and a father.
It takes two to tango, and soit's crazy to me that we haven't
prioritized funding thisbecause you and I have talked
about.
Because you're an entrepreneur,I've worked at smaller
(11:24):
companies where there is afinancial burden and the owners
of the company are literallythinking how am I going to fund
my own leave?
How am I going to fund myemployees leave?
This isn't something I plannedfor.
Maybe I have to hire a tempwhile they're out, so I should
be double paying.
I mean, even when people havethe best of intentions, money
(11:48):
and finances are just a hardtopic, right?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, I see the role of the state as a part of the
role of the state and thegovernment federal government is
to identify these kinds ofissues that affect large swaths
of the population and to createprograms around them to protect
(12:12):
people so that they are able togo through these transitions
better than you know, then, wehave in the past and I think
that there's this idea that Imean it comes from centuries of
the division of labor, of womenworking in the home and doing
(12:34):
things in the home and raisingchildren and raising up the
workforce, and then men beingprimarily out of the home and
being a wage earner and thatpiece.
But now that things have shiftedtoward having two earner
households, there haven't beenprograms that have been put in
(12:55):
place in order to support thattransition.
That has happened, which I amso grateful to be able to have a
credit card and a bank accountand, like the ability to own
property, which I don't rightnow, but the ability to and to
have my own business and to earnmy own income.
(13:18):
But with that also comes, as aworking mother, being primarily
responsible for everythingrelated to children and the home
in addition to everything else.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, no, it's a heavy load and I, as someone who
works directly with parents,but also directly with companies
, to support you know whoevermay be expecting that year in
their company.
I do try to see both sides, youknow, of the issue, and I think
(13:52):
in the end, though, if financescould be removed or just the
burden could be lessened by thestate or by the federal
government, what would go awayis the resentment that comes
with that.
You know, if an employer can'tgive their or doesn't give their
employee paid leave, you know,even if they love their job plan
(14:14):
to come back and do come backthey're probably going to feel
some resentment about that.
You know they have a family tofeed there.
They may be the primarybreadwinner, and there's
resentment there.
But also on the employer side,you know, if they feel like
someone you know has been gonefor eight, 12, you know, 16
weeks, which is unfortunatelystandard here in America, you
(14:37):
know, and quote unquote notdoing the work or they make the
assumption that they're on avacation.
That's a bad assumptionactually, which we all know.
Any parent or anyone who knowsa parent, that's not that.
Any parental leave is not avacation, but I see a lot of
resentment brew there too.
So, when you can, if you canhelp alleviate that financial
pressure, a lot of thatresentment alleviates too and
(15:00):
creates a path for collaborationduring this transition between
an employee and an employer.
True support celebration, evenright, this should be a happy
time.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Totally, and I think that the way it is now it kind
of puts I mean, especially instates where there is no support
from the state for disabilityor you know, however it's done
in different states, it puts anespecially heavy burden on the
employer to take the place ofthe government in protecting
(15:32):
their employees from thesefinancial burdens, and so it's
just so challenging in that way.
But if a company is starting tokind of think about, like what
is the right time to think abouta parental leave policy, is it
(15:53):
when you have a pregnantemployee or someone who's the
partner?
Who is it then or is it beforethen?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Right.
Well, that's a valid questionand obviously, in a perfect
world, everyone which has tohave some sort of policy, no
matter how simple or robust, inplace right now, as you're
listening to this podcast, thisis your sign if you're listening
.
But I think what typicallyhappens, especially in growing
(16:22):
companies or smaller companiesor companies who are dealing
with it truly for the first timeright, they're developing it on
the fly kind of for thatinitial person, and that's okay.
But it can feel rushedsometimes when that happens.
But I think as long as thecompany does try to take a
(16:44):
thoughtful approach to not justthinking about this first parent
but how will this apply to allfuture parents, I think that's
okay.
I also think a company coulduse that opportunity to be
collaborative with the employeegoing through it, or to form a
small task force and let otheremployees of their company weigh
(17:07):
in on what they might like thatto look like, not necessarily
just from a wish listperspective, but what might be
realistic, what feels good, andeven have non-parents or people
who never want to be parents onthat committee, just kind of.
I think it's an opportunity forcollaboration.
If you have to do it on the fly, does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
I have worked with a fewdifferent companies to develop
parental leave policies and ithas always been because someone
is about to have a baby and thatit's been kind of like a crunch
time.
And what we have talked about,what I've talked about each time
with them, is, from the HR side, there is submitting a leave of
(17:50):
absence request, right, and Ithink that some employers can
think, okay, I get this leave ofabsence request and so whatever
they're requesting is gonna bethat amount of time and I can
count on that.
But really it's, I think, soimportant to be in a
collaborative process around howmuch leave is being asked for
(18:10):
and then what the transitionlooks like to re-enter into the
workforce, because it can lookall different kinds of ways,
because it's such alife-changing event to have a
baby that the person may thinkthat they'll be able to do
something or that they'll wantto do something, and then that
can change, and so it's helpedto have that conversation
(18:32):
earlier on with the employer tokind of set the stage that
things may not go back toexactly what they were before.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
And as employers think aboutcreating these plans, building
in some sort of contingency,some leeway, some lower
expectations, especially on theback when they're transitioning
back to work, but building thatinto the plan, like we don't
(19:02):
need to set ourselves up forfailure by setting these
unrealistic expectations and momone and dad two will return on
ex-state and everything will beas it was, because it's not for
that person, for that new parent.
Their life will never be thesame as it was before they
brought their new child into theworld and they are going
(19:25):
through a major transition,adjusting to new routines and a
new identity, really all thethings.
And so I think trying to buildthat in that margin room into a
plan upfront is something Iwould recommend everyone really
try to think about.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, and I think you know, on On the one hand it is
for some people they really wantto come back to work and to be
working full time and that islike the way that they want to
move forward.
And then for other people thatshifts and and they may go into
it thinking that that'll shiftfor them, but it actually turns
(20:03):
out that they want to work a lotor, you know, they may Go into
it thinking they may want towork part time when they come
back, but they, you know it just, it can all change around.
And what do you think?
When you work with employers,what are some things that they
can do to kind of prepare forthat transition time back?
(20:24):
Any ideas on how to be flexiblewhile also making sure
everything for the business getsdone that needs to get done?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
yeah, I think that's a good question and I think that
the, in my opinion, what I'veseen, what I've read, what I've
heard that works the best is inyour leave policy or if, even if
you don't have a written leavepolicy and the expectation
communicated with that newparent Is that there absolutely
will be some sort of ramp upperiod, and what I mean by that
(20:53):
is sort of transitioning backslowly to work in in a somewhat
in a part time way.
So there's a couple week periodeven one week would be very
helpful for an employer to kindof plan for some of the.
You know some of the Lowerpoints of that.
You know new parenthood, youknow childcare snafus and you
(21:16):
know being able to make it towork on time because you haven't
had to be anywhere on time in afew months.
And Again, I just think, if youintentionally build it into your
plan, whether it's one week ofokay, if you could come in from
you know 10 to 2 for the firstweek.
And then you know, as you getused to your new routine with a
nanny or a daycare, and as youfigure out if you're a
breastfeeding mom, you know howto pump away from your child and
(21:42):
as you, as you know, maybe youneed to just do some laundry
girl like if a company couldjust build in a little bit of
that humanity, I think thateveryone would be set up for
success, because because there'scushion and if it's expected to
the employer from the outset,then no one's letting anyone
down.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, that makes me want to, because not everyone
who's listening to this willhave had a child or will have
been close with someone who has,and that maybe we could paint a
picture of what postpartum islike.
You know, in that, maybe aroundthat eight week time period,
(22:22):
which is when a lot of peopleare trying to get back to work,
and but what is life like fornew parents in that in that time
?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Okay, look, I don't want to scare anyone, but I am
going to be.
I am going to be honest.
You know that's.
It is a, it's a.
It's a tough time for me.
It's, especially if you are thebirthing parent or a mother who
may, at eight weeks, still berecovering from birth, whether
that was a vaginal birth or a Csection, which it?
(22:56):
You know it is a major surgery.
A C section is.
People always are like, oh,it's only 15 minutes, it's so
sophisticated and civilizedthese days it is.
I've had to for three of mykids.
It's actually quite civilized.
However, the recovery from thatyou can't even drive a car, you
(23:17):
know, for up to six weeksbecause you're on pain pills.
It's the only surgery that cutsthrough seven layers of a
person's body and you'reexpected to be walking four
hours later.
It can be either type of birth.
Any type of birth can be atough recovery is the picture
I'm trying to paint.
So, if you're a birthing mother, you're recovering from that.
(23:39):
Okay, now let's bring in thenew baby.
So, whether you're a nonbirthing mother or you know a
father here, in this scenario,you are learning how to, for the
first time, or maybe the secondor third, take care of a baby
Around the clock.
Literally, you may only, ateight weeks, be getting one hour
of consecutive sleep at a time.
(23:59):
You may be getting that severaltimes throughout a 24 hour
period, but you are not gettinggood sleep.
You're exhausted, disoriented.
You're worried about feedingyour child, and you know whether
it's through breastfeeding orformula.
You know, often times there arecomplications around feeding at
(24:20):
a newborn baby.
Are they gaining enough weight?
Am I nursing okay?
Can I learn how to pump?
You know?
Will the baby take a bottlewhen I go back to work?
