Can You Have It All?

In previous years, “lean in” became a popular vernacular among career women around the world. Made popular by former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, it’s all about seizing opportunities in the workforce –”leaning in” to career challenges – despite obstacles. But in a world where women face difficulties like juggling motherhood with their careers or fighting institutional sexism, do female workers really believe they can have it all?

To find out, we surveyed 625 women who had experience balancing both their career and family. We asked them about their beliefs, aspirations, and setbacks to learn more about working women and whether “leaning in” is enough. Read on to see how women navigate motherhood and the workforce – and what the world can do to make it better.

Beliefs on Balance

Even former first lady Michelle Obama believes “it’s not always enough to lean in.” But what does the average working woman think about her career prospects, especially when it involves children?

According to our survey, more than half of female respondents agreed that it’s possible for women to balance their careers and family successfully. Another 27.9 percent somewhat agreed with this statement, while 9 percent somewhat disagreed and 5.4 percent fully disagreed. This suggests that most respondents were optimistic about being mothers while having a career. That remained fairly true despite their demographic backgrounds.

Nevertheless, there were slight differences in this optimism. Women in single-income households were slightly less likely than those in double-income households to believe they could balance a career and family. Moreover, those from Generation X were also less likely to believe this compared to other generations.

Balancing Act

Women who work and parent are, no doubt, faced with a long list of obligations and ever-shifting priorities. The average mother puts in nearly 100 hours of labor each week between work and time spent on her family, according to one recent study. We asked mothers about how they believe they balanced work and family, plus how they envisioned that balance ideally.

Our survey results suggest that about a third of mothers considered themselves “much more focused” on their family than their career. Almost 15 percent considered themselves “somewhat more focused” on their family, while a little over a quarter said they were equally career- and family-focused.

Nevertheless, the majority of women said their ideal was an equal split between their career and family, with nearly 39 percent of respondents saying so. Another 19.4 percent saw their ideal life as “strongly family-focused,” while 17.4 percent saw their ideal life as “completely family-focused.”

Finding the Ideal Balance

For many women, finding the ideal balance between work and family usually takes years of practice. In fact, working moms took an average of nearly six years to achieve a work-life balance they found satisfactory. We surveyed working mothers about their satisfaction level depending on how they balanced work and family –plus how many women thought their careers suffered as a result.

Interestingly, our findings suggest that the majority of women surveyed (nearly 61 percent) were most satisfied when they were mostly career-focused. Meanwhile, more than half of those who were equally career- and family-focused were also satisfied, as was the case for those who considered themselves mostly family-focused (49 percent). However, respondents who were family-focused were most likely to believe their work compensation suffered due to familial responsibilities.

Even so, a large proportion of mostly career-focused women – 41 percent – still believed their work compensation was negatively impacted because of responsibilities to their family.

Surveying Support

In the U.S., the gender wage gap is certainly wide – women made 18.2 percent less than men on average, according to 2017 numbers provided by the OECD. And the gender wage gap significantly widens with the arrival of a family’s first child. As The New York Times put it, “… women’s earnings plummet and their career trajectories slow.” Meanwhile, new fathers remain relatively unimpacted.

To get a glimpse into this reality, we asked women whether they felt supported at work and what policies ultimately made working and motherhood more seamless. Our survey results suggest that working moms were much more likely to be satisfied with their jobs when they were supported to take time off for child care. 

About 63 percent of women in this situation were satisfied with their jobs when employers were supportive of time off, and just 16 percent of women who worked at places where they were not supported. Meanwhile, 31 percent of currently unemployed mothers reported their workplace was not supportive of time off for child care.

Of all the perks offered, survey respondents were most favorable of different or more flexible working hours (45.2 percent). Forty-three percent said days off were the most helpful, while 32.6 percent said more flexibility in their work responsibilities was most helpful.

Motherhood vs. Career

It’s often said women are forced to choose either children or a career. But how do things look for those who ultimately manage both? And are there advantages to both working and being a mother?

According to our survey, about 42 percent of women surveyed said they believed motherhood benefited their career, while fewer (28.2 percent) believed their career benefited motherhood. Interestingly, women newest to the workforce, with 2-5 years of work experience, were most likely to believe motherhood benefited their careers (48.4 percent). Whereas, veterans of the workforce –women with 16 or more years of job experience – were most likely to say their career benefited motherhood (34.5 percent). This group was also likely to believe motherhood benefited their career (46.5 percent).

Some respondents explained their reasoning:

“Being a mother helped me be better at my job because it taught me patience with poor behavior even in adults. It kept me calm and focused on my goal. Working, on the other hand, never really made me a better mother,” said a 60-year-old survey respondent who had 16 or more years of job experience. “I was more tired and lacked the time I needed to be all the places I needed to be at once.”

We also analyzed women’s explanations of how motherhood skills translated to the workplace. We found over 17 percent of women mentioned “compassion” as a valuable skill they brought to work, along with 14 percent who mentioned “patience” and 11 percent who brought their multitasking skills to the office.

Words of Advice

If you’re a working mother or hope to be one, there’s perhaps no better place to look for advice than here. We asked women who balanced their careers and families for their best piece of advice.

In the end, more women wished they had spent more time with their family than with their co-workers. Thirty-four percent of women said that, in hindsight, they would have spent more time with their family. Only 13 percent said they wished they had spent more time on their career – and nearly 40 percent said that, ideally, they would have balanced both equally.

Working Mothers Are the Majority

These days, most mothers are working mothers. More than 70 percent of American women with children under 18 have a job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and some have even called working mothers “the backbone of the U.S. economy.” Moreover, women spent about nine more hours doing paid work in 2016 than in 1965, on average.

Given this shift in American culture over the last few decades, understanding working motherhood is, no doubt, important for the betterment of our society. Mothers still face discrimination, unfair wages, and sexism in the workforce – and even worse, many are afraid to speak up about it. Our survey of 625 women respondents gives us a glimpse into the very real, raw world of parenting and having a career.

Methodology

We surveyed 625 women who have or had careers and families to understand how they felt about balancing their work and kids’ needs. Our respondents ranged in age from 29 to 75 with an average age of 44 and a standard deviation of 11 years. Twenty percent of the women surveyed were currently unemployed, while the majority (80 percent) were employed. We also surveyed 762 women who were currently pursuing careers and aspired to be mothers to gauge their sentiment toward their jobs, future families, and their ability to manage both.

We measured sentiment toward women’s balance of work and family using a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being “completely career-focused,” 4 being “equally career- and family-focused,” and 7 being “completely family-focused.” We measured sentiments like career satisfaction to understand how women’s choices affected their job satisfaction. We also did a word analysis that broke down mentions of each word in write-in options of our survey to analyze the number of times women mentioned specific skills they learned from motherhood that they brought to the office.

Fair Use Statement

Are you optimistic about balancing a family and career? Feel free to share our study on women’s perspectives of work-life balance for noncommercial purposes, but don’t forget to link back to us to give us some credit for these insights.