It’s Not Physics – It’s Bad Workplace Design
Mothers can have it all – if we design it all better.
Welcome to Promoted to Mother, a Substack on motherhood, careers and culture. I offer career perspectives to integrate motherhood, question cultural norms impacting mothers and share reflections from my own motherhood journey. Thank you for being here! 🤍
Mothers are routinely told by society, “You can’t have it all.”
You can’t be successful at your job and be a present mother at the same time. We’re told it’s not possible.
“It’s impossible to be in two places at once.”
Or, we’re told we can have it all, but not all at once – something always has to give.
So we’re told to make tradeoffs and compromises.
We’re told to reassess our priorities and make decisions based on the ranking order.
“You want to be at bathtime? Maybe now’s not a good time for a promotion…”
“You want to be with your kids while they’re young? You mustn’t be very ambitious…”
In prioritising, we’re then left trying to figure out how we suppress the other parts of ourselves in a way that makes them quiet enough to operate each day, without drowning out their existence altogether.
“You can’t have it all…”
Sure.
Maybe.
But what if…
What if it has absolutely nothing to do with mothers trying to defy physics by being in two places at once, and more to do with the fact that we exist in workplaces that are simply not designed for us?
Workplaces were not designed to integrate the needs of a mother.
Workplaces were designed for men in a time when they were not culturally expected to provide care.
Workplaces were designed to meet the “Ideal Worker” norm – where the ideal employee is always available, always committed, and not seen to have any requirements that could conflict with their ability to respond to work.
And we haven’t updated the design.
We haven’t stopped to ask ourselves collectively, what do mothers really need in a workplace?
Instead, we’ve spent decades trying to simply fit in. To be taken seriously. To be treated without bias. To be given opportunities without the presumption that our gender – or care status – makes us less capable than men.
We can’t “have it all” – because we didn’t design workplaces to integrate with motherhood.
We can’t “have it all” – because we didn’t design jobs with the hours for nursing a young child, or the resources to have them cared for nearby.
We can’t “have it all” – because we deprioritised multigenerational villages where child-rearing can be shared.
We can’t “have it all” – because corporations obsess with timesheets over outputs, and where presence has become more important than performance.
We can’t “have it all” – because we still act as if a career is the most important singular season in life. A linear rat race that ends in early retirement and then starting to “live a life”.
We can’t “have it all” – because we don’t acknowledge the cyclical nature of women compared to men.
And so, rather than collectively design more suitable workplaces, it has become easier to allow this to be made our fault, as mothers and women, for daring to try to expand beyond antiquated containers.
It’s become easier to minimise a mother through shaming her ambition than it is to reconsider how we design jobs.
It’s become easier to rely on the comfort of having employees ever-present, ever-online, than it is to enquire whether such presence actually aligns with productivity (it rarely does).
How do we fix this?
How do we redesign workplaces for mothers?
We stop stifling mothers into rigid timesheets.
The 8-hour workday is dead; let’s move on.We prioritise performance over presence in workplaces.
Does it matter how the work gets done, if it gets done?We give true flexible working hours that focus on output instead of input.
A mother’s day might look like, 8-10am / 12-2pm / 5-7pm OR 11am-2-pm / 6-10pm OR 5am-8am / 3-6pm.We challenge managers operating teams without clarity on who is ultimately accountable for what.
Lack of clarity fuels fear-based availability and disproportionately impacts mothers.We stop punishing mothers for working from home.
Again, it doesn’t matter how the work gets done – so long as it gets done. Working from home can give some women the opportunity to still see their children while another provides the primary care.We invest in on-site childcare options, and/or hybrid childcare models that allow mothers to work in the same space.
FYI I’m currently writing from a hybrid care space – given my child’s temperament, it works a treat and I’ve never been so productive in motherhood…We trust that mothers are infinitely capable of getting the job done – if you empower them to do so.
No further comment required on this one.
Compromise will always exist – but it doesn’t have to be as severe as it currently is.
We’re not asking to defy physics with witchcraft. We’re just asking for better design.
What else would you add? How would you design a workplace that helps you to feel that you can “have it all”?
With love,
Kiya
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This is so good! If companies implemented even just ONE of your proposed solutions, the world would be a better place.
Better design, please!