These are concerns you know.
Hormones and mental healthissues are, are kind of flying
around in this area as well.
One in I believe, seven womenwill experience postpartum
(24:42):
depression.
And here is a stat that shockedme one in ten dads will
Experience postpartum depression.
That's from PSI, which ispostpartum, I believe, support
international.
They yes and so that wassurprising to me.
So when we talk about postpartumor mental health issues,
(25:02):
they're not Just for the mom orjust for the birthing mom.
A male, you know, canexperience that as well, and
they're expected to be back atwork, sometimes much sooner, mom
.
But you know these are allthings happening around eight
weeks, and you know.
And then, of course, justWhenever you're transition back
(25:23):
to work, is figuring out yournew routine.
What time do I have to wake upto get myself ready to feed the
baby, to drive?
Do a minor commute today carethan the minor commute to my
office?
Can I Wake up at four now?
Can I still wake up at six?
You know there's new routinesabout.
And then, of course, figuringout pumping if you're a
(25:45):
breastfeeding mom.
All on top of, by the way, justmaintaining your life grocery
shopping, cooking meals, payingyour bills, you know, spending
time with your partner, just allof it.
That's what's going on eightweeks it's.
It's a beautiful but chaotictime.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
It's wild some things that came to mind for me, to
our doctor's appointmentsbecause there are doctors
appointments for the birthingperson and then also for the
baby.
That happened frequently duringthose first few months.
And then we were also figuringout like the social security
number and getting them onmedical insurance and, you know,
(26:27):
updating all of that there.
So there's all thisadministrative kind of stuff
that is involved in it to andthen I know a lot of cultures
around the world and have thisforty day period, so it's about
six weeks, where and the motheris supposed to be primarily
(26:47):
inside in a warm place andtaking care of the, the birthing
mother and the baby taking careof by the community.
And it just occurs to me thatyou know it's right around that
time that we're really expectingpeople to go from being in a
pretty sheltered kind of spacewith just people they know to
(27:10):
then being out there in theworld and very productive.
And that you know it's a it's astart contrast between this,
you know, caring for a littleinfant, like I think I was
breastfeeding every two hoursand napping maybe four hours at
a stretch, you know, at thelongest, and trying to,
(27:33):
throughout the day, somehowcobble together six or seven
hours of sleep and yeah, so it'sdefinitely a wild thing to try
to, you know, do that and thenget yourself professional
looking Right especially ifyou're working in person.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
yeah, in an office like, or you know, in a
restaurant or wherever it isthat you're working, and no,
seriously and I think onestatistic that I heard during my
certification program for beinga maternity or parental leave
coach, which is through thecenter for parental leave
leadership, but we were taughtthat about 25%, so about a
(28:16):
quarter of birthing mothers, areactually back to work within
two weeks of giving birth inAmerica.
That's amazing to me.
Wow, it is, but it goes back tothere isn't leave.
They need to make money fortheir families, like you know
there's.
They have to.
I doubt I've never met a womanwho would have voluntarily
(28:39):
gotten up at two weeks and goneback to work, even people who
are really passionate abouttheir jobs, right, you know.
So there's, there's that toconsider to for sure.
And you know, one other thingwhen you were talking about
getting presentable for work,one really lesser talked about,
thing it because it seems itsounds vain, it seems trivial,
(29:01):
but A birthing mother, her bodyhas changed so drastically to
carry a baby has grown truly,you know, may Still kind of be
puffy and weird from surgery.
You know, if they're nursingtheir, their breasts are usually
really like several sizeslarger than usual.
You actually don't have clothesthat fit.
Yeah, in those early days,truly like, you have to probably
(29:26):
buy new clothes that will like,be conservative enough for work
to cover your chest, may belarger to accommodate your hips,
which have stretched and grownduring your pregnancy.
Like I remember Putting onclothes after my first baby and
I went back to work after myfirst child at sixteen weeks,
which you know is wonderful.
But even then, even though Iactually felt like when I looked
(29:47):
in the mirror like hey, lookokay.
No, when I put on the clothesthat I wore before my pregnancy,
they did not button, they weretoo tight across my chest and
that was surprising to me.
But that's and put that asanother thing to put on the
parents.
The birthing parents played oflike well, now I'm gonna go
spend more money to go shoppingand I feel self conscious and
(30:09):
it's that you know that tricklesinto work too.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
It just kind of baffles me, because I think that
a lot of like this part of thetransition back to work doesn't
really get talked about.
It's like a mystery that thepost like the postpartum period
Sometimes is even, like you saidearlier is thought of as like a
vacation, but it's really, Imean, often times more stressful
(30:36):
and more work than people haveever done in their entire life,
on a twenty four hour basis,continually, for months on end,
and because there isn't as muchfamily support here in the
states as there are, you know,in other places.
It's really challenging andsomething that I learned.
(30:57):
Actually, I was watching aprogram about parental leave and
they featured Iceland, and inIceland they did I think it was
a year long leave for birthingmothers.
But they noticed that when theydid that, there started to be
(31:18):
this disparity in pay betweenbirthing mothers and everybody
else, and then so they decidedthat they would add in the
partner leave so that thepartner could also have a year
of leave, and it was a take itor lose it kind of a situation.
(31:38):
So everybody started taking it,and so it meant that the
disparity in pay between thedifferent groups of people was
not as large, and so it helpedto correct that imbalance which
I mean.
In the United States nowbirthing parents get I think
it's like 75% of the pay ofeveryone else, and birthing
(32:02):
mothers of color it's even less,like around 50%.
So it's just a interesting.
I was fascinated by that.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, I think they call that or that's a symptom of
, like, the motherhood bias orthe motherhood penalty.
Does that sound familiar?
It's usually a decrease or agap in pay noticeably between
parents, especially mothers, andeverybody else, and what's
interesting and awful at thesame time is that it bleeds over
(32:35):
to women who are not mothers aswell.
There is like a distortedperspective about all women
because some choose to becomemothers but that all women tend
to feel the negativeconsequences of this motherhood
bias, which is that like we'retoo emotional and we're kind of
kind of not up to par and wehave mom brain or whatever
(32:56):
people.
It's everyone or not everyone,but it is acknowledged as a
misperception, but it occurs.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Mm-hmm.
And it is especially true, Ithink, in hiring when women are
in that 20s to 30s kind of phaseof life, that some companies
will not hire women who arearound that age because they're
assuming that they'll be havingchildren and they'll have to
deal with all of this parentalleave.
And I've even seen it happen incompanies that I work with
(33:27):
where there is not an intentionto pay unfairly, but because a
woman goes out on leave she maymiss the normal period where
raises happen, so she doesn'tget the raise for that year.
And then when she comes back,because there is this period of
transition where she's rampingback up, there's another year of
(33:50):
her not getting a raise orgetting an increase in pay, and
then it just kind of gets moreand more compounded as the years
go on if she has more kids.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Right, and one story that one of the other retained
certified parental leave coacheswas sharing in this cohort that
I'm in was about that and itwas about specifically a sales
team.
So sales people generally workon some sort of commission or
have financial incentives formaking sales.
(34:22):
Well, whether you get fourweeks or four months or six
months or a year, if you're asalesperson who's a woman or a
dad who's on parental leave andyou're missing, you're not gonna
make your sales quota.
And so they had to kind of puttogether, you know, a task force
and decide what would be kindof feel fair to the rest of this
(34:47):
, to everyone right To supportthat working parent while they
were on leave.
You know, not leave them in thedust, but ensure that they sort
of got the buy-in from everyoneelse.
And so there wasn't even moreresentment compounded on that
person taking leave who alsojust got the bonus.
And I sort of forgot where theynetted out.
(35:08):
But it was a really interestingcase study that they sort of
they came up with a formula thatwas kind of like based on your
previous year's sales and youknow we'll do this percentage,
and it was something.
But I appreciate companies likethat that strive to find some
sort of solution, some sort ofcreative solution.
It may not be perfect, but likelet's try to build those kinds
(35:30):
of contingencies into a writtenplan for our employers, for our
parents.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, and I've worked with companies too where
they've had the intent of, youknow, for example, wanting to
provide some kind of financialsupport during parental leave,
but it's not financiallyfeasible when the first
pregnancy or the first birthhappens.
But it gets them thinking okay,in the future this is something
(35:58):
that I wanna be able to provide.
So how do I create the on rampto that?
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, absolutely.
I've heard of companies.
You know you can call itwhatever you want.
Some companies just call itlike a bonus bucket and every
year they put money into a bonusbucket and that money can be
used discretionary, in adiscretionary way really, for
either kind of like smallbonuses, little sussies, rewards
(36:26):
, recognitions, birthdays, butalso, you know, especially for a
smaller company, maybe the oneperson in three years who might
need to take a parental leave,and so no, maybe they don't
quite have a parental leavepolicy that's guaranteed for
everyone, but they're willing todip into that bonus bucket and
(36:47):
pay that person, you know, partof their salary, or call it a
stipend, or call it a bonus,call it a baby bonus, something
to help, because I do understandthat not every employer on
their own, without aid, is in afinancial position maybe to pay
a full-time paid leave.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, and I think you have brought up in the previous
conversation of ours about evenproviding a little bit of
support for the person.
