The Power Pause How I Am Reframing Career and Motherhood

By Neha Ruch

Since becoming a mother, I’ve worked part-time, been fully at-home, fully-at-home with a side project, part-time on the growing project slash business, and now am working full-time out of the home seeing that business into a movement. It was all fulfilling, it was all challenging, and it was all right for me and my family at that time. And my kids were more than okay in every stage because they knew they were loved by me and their dad. All research points to one unifying fact, our careers do not impact our children – either their sense of security or their sense of ambition. Our children benefit from present parents and so if we’re lucky enough to get to choose, you can choose what feels right for you and your family right now and come back over and over.

My new book, THE POWER PAUSE: How To Plan A Career Break After Kids And Come Back Stronger Than Ever is not to say that pausing or downshifting your career is the right choice after you have children.

Instead, THE POWER PAUSE is to say that career shifts for family life can be another ambitious and valid choice in what I hope are the many choices that modern women have in the long game of work and family life.  And if it is a choice that one partner in a two-parent household does make to support their family for a chapter, whether that be because of finances, time with their kids, less stress in the home or other needs, it can be one that can actually lead them to a clearer sense of self, a more expansive network and new interests even if they’re all developed on playgrounds and on the PTA or in the fringe hours of family life on an Instagram account or Masterclass.  

So often, early mothers are warned about losing themselves in parenthood. And then we consider our careers, and add the “mommy penalty” or even “stay-at-home motherhood” into the mix and we worry about all that we’re losing. Here’s what I know – the experiences you’ve accrued in the decade prior to motherhood (based on the average age of first-time parenthood in America) do not evaporate. Those skills and accomplishments go with you. Your identity, your ambition, your feminism…they all go with you even as you make room for new endeavors like motherhood. And still, just like when you changed from age 5 to 15 and 15 to 25, you will change in this next chapter. Your priorities and perspectives will shift and the heightened sense of responsibility will feel more immense than ever. I would say the ability to prioritize and the perspective of what’s important will become your super power. You will meet new people by nature of having entered into parenthood and be in new playrooms and playspaces and it will be a new network you couldn’t have imagined to tease ideas or questions. You will face new problems in the day to day that will inspire new podcasts to listen to and ways to think. You may face parts of yourself as your kids get older that you’ve always wanted to heal and there’s never more motivation than your child.  

But the parts of you that you want to go with you, you get to choose to hold even if they change shape. Your ambition and intellect does not evaporate if you choose to shift your career to make more room for the day-to-day with your family.  Instead, I want you to adopt the dictionary definition of your ambition – work of doing things you care about with determination. If you shift to make room for work on family life, yourself, new passions, community building or your marriage and you do that with care and intention to further your life in a direction you value, then your ambition is in fact, intact. You get to come back and decide what it looks like, over and over again.

Neha Ruch is the founder of Mother Untitled, the leading platform for ambitious women leaning into family life. Neha lives in Manhattan with her husband, their two children, and their dog Coconut. Her book, The Power Pause, will be published January 12th by Putnam and can be ordered here now.