After more than nine years as a working mother, having worked both “for the man” as a corporate cog and “for the woman” (me!) as an small business owner, I’ve figured out how to make better sense of the work-life juggle. Though, it’s not always a perfect or pretty picture. I’m human, after all, and the one constant in motherhood is change so I’m always in the process of learning and growing into the role.
One of the key lessons I’ve learned in the last nine years is that my approach to work-life challenges matters.
Life is a series of roles
We each have several life roles we play and there are responsibilities for fulfilling each role. Before motherhood, managing our life roles posed some challenges, but we usually figured it out without too much stress (at least compared to now). There’s something about the mother role that complicates our lives. Maybe it’s because the role is really layers deep and comprised of sub-roles like, chef, teacher, housemaid, bookkeeper, taxi driver, therapist, nurse, etc. As a mother we’re asked to do things that stretch us in new and unexpected ways.
The whole work-life juggle comes down to role management. Every day, we must prioritize and manage the activities within each role. If we’re not effective, things fall through the cracks and we’re left to manage the outcome – missed appointments, incomplete work assignments, and feelings of guilt. To resolve our ineffectiveness, we look for ways to regain control of our roles. There are two common approaches:
The compartmentalize approach
In this approach, roles are placed into neat, conforming boxes. For example, your work role is neatly set aside and separate from all other roles, especially the mother role. When you’re at work, you turn on your work personality and shed any trace of being a mom. Many working moms adopt this approach because it seems appropriate. You can’t let your role as a mom interfere with your career, right? The problem with this approach is that you end up leading a fragmented life. Even worse, you’re forced to shift identities as you move from role to role. Over time, people will notice your incongruence and so will you.
The balance approach
By definition, balance is “an even distribution of weight ensuring stability” (Oxford English Dictionary). In theory this sounds like a great idea because it suggests that a mother can regain control (or stability) simply by spreading herself evenly across life roles. Yet in practice, it’s impossible. Life is too irregular, too transient and too fluid to allow for balance in the traditional sense. Struggling to achieve work/life balance is wasted effort.
Frustrated by these two approaches, I was determined to find a better way to manage my work/life. In my perfect world, my life was whole and unified. I wasn’t fragmented. I wasn’t teetering on a thin rope trying to balance it all. I was integrated. And in 2005, I coined the name of this blog, The Integrated Mother, in an effort to share my experience in creating an integrated life.
The integrated approach
Integrated mothers are innovators in that they observe and sometimes adopt elements from traditional approaches, like compartmentalizing and balancing, but they go a step further to redefine their roles in a way that uniquely fits them. One mother’s integrated life may look vastly different than another’s. Integrated mothers often update traditional beliefs about working motherhood to create new norms. For example, there are many ways to work and earn money. An integrated mother is willing to find the way that works best for her and her family even if it means being different than the norm. The key to this approach is keeping in mind the goal: to be whole and unified. All of your roles are combined, or integrated, to create a complete picture of you.
Creating an integrated life isn’t always easy. I have stumbled and fallen more times than I care to admit as I try to fully live up to my blog name. I see those as character-building moments though and trudge through anyway. And despite those missteps, I’ve found that pursuing an integrated life is far better than the other two options.
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