It really shows how much youcare as an organization about
them and can have a positiveeffect on retention, like I have
(37:27):
seen that too, where if thecompany gives a gift card to
somewhere, helps with diapers orformula or whatever it is, then
it helps to bring the personback, absolutely, absolutely.
So outside of financial support, what are some things that
businesses can do to help theiremployees through this
(37:51):
transition?
Speaker 2 (37:52):
You know there's a lot.
There is a lot and I think itcomes down to the culture you
build, the culture you want inyour organization, whether
there's just two people or 2,000people.
But I think that we have tostart by being kind of open and
celebratory about growingfamilies and help and give the
(38:16):
impression that families andchildren are assets and not
liabilities.
That right there, costs nothing.
So congratulate your employeeswho are expecting, ask them
questions about how it's going.
That doesn't relate to yourbottom line, right, you know,
just be a human and justcelebrating their celebrations.
(38:39):
I think also being thoughtfulabout at least hopefully
providing resources for that newparent, like mental and
physical and kind of emotionalhealth resources related to
pregnancy or postpartum orreturn to work.
But if you can't provide themlike if you don't have an HR
(39:02):
department or you just don'thave access to those kinds of
resources even just doing alittle research on your own and
sending an email to youremployee like hey, I found a few
links that might be helpful foryou as you're thinking about
planning for your leave Likethat would have meant so much to
me if a boss sent me that, evenif they weren't giving me paid
(39:23):
leave or I didn't work for thishuge company with a big budget,
so going out of their way to bethoughtful, I think, in a
perfect world, providingmanagers with some training
around this type of transition,like a kind of a family, a
growing family transition.
There's probably other lifetransitions that managers could
(39:46):
be trained about how to supporttheir employees through.
It's because it's not reallyfair right that these we get
just promoted and promoted andall of a sudden we're the boss
and we have a whole team to takecare of, and maybe we've never
done that before.
And so I think there's likesome emotional intelligence kind
of training and skill honingthat employees can provide for
(40:08):
their leaders.
A couple of other things justoff the top of my head setting
clear and realistic policies,like across the board, but being
flexible, or with an emphasison being flexible about
schedules and changes and ifsomeone needed to work from home
(40:31):
because they had a sick kid,and all of that that we learned
that we can do during COVID.
So this isn't like a novelconcept.
We can be flexible to people'slives.
And I think, finally, or oneother thing, is modeling having
the leaders model the kind ofbehavior I guess I'm not saying
(40:56):
this right, but having leadersmodel family forward policies
and family kind of forwardtolerance.
So, even if a leader or amanager is not a parent
themselves, they leave early oneday to go to their niece's
ballet recital and they telleveryone I'm going to be with my
(41:17):
family.
I heard some on the other daysay that they tried to
reschedule a team meeting andtheir manager said, oh sorry, I
can't reschedule to that time.
That's my therapy appointmentand it's like okay, so mental
health is a priority.
It's okay to bring mentalhealth into the picture, got it?
Or if you do have kids, beingthe one especially, I would love
(41:39):
to see more men do this leavingearly to pick up the kids from
school or being home whenthey're sick.
But talking about those things,I think, also creates a culture
that this is okay as long aswork's getting done.
We all know we're doing ourbest, life happens and we're
going to prioritize family.
I think that doesn't cost athing but helps support, you
(42:04):
know, people thinking aboutstarting a family and those who
have them.
What if you?
Speaker 1 (42:10):
have created or are in a work environment where none
of that is happening, like howdo you start it or what's a way
to kind of introduce that?
And I can imagine that a lot ofdifficult conversations can
come up for people in thosekinds of situations where it's
(42:35):
not a family forward environment, where it's not conducive to
people taking time away for work.
I mean, it could just be thatthat's not the right workplace
for a parent to be in.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
That's a great question because I think that
the reality is we can talk aboutan ideal world where you know
there's maternity leave andpaternity leave policies and
everyone's welcoming and theCEOs are leaving early to pick
up their kids.
But likely the majority that'snot what's probably happening in
the majority of organizationsin our country and so if someone
finds themselves in one ofthose organizations where you
(43:16):
know, at best you know kind ofhaving a family is tolerated and
at worst it's mocked, ridiculed, judged, discriminated against,
I think there's a couple ofthings people can do.
Number one I think I'm just ahuge fan of advocating for
yourself firmly but politely,you know.
(43:37):
I think it's always worth thequestion.
So, going to your manager oryour employer or the head of the
company or whoever asking totalk about this specifically,
provide some context, providesome solutions, like a leader
wants to hear solutions, theydon't want to hear about the
problem.
(43:57):
Some potential solutions couldbe that you are proposing
putting together a group withinthe committee, within the
organization, that will try tohelp build this part of the
culture, or could be a supportgroup for people within the
company who find themselves tobe a new parent or a working
(44:19):
parent, women, whatever thesubgroup is, but offering to
spearhead that no one needs todo any work, there doesn't need
to be a budget for it, even, butstarting somewhere.
But I do think you have to askfor what you want.
So, I think, advocate for whatyou think is best.
If your employer is open to it,pursue that path, encourage it,
(44:42):
water it, see where it goes.
If things get better, then wow,you've made some change in your
company and maybe it's a goodplace to stay and hang.
If it doesn't get better, Ithink you have a decision to
make if it's the right place foryou.
If you do advocate again backto the start of this decision
tree if you advocate foryourself like that and you're
(45:03):
met with disdain, dismissal,judgment, all the things, I also
think it's maybe time to thinkabout a different career path or
employer.
And I don't say that lightly,because I know it's hard to find
a good job and I know certainparts of the country or certain
cities or smaller cities likethere's a lack of available
(45:26):
positions, but because the truthis, at the end of the day, you
are replaceable to your companyand kind of your company is
replaceable to you or somethingcan happen that's so out of your
control that your job goes away.
Your company could be acquired,your company could go under.
They could fire you at will forno reason, depending what state
(45:47):
you live in.
This is, your company that youcurrently work at is temporary,
but your family is forever.
Your children are forever.
You being a mom is forever, andso you need to do your best to
advocate for your needsflexibility, paid leave within
(46:07):
your organization, be anadvocate for yourself and other
families.
And if you're not seeingtraction there, I do encourage
you to take a hard inventory andlook at that situation and
decide if maybe you need to lookfor something else.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Becoming a parent for me was a time when I started
speaking up for my thoughts andbeliefs and what like the
perspective that I have aroundmy family and raising my son and
all of these things in a waythat I had never really done
before.
It was a really big shift forme, I think, especially in my
(46:45):
family I would tend to be quietabout things that because I
didn't want to stir the pot ormake things difficult, and so
it's been a big learning processof saying the things that I
normally keep inside and tospeak up for the ways that I
(47:06):
want for things to go, when Ihad learned to not be that way
earlier on in my life.
So it's so important to do thatand also just acknowledging how
not all of us are raised aswomen to have that voice and to
(47:31):
be able to speak to our needsand to speak up for them,
especially in a power dynamic ofa workplace.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, I think I've probably been a little too
empowered to speak my mindgrowing up, but I recognize that
not everyone feels as confidentraising their voice, raising
their hand in certain situations.
But I truly believe that if youapproach the situation
(48:02):
professionally, politely butwell researched, it's almost
like you're pitching somethingyou've done nothing wrong by
asking for something and thenwhatever response they give you
is the information you need toprocess and make a decision for
what's next.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think that sometimes whenyou hear the response back, it
can make you angry, it can makeyou upset, but really when
you're in that meeting or inthat conversation, it's just
your information gathering.
Yeah, you're learning about theenvironment and what is working
(48:42):
and what isn't working, and youcan take that and you can use
it to make important decisionsabout your life.
Which brings me to as anemployee.
If I have found out that mypartner is going to have a baby
or I'm going to have a baby andI know nothing about all of this
(49:03):
, what are some things that Ican do to help with my
transition, both in and out ofwork and then just with having a
little human?
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's the million dollar question.
My answer is not going to bevery sophisticated, but I think
the first thing you do is youget on Google and there are
versus five years ago, when Iwas kind of going through my
hard time, there are so manymore resources available to
every part of expecting a child,postpartum, returning to work,
(49:40):
even right, that's a veryemerging like.
I'm an attorney, leave coach,I'm certified in it.
Where was that a few years ago?
That's cool, but I honestly Iwould start with Google, because
I think in everyone's, wherevereveryone lives, there's going
to be some slightly differentresources, policies, rules et
cetera.
But there are so many good blogposts, government websites,
(50:03):
instagram accounts that havesummaries for where to start.
I think that my personal adviceis that in that first trimester,
whether you're carrying thechild or not carrying the child,
that you hold steady, letyourself process and feel the
(50:23):
feelings, the excitement, thenervousness, the anxiety, the
amazement, not only to process,but also, as anyone who's been
involved in a pregnancy knows,the first trimester is when I
believe it's about 80% ofmiscarriages happened during the
(50:46):
first trimester, and so, asexcited as people can get, I
really do encourage them to justkind of sit tight, nurture
themselves, nurture their dreamsduring that first trimester and
wait a little bit.
And when they get into theirsecond trimester, that's a good
time to start planning, and I domean planning like a written
(51:10):
plan.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Yeah, I have had three miscarriages actually, and
for me, every time that I'vebecome pregnant, the first
trimester has not been a joyfultime.
For me, it's been a very highanxiety, stressful, worried time
, and this last time Iintentionally didn't tell anyone
(51:39):
that I was pregnant, because Iknew that people were going to
be really happy and that Iwasn't going to be able to meet
their happiness.
