My friend was sobbing when I answered the phone. This is someone I rarely see show the stress of her busy job, which she juggles with small children and very little support. Something had pushed her over the edge. “What happened?’ I asked, fearing the answer...

The straw that broke the camel’s back? Her son had come down with a terrible throat infection, and in the time she had been away from her desk to take him to the doctor and get some much-needed antibiotics, something had come up at. It wasn’t a massive issue. The shit had not hit the fan. Still, her colleagues reacted with a kind of corporate stacks-on. Everyone called, texted and emailed… with varying levels of veiled frustration and accusation in their words and tone. 

It was a storm in a teacup, she said, but one manager was scathing about her delay in responding. And she works hard, and it was hurtful. 

“Did you tell them where you were?” I asked. “Of course not,” she answered, flatly. And I totally get why. I would have done the exact same thing. And that’s because for many women in senior roles (and at all sorts of other levels too), we just don’t mention our kids at all. Somewhere along the way, it became like saying “the dog at my homework,” admitting your work has been compromised by the small people at home.

For everyone I asked about this who does the same thing, none of us have the exact same reason why. In fact, it’s hard to put a finger on when we decided to zip it. 

One of the ways I see this issue manifesting is with those women who had negotiated more child-friendly hours pre-pandemic. I have colleagues who, say, work from 8am-4pm because they want to pick up their small children before the witching hour hits. My friend explains it like this: “I work the same hours as everyone else, but I often feel I have to keep showing I deserve the privilege of these bespoke hours over and over again,” she says. And so she rarely takes a lunch break or participates in water-cooler chat and scurries out with her head down at 4pm. I sneak out at the end of the day too, hoping no-one sees me. I’m not doing anything wrong… I’ve finished my day. But still, it’s always just before everyone else. It’s always when others are relaxing and having a chat. But I can’t stay. I’ve got another job to go to—one that matters so much more.

Of course, that’s not to say no-one at work knows about my kids. I share entertaining anecdotes about them…  but I would never reveal the true stresses of my juggle. I wouldn’t explain that my fourth coffee is because of a sleepless night. And I would never admit the pressure I feel as another bank of school holidays looms. I wish I could be excited about them, but I get four weeks of annual leave and my kids are at home 14 weeks of the year… how are we all not losing our shit constantly, simply on the back of this math? For me it’s like a tsunami heading my way… I keep the calendar at work, counting the weeks down until the real juggle begins. I figure out how to get eight weeks whether of work done in four. It’s a mad dash of hitting up in-laws, babysitting dollars, holidays camps, annual leave and honestly, sometimes loving neglect.

The research points to a pretty simple reason for all of this: working women often feel the need to minimise the demands of family life to be taken seriously at work. We want our managers to see us as committed. And somewhere along the way, that meant keeping quiet about what’s going on at home.

We keep this all to ourselves because we figure it’s not our manager’s fault we have all this extra pressure. But when so many women are forced to leave full-time work because of this impossible juggle… maybe, just maybe, we have been approaching this the wrong way.

For me, remote working during the pandemic has felt like a beacon of hope. Suddenly, with so many companies having to update dinosaur tech and with remote access better than ever, working a day from home when a child is sick or during school holidays is suddenly possible. It has felt like someone handed me the oxygen mask on the plane. It even stoked my ambition for a more challenging role, knowing the juggle was now almost possible. It never occurred to me to demand this kind of flexibility before. 

The truth us, the psychological contract between employee and employer has shifted for a moment in time. It won’t last forever. But right now, we are allowed to be seen as complex humans with demands on our time that go beyond work. We are more focused on output than hours, as workplaces worry about retention. And so this might just be our moment to admit, a little more publicly, that we were at a dentist appointment or school meeting or putting up Halloween decorations… with our kids. And so what of it.