Oh yes, yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
So you needed to process in a different way.
You needed a little more timeto process.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
But then something happened when I moved into the
second trimester where I think,hormonally things change,
biologically things change.
It's more likely that you'regoing to carry all the way to
term and I just accepted it.
And I don't think that's theexperience of everyone who is
(52:19):
pregnant and who has anxiety,but for me that was a big shift
that happened at that secondtrimester time.
And now, moving into the thirdtrimester, there's this sense of
needing to slow down and thatof feeling my body getting
bigger and dilating and beingpreparing to birth.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's amazing, and I do like
most doctors say and people whohave experienced it, I think
it's.
You may want a plan, you maywant to research and you may
want to do all these things.
You may have a lot of anxieties, even about work that you're
trying to research and find theanswer to, but I think sometimes
(53:02):
giving it a little bit of abeat is helpful.
And then, when you are ready todo that, I always recommend
putting pen to paper and writingdown some sort of maternity or
paternity leave plan, even plansbetween two partners for how
they're going to support eachother during this transition,
(53:24):
and I think it helps people feelless anxious when they start
putting pen to paper about okay,what am I going to do, what's
my general plan, timing, whatwork responsibilities need to
get handed off to someone elseor paused, and how will I take
those back on?
What are my boundaries?
(53:45):
I think those are kind of thecouple of basic things that I
would highly recommend someonewrite down, even if it's just in
a journal.
Write it down Word document,excel, powerpoint, whatever you
need.
That would be.
That's something I work on withpeople.
I have kind of a differenttemplate, a kind of proprietary
(54:05):
template that I use.
But people find a lot ofconfidence or, I guess, sort of
relief in letting go all thethings that are swirling around
in their head and capturing itinto a literal plan document
type thing.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Yeah, and I think when we did it it was like I did
that first for work and then Idid that for personal life and
it just completely even knowingthat the plan will not always go
to plan.
It just helped to get it allout of my head.
Speaker 2 (54:41):
Yeah, yeah, and sometimes that's all we need,
right, and we can take it a stepfurther if we want.
But I would just encourageparents all expecting parents to
kind of get in planning mode,as simple or robust as that
looks to them, because eventhough you might not be able to
see exactly what life aheadlooks like, especially if you're
(55:03):
a first time parent, you knowthat change is coming.
And what can you do now to setyourself up for success later is
sort of what I would recommendthinking about.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
I mean, there's just so many things, I think, related
to the new parent time that youcan plan out.
I think one of the things thatreally helped me was learning
about birth the first timearound, especially because I had
really no idea the differentphases of birth, and I think I
(55:36):
took a class with some peoplewhere it was six weeks long or
something and we did that, andthen also I was able to connect
with some other moms who wereall having kids around the same
time and we, to this day, have aWhatsApp group where we, you
know, text each other aboutdifferent weird things that
happen.
(55:56):
So what is going on in yourbusiness right now that you want
to share about?
What are all the how?
Can people be supported by youthrough the work that you do?
Speaker 2 (56:10):
That's a great question.
Thank you for asking.
Yeah, you know, I'm reallyreally honing in and focusing on
doing one-on-one parental leavecoaching.
Typically I work with women,just kind of given my unique
perspective as a mother also,but I'd be more than happy to
work with dads who have apaternity leave coming up as
(56:35):
well.
So I do one-on-one coachingprograms which typically last
from the time you engage me.
So usually a lot of people thathappens during the second
trimester of a pregnancy and Iwork with that individual to
plan for and literally make aplan for parental leave, put it
into writing, help facilitate aconversation with their manager
(56:57):
if they'd like me to.
You know, pause to celebrateand do all the things.
You know.
We work together a couplesessions before their leave and
then I'm there for them duringtheir leave.
I schedule a few check-ins butdon't want to take up too much
of their time, but in a resourcethey can text or call.
I'm part of their team.
You know anything they needthat I can just be a sounding
(57:18):
board for during leave I'm thereand during that time we also
start thinking about how willyou transition back to work?
Do you even want to transitionback to work?
You know what does that looklike.
And then I'm there for somesessions as the new parent
returns to work, for about sixmonths after, to ensure it feels
(57:39):
seamless, supported.
We have a plan for things.
We're kind of mitigating anylittle challenges that come up,
but it's a long, intensivecoaching program and I love it
so much because I get to gothrough this crazy life
transition with different peopleand help them feel supported.
So one-on-one coaching is thebest way to work with me.
(58:01):
I can work directly with you, amom or a dad who's listening,
or I can work with an employerwho may hire me for the one or
two parents they have in theirorganization a year who will be
going through this transition,and in that case I can also do
some manager training, and sothey also get a little bit of
(58:23):
coaching, not only to help them,not only to help the employee
who's maybe who's expecting, butto help them, because I mean,
just because someone's a managerdoesn't mean they know how to
deal with one of their teammembers going out only for
several months.
They need support and help too,and so you know it's a whole
(58:44):
ecosystem.
So one-on-one coaching that'swhat I'm all about these days,
though I also have an onlinecourse that you can buy.
That kind of helps newerworking moms think about how to
juggle everything and, you know,streamline their tasks and
prioritize self-care.
And then just hanging out onInstagram, I just love to talk
(59:05):
to people, so you can find methere.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Awesome, awesome.
Well, thanks so much for comingon the show.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
Thank you for having me.
I just, I just thank you somuch.
All the stuff you're doing foryou know business leaders and
for people who are wanting tosucceed in their careers.
I love it.
I love everything on thispodcast.
Thank you.
The hearth is for you if you're a business leader
with a team.
Here we have conversationsabout how to keep growing.
When you feel you've reachedyour capacity, when what you're
doing is working but you'restarting to see the cracks, when
there's a gap between whereyou're at now and where you want
(00:26):
to be, here we find ways totransition through the struggle
of survival toward creating athriving business that supports
you and your team as wholehumans.
Your host is me, candiceElliott.
I'm a business strategist andmentor who specializes in
(00:49):
working with business owners whoare going through periods of
growth.
Especially when you're addingmore people to your team, the
practices and systems thatworked when your team was
smaller just don't seem to fitanymore, and when you're caught
in stress and reaction, it'stough to reimagine the way that
(01:14):
you created your world of work,both your own personal one and
the one that you created forothers.
I help people align theirvalues and business practices to
build practical, sustainable,thriving work ecosystems and no,
(01:35):
this isn't just some workutopia talk.
To do this, I bring forward mydecade-long professional
background in human resourcesand organizational development,
working with growing businessesacross many sectors, and my
decades-long search for meaningand wholeness, which includes
(01:59):
researching the history of workand how it came to be what it is
today, practicing atrauma-informed approach to
business and integrating work,life and spirituality into a
meaningful whole.
Let's take this journeytogether.
Welcome to the hearth BraveSoul.
(02:27):
I'm excited that Claire Holmes,the owner of Mama Collaborative,
is joining me today for aconversation about parental
leave.
Claire is a proud mom of threeboys, the CEO of her household
and also has a professionalcareer.
Each of these roles is afull-time job in itself and,
(02:53):
just like for a lot of workingmoms, there just don't seem to
be enough hours in the day.
I can definitely.
That resonates with me for sure, and Claire created her
business, mama Collaborative,dedicated to helping working
moms set themselves up forsuccess in personal and in their
(03:15):
professional lives.
So I hope you enjoy ourconversation.
I'm so excited to be welcomingClaire Holmes onto the show
today.
Claire and I have been workingtogether for a couple of months
now on my own maternity leaveand I have just felt this sense
(03:38):
of relief around it.
I have had a mental blockaround even starting to think
about how to do a maternityleave.
We're recording this inspringtime, before my son is
born, and it's just been such ajoy to work with her and I knew
that when I was doing thisseason on redefining work that I
(03:59):
really wanted to have aconversation with her about
parental leave.
So welcome to the show, claire.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Thank you so much for having me.
I love that we have this toconnect about, in addition to
working together on your ownmaternity leave process, me too,
me too.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
So can you tell our listeners a bit about your
background and how you came tobe doing the work that you do
today?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yes, absolutely so.
I am a maternity leave coachand the founder of Mama
Collaborative, which aims tosupport working moms kind of
through all the seasons ofworking motherhood, from when
they first find out that they'reexpecting or adopting and are
kind of looking down the longline at what that might look
like to be a working mom through, kind of, you know, with early
(04:46):
age children and kind ofclimbing back up the career
ladder if that's what they wantto do, or being a successful
entrepreneur.
So kind of runs the gamut andthat's what I'm doing now.
But I am a recovering corporateconsultant who has turned
entrepreneur myself.
That's kind of a way I woulddescribe myself.
So you know, if we back it wayup, I graduated from the
(05:07):
University of Georgia and youknow I had a degree in
advertising.
I was so sure that's what Iwanted to do.
But my career has taken a few,you know, pivots since then and
now, after spending over adecade as a marketing consultant
, a project manager and atraining developer kind of in
the consulting marketing space,I, you know, and I leveraged
(05:30):
that in my personal experienceas a full time working mom, you
know, to help women embraceworking motherhood.
And the truth is that work,that Mama Collaborative, was
born from my own needs as aworking mom, which I feel, like
a lot of businesses are, kind ofborn from a need that the owner
has or has experienced.
You know, after I have I havethree kids who are now five,
(05:54):
three and one.
And after I returned to workfull time with my first son at a
job I loved, by the way, andfelt supported you know, great
situation.
But after I had my first son Ireally struggled to find my
footing, you know, like betweenthe pumping sessions around
client meetings and constantlygetting sick kid calls from
(06:15):
daycare and just like reallybeing exhausted.
I just found the transition tomotherhood and working
motherhood completelyoverwhelming and I didn't have a
plan.
I was flying by the sea in mypants, you know every day was
different and there was not,didn't feel like there were a
lot of resources at the time,five years ago, to help working
(06:36):
moms navigate the ups and downs,especially in that new mom
period.
So I ended up getting burnt out, exhausted.
My wonderful boss at the timerecognized that and told me to
take a week off, clear my head,got me a career coach.
So I had a coach and that madeall the difference, and so, you
know, I learned from thatexperience.
(06:58):
I really wanted to turn thatback and provide something
similar to other women in, youknow, similar situations, who
were new moms trying to be likewhat can I even do this?
Can I go back to work?
Do I want to?
What will it look like?
You know?
You know just, will it besustainable?
Can I ever enjoy myself again?
And so, again, that is what Ifocus on now, through coaching,
(07:23):
training, online courses,workshops, and I hang out a lot
on Instagram, where I have areally nice community of women
and I try to kind of do thingsthat incorporate getting
feedback from the community sothat we all just don't feel so
alone, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
For me that time after my first my son was born
was completely overwhelming, andI had my own business at the
time, which I wanted to do,knowing that I wanted to have
children, because I felt like Iwouldn't be able to fit being a
mom into a corporate or abusiness structure.
(08:02):
But it is such a it's the timeof life that I think is unlike
any other time of life thathappens and I can see how the
work that you're doing I mean itimpacts me personally because
it is helping me to do a bettertransition this time than I
(08:23):
think the last time I was ableto.
But I want to start and talk alittle bit like big picture
about some of the structuresthat are in place and the
assumptions that we have around.
This time.
There isn't federal support fornew parents.
Some states have some support,but how does not having
(08:48):
financial support, or limitedfinancial support, affect both
the new parent and then thecompany that they work for?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
To answer that very bluntly.
I think it's very hard right.
You know, in theory I thinkeveryone is supportive of
families and putting that intheir quotes Like that should be
a positive thing that ourcommunity embraces, whether it's
the CEO of a global corporationor an employee or anyone in
(09:17):
between.
But I think a lot of times itdoes come down to a question of
cost and financial support.
And if we had the rightfinancial support, all of this
could be a smoother transition.
There would be better resourcesin place, the cultures of
(09:37):
organizations just because therewere better resources, better
training, paid leave, thingslike that I think the cultures
would just benefit greatly fromit.
But, like you're saying, there'snot a standardized type of
financial support for parentalleave.
In our country.
The government at a federallevel, they are trying to push
(09:58):
through different legislationand we'll see what happens with
that.
And at the state level, certainstates do have some really
supportive options for families,both moms and dads, to take
leave, but others have literallynothing or almost, it feels
like, opposed to it, and sothere's just nothing consistent
out there where I feel likepeople, whether it's the
(10:20):
employee or the employer, canfind resources on what to even
do.
There's a stat out there.
The current stat is there are 8million new parents a year in
the United States, and thinkabout the trickle effect Each of
those parents potentially hasmaybe a manager, some employees.
(10:41):
Obviously some are not in theworkforce.
So if you have 8 million newparents a year, though, even if
you each, there's another 8million managers and colleagues
and companies that are affected,like you would think this would
be a bigger topic that we couldfind some way to help relieve
the financial burden right, yeah, and literally everyone was a
(11:04):
baby at one point.
Yes, yes, and literally everyonehas a mother and a father.
It takes two to tango, and soit's crazy to me that we haven't
prioritized funding thisbecause you and I have talked
about.
Because you're an entrepreneur,I've worked at smaller
(11:24):
companies where there is afinancial burden and the owners
of the company are literallythinking how am I going to fund
my own leave?
How am I going to fund myemployees leave?
This isn't something I plannedfor.
Maybe I have to hire a tempwhile they're out, so I should
be double paying.
I mean, even when people havethe best of intentions, money
(11:48):
and finances are just a hardtopic, right?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, I see the role of the state as a part of the
role of the state and thegovernment federal government is
to identify these kinds ofissues that affect large swaths
of the population and to createprograms around them to protect
(12:12):
people so that they are able togo through these transitions
better than you know, then, wehave in the past and I think
that there's this idea that Imean it comes from centuries of
the division of labor, of womenworking in the home and doing
(12:34):
things in the home and raisingchildren and raising up the
workforce, and then men beingprimarily out of the home and
being a wage earner and thatpiece.
But now that things have shiftedtoward having two earner
households, there haven't beenprograms that have been put in
(12:55):
place in order to support thattransition.
That has happened, which I amso grateful to be able to have a
credit card and a bank accountand, like the ability to own
property, which I don't rightnow, but the ability to and to
have my own business and to earnmy own income.
(13:18):
But with that also comes, as aworking mother, being primarily
responsible for everythingrelated to children and the home
in addition to everything else.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, no, it's a heavy load and I, as someone who
works directly with parents,but also directly with companies
, to support you know whoevermay be expecting that year in
their company.
I do try to see both sides, youknow, of the issue, and I think
(13:52):
in the end, though, if financescould be removed or just the
burden could be lessened by thestate or by the federal
government, what would go awayis the resentment that comes
with that.
You know, if an employer can'tgive their or doesn't give their
employee paid leave, you know,even if they love their job plan
(14:14):
to come back and do come backthey're probably going to feel
some resentment about that.
You know they have a family tofeed there.
They may be the primarybreadwinner, and there's
resentment there.
But also on the employer side,you know, if they feel like
someone you know has been gonefor eight, 12, you know, 16
weeks, which is unfortunatelystandard here in America, you
(14:37):
know, and quote unquote notdoing the work or they make the
assumption that they're on avacation.
That's a bad assumptionactually, which we all know.
Any parent or anyone who knowsa parent, that's not that.
Any parental leave is not avacation, but I see a lot of
resentment brew there too.
So, when you can, if you canhelp alleviate that financial
pressure, a lot of thatresentment alleviates too and
(15:00):
creates a path for collaborationduring this transition between
an employee and an employer.
True support celebration, evenright, this should be a happy
time.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Totally, and I think that the way it is now it kind
of puts I mean, especially instates where there is no support
from the state for disabilityor you know, however it's done
in different states, it puts anespecially heavy burden on the
employer to take the place ofthe government in protecting
(15:32):
their employees from thesefinancial burdens, and so it's
just so challenging in that way.
But if a company is starting tokind of think about, like what
is the right time to think abouta parental leave policy, is it
(15:53):
when you have a pregnantemployee or someone who's the
partner?
Who is it then or is it beforethen?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Right.
Well, that's a valid questionand obviously, in a perfect
world, everyone which has tohave some sort of policy, no
matter how simple or robust, inplace right now, as you're
listening to this podcast, thisis your sign if you're listening
.
But I think what typicallyhappens, especially in growing
(16:22):
companies or smaller companiesor companies who are dealing
with it truly for the first timeright, they're developing it on
the fly kind of for thatinitial person, and that's okay.
But it can feel rushedsometimes when that happens.
But I think as long as thecompany does try to take a
(16:44):
thoughtful approach to not justthinking about this first parent
but how will this apply to allfuture parents, I think that's
okay.
I also think a company coulduse that opportunity to be
collaborative with the employeegoing through it, or to form a
small task force and let otheremployees of their company weigh
(17:07):
in on what they might like thatto look like, not necessarily
just from a wish listperspective, but what might be
realistic, what feels good, andeven have non-parents or people
who never want to be parents onthat committee, just kind of.
I think it's an opportunity forcollaboration.
If you have to do it on the fly, does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
I have worked with a fewdifferent companies to develop
parental leave policies and ithas always been because someone
is about to have a baby and thatit's been kind of like a crunch
time.
And what we have talked about,what I've talked about each time
with them, is, from the HR side, there is submitting a leave of
(17:50):
absence request, right, and Ithink that some employers can
think, okay, I get this leave ofabsence request and so whatever
they're requesting is gonna bethat amount of time and I can
count on that.
But really it's, I think, soimportant to be in a
collaborative process around howmuch leave is being asked for
(18:10):
and then what the transitionlooks like to re-enter into the
workforce, because it can lookall different kinds of ways,
because it's such alife-changing event to have a
baby that the person may thinkthat they'll be able to do
something or that they'll wantto do something, and then that
can change, and so it's helpedto have that conversation
(18:32):
earlier on with the employer tokind of set the stage that
things may not go back toexactly what they were before.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
And as employers think aboutcreating these plans, building
in some sort of contingency,some leeway, some lower
expectations, especially on theback when they're transitioning
back to work, but building thatinto the plan, like we don't
(19:02):
need to set ourselves up forfailure by setting these
unrealistic expectations and momone and dad two will return on
ex-state and everything will beas it was, because it's not for
that person, for that new parent.
Their life will never be thesame as it was before they
brought their new child into theworld and they are going
(19:25):
through a major transition,adjusting to new routines and a
new identity, really all thethings.
And so I think trying to buildthat in that margin room into a
plan upfront is something Iwould recommend everyone really
try to think about.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, and I think you know, on On the one hand it is
for some people they really wantto come back to work and to be
working full time and that islike the way that they want to
move forward.
And then for other people thatshifts and and they may go into
it thinking that that'll shiftfor them, but it actually turns
(20:03):
out that they want to work a lotor, you know, they may Go into
it thinking they may want towork part time when they come
back, but they, you know it just, it can all change around.
And what do you think?
When you work with employers,what are some things that they
can do to kind of prepare forthat transition time back?
(20:24):
Any ideas on how to be flexiblewhile also making sure
everything for the business getsdone that needs to get done?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
yeah, I think that's a good question and I think that
the, in my opinion, what I'veseen, what I've read, what I've
heard that works the best is inyour leave policy or if, even if
you don't have a written leavepolicy and the expectation
communicated with that newparent Is that there absolutely
will be some sort of ramp upperiod, and what I mean by that
(20:53):
is sort of transitioning backslowly to work in in a somewhat
in a part time way.
So there's a couple week periodeven one week would be very
helpful for an employer to kindof plan for some of the.
You know some of the Lowerpoints of that.
You know new parenthood, youknow childcare snafus and you
(21:16):
know being able to make it towork on time because you haven't
had to be anywhere on time in afew months.
And Again, I just think, if youintentionally build it into your
plan, whether it's one week ofokay, if you could come in from
you know 10 to 2 for the firstweek.
And then you know, as you getused to your new routine with a
nanny or a daycare, and as youfigure out if you're a
breastfeeding mom, you know howto pump away from your child and
(21:42):
as you, as you know, maybe youneed to just do some laundry
girl like if a company couldjust build in a little bit of
that humanity, I think thateveryone would be set up for
success, because because there'scushion and if it's expected to
the employer from the outset,then no one's letting anyone
down.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, that makes me want to, because not everyone
who's listening to this willhave had a child or will have
been close with someone who has,and that maybe we could paint a
picture of what postpartum islike.
You know, in that, maybe aroundthat eight week time period,
(22:22):
which is when a lot of peopleare trying to get back to work,
and but what is life like fornew parents in that in that time
?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Okay, look, I don't want to scare anyone, but I am
going to be.
I am going to be honest.
You know that's.
It is a, it's a.
It's a tough time for me.
It's, especially if you are thebirthing parent or a mother who
may, at eight weeks, still berecovering from birth, whether
that was a vaginal birth or a Csection, which it?
(22:56):
You know it is a major surgery.
A C section is.
People always are like, oh,it's only 15 minutes, it's so
sophisticated and civilizedthese days it is.
I've had to for three of mykids.
It's actually quite civilized.
However, the recovery from thatyou can't even drive a car, you
(23:17):
know, for up to six weeksbecause you're on pain pills.
It's the only surgery that cutsthrough seven layers of a
person's body and you'reexpected to be walking four
hours later.
It can be either type of birth.
Any type of birth can be atough recovery is the picture
I'm trying to paint.
So, if you're a birthing mother, you're recovering from that.
(23:39):
Okay, now let's bring in thenew baby.
So, whether you're a nonbirthing mother or you know a
father here, in this scenario,you are learning how to, for the
first time, or maybe the secondor third, take care of a baby
Around the clock.
Literally, you may only, ateight weeks, be getting one hour
of consecutive sleep at a time.
(23:59):
You may be getting that severaltimes throughout a 24 hour
period, but you are not gettinggood sleep.
You're exhausted, disoriented.
You're worried about feedingyour child, and you know whether
it's through breastfeeding orformula.
You know, often times there arecomplications around feeding at
(24:20):
a newborn baby.
Are they gaining enough weight?
Am I nursing okay?
Can I learn how to pump?
You know?
Will the baby take a bottlewhen I go back to work?
These are concerns you know.
Hormones and mental healthissues are, are kind of flying
around in this area as well.
One in I believe, seven womenwill experience postpartum
(24:42):
depression.
And here is a stat that shockedme one in ten dads will
Experience postpartum depression.
That's from PSI, which ispostpartum, I believe, support
international.
They yes and so that wassurprising to me.
So when we talk about postpartumor mental health issues,
(25:02):
they're not Just for the mom orjust for the birthing mom.
A male, you know, canexperience that as well, and
they're expected to be back atwork, sometimes much sooner, mom
.
But you know these are allthings happening around eight
weeks, and you know.
And then, of course, justWhenever you're transition back
(25:23):
to work, is figuring out yournew routine.
What time do I have to wake upto get myself ready to feed the
baby, to drive?
Do a minor commute today carethan the minor commute to my
office?
Can I Wake up at four now?
Can I still wake up at six?
You know there's new routinesabout.
And then, of course, figuringout pumping if you're a
(25:45):
breastfeeding mom.
All on top of, by the way, justmaintaining your life grocery
shopping, cooking meals, payingyour bills, you know, spending
time with your partner, just allof it.
That's what's going on eightweeks it's.
It's a beautiful but chaotictime.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
It's wild some things that came to mind for me, to
our doctor's appointmentsbecause there are doctors
appointments for the birthingperson and then also for the
baby.
That happened frequently duringthose first few months.
And then we were also figuringout like the social security
number and getting them onmedical insurance and, you know,
(26:27):
updating all of that there.
So there's all thisadministrative kind of stuff
that is involved in it to andthen I know a lot of cultures
around the world and have thisforty day period, so it's about
six weeks, where and the motheris supposed to be primarily
(26:47):
inside in a warm place andtaking care of the, the birthing
mother and the baby taking careof by the community.
And it just occurs to me thatyou know it's right around that
time that we're really expectingpeople to go from being in a
pretty sheltered kind of spacewith just people they know to
(27:10):
then being out there in theworld and very productive.
And that you know it's a it's astart contrast between this,
you know, caring for a littleinfant, like I think I was
breastfeeding every two hoursand napping maybe four hours at
a stretch, you know, at thelongest, and trying to,
(27:33):
throughout the day, somehowcobble together six or seven
hours of sleep and yeah, so it'sdefinitely a wild thing to try
to, you know, do that and thenget yourself professional
looking Right especially ifyou're working in person.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
yeah, in an office like, or you know, in a
restaurant or wherever it isthat you're working, and no,
seriously and I think onestatistic that I heard during my
certification program for beinga maternity or parental leave
coach, which is through thecenter for parental leave
leadership, but we were taughtthat about 25%, so about a
(28:16):
quarter of birthing mothers, areactually back to work within
two weeks of giving birth inAmerica.
That's amazing to me.
Wow, it is, but it goes back tothere isn't leave.
They need to make money fortheir families, like you know
there's.
They have to.
I doubt I've never met a womanwho would have voluntarily
(28:39):
gotten up at two weeks and goneback to work, even people who
are really passionate abouttheir jobs, right, you know.
So there's, there's that toconsider to for sure.
And you know, one other thingwhen you were talking about
getting presentable for work,one really lesser talked about,
thing it because it seems itsounds vain, it seems trivial,
(29:01):
but A birthing mother, her bodyhas changed so drastically to
carry a baby has grown truly,you know, may Still kind of be
puffy and weird from surgery.
You know, if they're nursingtheir, their breasts are usually
really like several sizeslarger than usual.
You actually don't have clothesthat fit.
Yeah, in those early days,truly like, you have to probably
(29:26):
buy new clothes that will like,be conservative enough for work
to cover your chest, may belarger to accommodate your hips,
which have stretched and grownduring your pregnancy.
Like I remember Putting onclothes after my first baby and
I went back to work after myfirst child at sixteen weeks,
which you know is wonderful.
But even then, even though Iactually felt like when I looked
(29:47):
in the mirror like hey, lookokay.
No, when I put on the clothesthat I wore before my pregnancy,
they did not button, they weretoo tight across my chest and
that was surprising to me.
But that's and put that asanother thing to put on the
parents.
The birthing parents played oflike well, now I'm gonna go
spend more money to go shoppingand I feel self conscious and
(30:09):
it's that you know that tricklesinto work too.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
It just kind of baffles me, because I think that
a lot of like this part of thetransition back to work doesn't
really get talked about.
It's like a mystery that thepost like the postpartum period
Sometimes is even, like you saidearlier is thought of as like a
vacation, but it's really, Imean, often times more stressful
(30:36):
and more work than people haveever done in their entire life,
on a twenty four hour basis,continually, for months on end,
and because there isn't as muchfamily support here in the
states as there are, you know,in other places.
It's really challenging andsomething that I learned.
(30:57):
Actually, I was watching aprogram about parental leave and
they featured Iceland, and inIceland they did I think it was
a year long leave for birthingmothers.
But they noticed that when theydid that, there started to be
(31:18):
this disparity in pay betweenbirthing mothers and everybody
else, and then so they decidedthat they would add in the
partner leave so that thepartner could also have a year
of leave, and it was a take itor lose it kind of a situation.
(31:38):
So everybody started taking it,and so it meant that the
disparity in pay between thedifferent groups of people was
not as large, and so it helpedto correct that imbalance which
I mean.
In the United States nowbirthing parents get I think
it's like 75% of the pay ofeveryone else, and birthing
(32:02):
mothers of color it's even less,like around 50%.
So it's just a interesting.
I was fascinated by that.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, I think they call that or that's a symptom of
, like, the motherhood bias orthe motherhood penalty.
Does that sound familiar?
It's usually a decrease or agap in pay noticeably between
parents, especially mothers, andeverybody else, and what's
interesting and awful at thesame time is that it bleeds over
(32:35):
to women who are not mothers aswell.
There is like a distortedperspective about all women
because some choose to becomemothers but that all women tend
to feel the negativeconsequences of this motherhood
bias, which is that like we'retoo emotional and we're kind of
kind of not up to par and wehave mom brain or whatever
(32:56):
people.
It's everyone or not everyone,but it is acknowledged as a
misperception, but it occurs.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Mm-hmm.
And it is especially true, Ithink, in hiring when women are
in that 20s to 30s kind of phaseof life, that some companies
will not hire women who arearound that age because they're
assuming that they'll be havingchildren and they'll have to
deal with all of this parentalleave.
And I've even seen it happen incompanies that I work with
(33:27):
where there is not an intentionto pay unfairly, but because a
woman goes out on leave she maymiss the normal period where
raises happen, so she doesn'tget the raise for that year.
And then when she comes back,because there is this period of
transition where she's rampingback up, there's another year of
(33:50):
her not getting a raise orgetting an increase in pay, and
then it just kind of gets moreand more compounded as the years
go on if she has more kids.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Right, and one story that one of the other retained
certified parental leave coacheswas sharing in this cohort that
I'm in was about that and itwas about specifically a sales
team.
So sales people generally workon some sort of commission or
have financial incentives formaking sales.
(34:22):
Well, whether you get fourweeks or four months or six
months or a year, if you're asalesperson who's a woman or a
dad who's on parental leave andyou're missing, you're not gonna
make your sales quota.
And so they had to kind of puttogether, you know, a task force
and decide what would be kindof feel fair to the rest of this
(34:47):
, to everyone right To supportthat working parent while they
were on leave.
You know, not leave them in thedust, but ensure that they sort
of got the buy-in from everyoneelse.
And so there wasn't even moreresentment compounded on that
person taking leave who alsojust got the bonus.
And I sort of forgot where theynetted out.
(35:08):
But it was a really interestingcase study that they sort of
they came up with a formula thatwas kind of like based on your
previous year's sales and youknow we'll do this percentage,
and it was something.
But I appreciate companies likethat that strive to find some
sort of solution, some sort ofcreative solution.
It may not be perfect, but likelet's try to build those kinds
(35:30):
of contingencies into a writtenplan for our employers, for our
parents.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, and I've worked with companies too where
they've had the intent of, youknow, for example, wanting to
provide some kind of financialsupport during parental leave,
but it's not financiallyfeasible when the first
pregnancy or the first birthhappens.
But it gets them thinking okay,in the future this is something
(35:58):
that I wanna be able to provide.
So how do I create the on rampto that?
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, absolutely.
I've heard of companies.
You know you can call itwhatever you want.
Some companies just call itlike a bonus bucket and every
year they put money into a bonusbucket and that money can be
used discretionary, in adiscretionary way really, for
either kind of like smallbonuses, little sussies, rewards
(36:26):
, recognitions, birthdays, butalso, you know, especially for a
smaller company, maybe the oneperson in three years who might
need to take a parental leave,and so no, maybe they don't
quite have a parental leavepolicy that's guaranteed for
everyone, but they're willing todip into that bonus bucket and
(36:47):
pay that person, you know, partof their salary, or call it a
stipend, or call it a bonus,call it a baby bonus, something
to help, because I do understandthat not every employer on
their own, without aid, is in afinancial position maybe to pay
a full-time paid leave.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, and I think you have brought up in the previous
conversation of ours about evenproviding a little bit of
support for the person.
It really shows how much youcare as an organization about
them and can have a positiveeffect on retention, like I have
(37:27):
seen that too, where if thecompany gives a gift card to
somewhere, helps with diapers orformula or whatever it is, then
it helps to bring the personback, absolutely, absolutely.
So outside of financial support, what are some things that
businesses can do to help theiremployees through this
(37:51):
transition?
Speaker 2 (37:52):
You know there's a lot.
There is a lot and I think itcomes down to the culture you
build, the culture you want inyour organization, whether
there's just two people or 2,000people.
But I think that we have tostart by being kind of open and
celebratory about growingfamilies and help and give the
(38:16):
impression that families andchildren are assets and not
liabilities.
That right there, costs nothing.
So congratulate your employeeswho are expecting, ask them
questions about how it's going.
That doesn't relate to yourbottom line, right, you know,
just be a human and justcelebrating their celebrations.
(38:39):
I think also being thoughtfulabout at least hopefully
providing resources for that newparent, like mental and
physical and kind of emotionalhealth resources related to
pregnancy or postpartum orreturn to work.
But if you can't provide themlike if you don't have an HR
(39:02):
department or you just don'thave access to those kinds of
resources even just doing alittle research on your own and
sending an email to youremployee like hey, I found a few
links that might be helpful foryou as you're thinking about
planning for your leave Likethat would have meant so much to
me if a boss sent me that, evenif they weren't giving me paid
(39:23):
leave or I didn't work for thishuge company with a big budget,
so going out of their way to bethoughtful, I think, in a
perfect world, providingmanagers with some training
around this type of transition,like a kind of a family, a
growing family transition.
There's probably other lifetransitions that managers could
(39:46):
be trained about how to supporttheir employees through.
It's because it's not reallyfair right that these we get
just promoted and promoted andall of a sudden we're the boss
and we have a whole team to takecare of, and maybe we've never
done that before.
And so I think there's likesome emotional intelligence kind
of training and skill honingthat employees can provide for
(40:08):
their leaders.
A couple of other things justoff the top of my head setting
clear and realistic policies,like across the board, but being
flexible, or with an emphasison being flexible about
schedules and changes and ifsomeone needed to work from home
(40:31):
because they had a sick kid,and all of that that we learned
that we can do during COVID.
So this isn't like a novelconcept.
We can be flexible to people'slives.
And I think, finally, or oneother thing, is modeling having
the leaders model the kind ofbehavior I guess I'm not saying
(40:56):
this right, but having leadersmodel family forward policies
and family kind of forwardtolerance.
So, even if a leader or amanager is not a parent
themselves, they leave early oneday to go to their niece's
ballet recital and they telleveryone I'm going to be with my
(41:17):
family.
I heard some on the other daysay that they tried to
reschedule a team meeting andtheir manager said, oh sorry, I
can't reschedule to that time.
That's my therapy appointmentand it's like okay, so mental
health is a priority.
It's okay to bring mentalhealth into the picture, got it?
Or if you do have kids, beingthe one especially, I would love
(41:39):
to see more men do this leavingearly to pick up the kids from
school or being home whenthey're sick.
But talking about those things,I think, also creates a culture
that this is okay as long aswork's getting done.
We all know we're doing ourbest, life happens and we're
going to prioritize family.
I think that doesn't cost athing but helps support, you
(42:04):
know, people thinking aboutstarting a family and those who
have them.
What if you?
Speaker 1 (42:10):
have created or are in a work environment where none
of that is happening, like howdo you start it or what's a way
to kind of introduce that?
And I can imagine that a lot ofdifficult conversations can
come up for people in thosekinds of situations where it's
(42:35):
not a family forward environment, where it's not conducive to
people taking time away for work.
I mean, it could just be thatthat's not the right workplace
for a parent to be in.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
That's a great question because I think that
the reality is we can talk aboutan ideal world where you know
there's maternity leave andpaternity leave policies and
everyone's welcoming and theCEOs are leaving early to pick
up their kids.
But likely the majority that'snot what's probably happening in
the majority of organizationsin our country and so if someone
finds themselves in one ofthose organizations where you
(43:16):
know, at best you know kind ofhaving a family is tolerated and
at worst it's mocked, ridiculed, judged, discriminated against,
I think there's a couple ofthings people can do.
Number one I think I'm just ahuge fan of advocating for
yourself firmly but politely,you know.
(43:37):
I think it's always worth thequestion.
So, going to your manager oryour employer or the head of the
company or whoever asking totalk about this specifically,
provide some context, providesome solutions, like a leader
wants to hear solutions, theydon't want to hear about the
problem.
(43:57):
Some potential solutions couldbe that you are proposing
putting together a group withinthe committee, within the
organization, that will try tohelp build this part of the
culture, or could be a supportgroup for people within the
company who find themselves tobe a new parent or a working
(44:19):
parent, women, whatever thesubgroup is, but offering to
spearhead that no one needs todo any work, there doesn't need
to be a budget for it, even, butstarting somewhere.
But I do think you have to askfor what you want.
So, I think, advocate for whatyou think is best.
If your employer is open to it,pursue that path, encourage it,
(44:42):
water it, see where it goes.
If things get better, then wow,you've made some change in your
company and maybe it's a goodplace to stay and hang.
If it doesn't get better, Ithink you have a decision to
make if it's the right place foryou.
If you do advocate again backto the start of this decision
tree if you advocate foryourself like that and you're
(45:03):
met with disdain, dismissal,judgment, all the things, I also
think it's maybe time to thinkabout a different career path or
employer.
And I don't say that lightly,because I know it's hard to find
a good job and I know certainparts of the country or certain
cities or smaller cities likethere's a lack of available
(45:26):
positions, but because the truthis, at the end of the day, you
are replaceable to your companyand kind of your company is
replaceable to you or somethingcan happen that's so out of your
control that your job goes away.
Your company could be acquired,your company could go under.
They could fire you at will forno reason, depending what state
(45:47):
you live in.
This is, your company that youcurrently work at is temporary,
but your family is forever.
Your children are forever.
You being a mom is forever, andso you need to do your best to
advocate for your needsflexibility, paid leave within
(46:07):
your organization, be anadvocate for yourself and other
families.
And if you're not seeingtraction there, I do encourage
you to take a hard inventory andlook at that situation and
decide if maybe you need to lookfor something else.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Becoming a parent for me was a time when I started
speaking up for my thoughts andbeliefs and what like the
perspective that I have aroundmy family and raising my son and
all of these things in a waythat I had never really done
before.
It was a really big shift forme, I think, especially in my
(46:45):
family I would tend to be quietabout things that because I
didn't want to stir the pot ormake things difficult, and so
it's been a big learning processof saying the things that I
normally keep inside and tospeak up for the ways that I
(47:06):
want for things to go, when Ihad learned to not be that way
earlier on in my life.
So it's so important to do thatand also just acknowledging how
not all of us are raised aswomen to have that voice and to
(47:31):
be able to speak to our needsand to speak up for them,
especially in a power dynamic ofa workplace.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, I think I've probably been a little too
empowered to speak my mindgrowing up, but I recognize that
not everyone feels as confidentraising their voice, raising
their hand in certain situations.
But I truly believe that if youapproach the situation
(48:02):
professionally, politely butwell researched, it's almost
like you're pitching somethingyou've done nothing wrong by
asking for something and thenwhatever response they give you
is the information you need toprocess and make a decision for
what's next.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think that sometimes whenyou hear the response back, it
can make you angry, it can makeyou upset, but really when
you're in that meeting or inthat conversation, it's just
your information gathering.
Yeah, you're learning about theenvironment and what is working
(48:42):
and what isn't working, and youcan take that and you can use
it to make important decisionsabout your life.
Which brings me to as anemployee.
If I have found out that mypartner is going to have a baby
or I'm going to have a baby andI know nothing about all of this
(49:03):
, what are some things that Ican do to help with my
transition, both in and out ofwork and then just with having a
little human?
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's the million dollar question.
My answer is not going to bevery sophisticated, but I think
the first thing you do is youget on Google and there are
versus five years ago, when Iwas kind of going through my
hard time, there are so manymore resources available to
every part of expecting a child,postpartum, returning to work,
(49:40):
even right, that's a veryemerging like.
I'm an attorney, leave coach,I'm certified in it.
Where was that a few years ago?
That's cool, but I honestly Iwould start with Google, because
I think in everyone's, wherevereveryone lives, there's going
to be some slightly differentresources, policies, rules et
cetera.
But there are so many good blogposts, government websites,
(50:03):
instagram accounts that havesummaries for where to start.
I think that my personal adviceis that in that first trimester,
whether you're carrying thechild or not carrying the child,
that you hold steady, letyourself process and feel the
(50:23):
feelings, the excitement, thenervousness, the anxiety, the
amazement, not only to process,but also, as anyone who's been
involved in a pregnancy knows,the first trimester is when I
believe it's about 80% ofmiscarriages happened during the
(50:46):
first trimester, and so, asexcited as people can get, I
really do encourage them to justkind of sit tight, nurture
themselves, nurture their dreamsduring that first trimester and
wait a little bit.
And when they get into theirsecond trimester, that's a good
time to start planning, and I domean planning like a written
(51:10):
plan.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Yeah, I have had three miscarriages actually, and
for me, every time that I'vebecome pregnant, the first
trimester has not been a joyfultime.
For me, it's been a very highanxiety, stressful, worried time
, and this last time Iintentionally didn't tell anyone
(51:39):
that I was pregnant, because Iknew that people were going to
be really happy and that Iwasn't going to be able to meet
their happiness.
Oh yes, yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
So you needed to process in a different way.
You needed a little more timeto process.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
But then something happened when I moved into the
second trimester where I think,hormonally things change,
biologically things change.
It's more likely that you'regoing to carry all the way to
term and I just accepted it.
And I don't think that's theexperience of everyone who is
(52:19):
pregnant and who has anxiety,but for me that was a big shift
that happened at that secondtrimester time.
And now, moving into the thirdtrimester, there's this sense of
needing to slow down and thatof feeling my body getting
bigger and dilating and beingpreparing to birth.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's amazing, and I do like
most doctors say and people whohave experienced it, I think
it's.
You may want a plan, you maywant to research and you may
want to do all these things.
You may have a lot of anxieties, even about work that you're
trying to research and find theanswer to, but I think sometimes
(53:02):
giving it a little bit of abeat is helpful.
And then, when you are ready todo that, I always recommend
putting pen to paper and writingdown some sort of maternity or
paternity leave plan, even plansbetween two partners for how
they're going to support eachother during this transition,
(53:24):
and I think it helps people feelless anxious when they start
putting pen to paper about okay,what am I going to do, what's
my general plan, timing, whatwork responsibilities need to
get handed off to someone elseor paused, and how will I take
those back on?
What are my boundaries?
(53:45):
I think those are kind of thecouple of basic things that I
would highly recommend someonewrite down, even if it's just in
a journal.
Write it down Word document,excel, powerpoint, whatever you
need.
That would be.
That's something I work on withpeople.
I have kind of a differenttemplate, a kind of proprietary
(54:05):
template that I use.
But people find a lot ofconfidence or, I guess, sort of
relief in letting go all thethings that are swirling around
in their head and capturing itinto a literal plan document
type thing.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Yeah, and I think when we did it it was like I did
that first for work and then Idid that for personal life and
it just completely even knowingthat the plan will not always go
to plan.
It just helped to get it allout of my head.
Speaker 2 (54:41):
Yeah, yeah, and sometimes that's all we need,
right, and we can take it a stepfurther if we want.
But I would just encourageparents all expecting parents to
kind of get in planning mode,as simple or robust as that
looks to them, because eventhough you might not be able to
see exactly what life aheadlooks like, especially if you're
(55:03):
a first time parent, you knowthat change is coming.
And what can you do now to setyourself up for success later is
sort of what I would recommendthinking about.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
I mean, there's just so many things, I think, related
to the new parent time that youcan plan out.
I think one of the things thatreally helped me was learning
about birth the first timearound, especially because I had
really no idea the differentphases of birth, and I think I
(55:36):
took a class with some peoplewhere it was six weeks long or
something and we did that, andthen also I was able to connect
with some other moms who wereall having kids around the same
time and we, to this day, have aWhatsApp group where we, you
know, text each other aboutdifferent weird things that
happen.
(55:56):
So what is going on in yourbusiness right now that you want
to share about?
What are all the how?
Can people be supported by youthrough the work that you do?
Speaker 2 (56:10):
That's a great question.
Thank you for asking.
Yeah, you know, I'm reallyreally honing in and focusing on
doing one-on-one parental leavecoaching.
Typically I work with women,just kind of given my unique
perspective as a mother also,but I'd be more than happy to
work with dads who have apaternity leave coming up as
(56:35):
well.
So I do one-on-one coachingprograms which typically last
from the time you engage me.
So usually a lot of people thathappens during the second
trimester of a pregnancy and Iwork with that individual to
plan for and literally make aplan for parental leave, put it
into writing, help facilitate aconversation with their manager
(56:57):
if they'd like me to.
You know, pause to celebrateand do all the things.
You know.
We work together a couplesessions before their leave and
then I'm there for them duringtheir leave.
I schedule a few check-ins butdon't want to take up too much
of their time, but in a resourcethey can text or call.
I'm part of their team.
You know anything they needthat I can just be a sounding
(57:18):
board for during leave I'm thereand during that time we also
start thinking about how willyou transition back to work?
Do you even want to transitionback to work?
You know what does that looklike.
And then I'm there for somesessions as the new parent
returns to work, for about sixmonths after, to ensure it feels
(57:39):
seamless, supported.
We have a plan for things.
We're kind of mitigating anylittle challenges that come up,
but it's a long, intensivecoaching program and I love it
so much because I get to gothrough this crazy life
transition with different peopleand help them feel supported.
So one-on-one coaching is thebest way to work with me.
(58:01):
I can work directly with you, amom or a dad who's listening,
or I can work with an employerwho may hire me for the one or
two parents they have in theirorganization a year who will be
going through this transition,and in that case I can also do
some manager training, and sothey also get a little bit of
(58:23):
coaching, not only to help them,not only to help the employee
who's maybe who's expecting, butto help them, because I mean,
just because someone's a managerdoesn't mean they know how to
deal with one of their teammembers going out only for
several months.
They need support and help too,and so you know it's a whole
(58:44):
ecosystem.
So one-on-one coaching that'swhat I'm all about these days,
though I also have an onlinecourse that you can buy.
That kind of helps newerworking moms think about how to
juggle everything and, you know,streamline their tasks and
prioritize self-care.
And then just hanging out onInstagram, I just love to talk
(59:05):
to people, so you can find methere.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Awesome, awesome.
Well, thanks so much for comingon the show.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
Thank you for having me.
I just, I just thank you somuch.
All the stuff you're doing foryou know business leaders and
for people who are wanting tosucceed in their careers.
I love it.
I love everything on thispodcast.
Thank you.
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