How Working Mothers Are Rewriting The Rules Of Work And Family With Dr. Dana Sumpter

Working mothers are constantly navigating the delicate balance between caring for others and caring for themselves, often while carrying invisible loads that no one sees. Dr. Dana Sumpter joins Carrie Fogliani for an honest conversation about what it really means to be a working mother today—how identity, purpose, and priorities evolve when professional life meets family life. Drawing from her research on women balancing work and motherhood during the pandemic, she sheds light on the silent pressures, the unrealistic “ideal worker” myth, and the systems that need to change. Together, they explore the path toward empathy-based leadership, sustainable workplace cultures, and a more human definition of success that honors both ambition and care.

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How Working Mothers Are Rewriting The Rules Of Work And Family With Dr. Dana Sumpter

From Professional To Parent: Dana’s Personal Journey

Dana, thank you so much for joining us. Before we get into your research, which I can’t wait to talk more about, I just wanted to pause and hear a little bit more about your personal journey of being a professional, becoming a mom, and what that was like for you.

Thank you so much, Carrie. We’re happy to be here talking with you about this. It’s so funny because I oftentimes feel like such a total fraud or imposter when I talk about these topics and best practices of working mothers and work-life balance, because I am far from perfect myself. I make all the mistakes. I continue to struggle with things daily. I just want to get that out there. First of all, I’ve always been someone who loves to work. I’ve always been a hard worker. I love having jobs, feeling useful, doing work, and accomplishing things. I’ve been working since I was old enough to legally be able to do so.

I’ve also always loved people. I studied Psychology in my undergrad. I got my master’s in HR right away afterwards, not knowing what the heck I wanted to do with a Psych degree, and studied Human Resources. That was the natural synthesis of people and work, and people and business. I was increasingly motivated at that time in my life and my career to want to make work better for people. I saw that as my why. I wanted to see how I could help make workplaces better. For a while, I did that in my career as an HR professional.

In my years working in financial services and HR, I was like, “I feel like this is not what I was put on this earth to do.” There were things about the job, the occupation, the industry, and all of that that I liked a lot. There’s a lot that didn’t feel like a fit. I felt like there’s more that I need to do here in this world. I made a big change. I quit my job and went back to get my PhD. Another part of why I made that change is that I was single at the time. I was living in New York City. It was an expatriate over in Asia. I had this awesome career.

I always knew in the back of my head that I wanted to be a mom. I am the oldest sister, the oldest kid on the block that I grew up in, and the oldest of ten cousins. I always loved taking care of everybody else. I knew in my heart of hearts I was going to be a mom someday, waiting for the right partner at the right time. I worked. I traveled. I got my PhD. It was right when I was about to start my professor job out here in Southern California that I met my husband.

I was in my 30s. I was eager to get started with the family. Luckily, he was on board. It was very early in my professor career. I was an assistant professor trying to get tenure when I had my first two babies in 2014 and 2016. It was at that time in my life and my career that I would say my work-life balance was probably at its absolute worst. There was a toddler and a baby, tenure track, research pressure, and lots of teaching. By the way, I have a husband, too, whom I tend to neglect more than I should. We can talk about that more, too. It was not stellar work-life balance, but I still look back. I love motherhood down to my bones.

That’s a big reason why, as I kept pursuing my research. Originally, my career was more on organizational behavior, how people work together, exchange and feel energy and power, empowerment, and these topics that I still care about. I shifted more to try to explore how we can find out more about working mothers, working parents, also caregivers more generally, and how we can help to support and know from an organization and management perspective how we can have these practices and policies in place to best support them. As individuals and employees, how can we know what the right drivers are for helping us achieve all the goals across all the domains in our lives? That’s a little bit about me.

The Spark: Why Research Working Moms?

It’s amazing. Honestly, when I was first introduced to you, I was blown away because I’d never heard of anybody taking the time and making it their passion to focus and fixate on working moms and what this experience is like. I was so thrilled that you were willing to come on and share. One of my curiosities, especially given your background in organizational focus, was whether there was a moment when the light bulb went off and you had that realization of, “I want to focus my research on working moms and what this experience is like.” Did you have kids when that happened? Was it watching yourself? Is there a crystallization that you were just like, “This is my thing.”?

Thank you, first of all. You made my day with those words. I’m far from the only one who is studying this stuff these days, which is one of the optimistic notes that I’ll share about. There are lots of other great scholars doing work in this area and related areas. What you described in qualitative research, we refer to as flashbulb moments. Are there these flashbulb moments that you feel looking back made a change and motivated you to make a pivot and do something different, or a wake-up call, however you want to call it?

For me, a couple of different flashbulb moments come to mind. One is when I was negotiating my maternity leave with a former administrator. I was told some very ungracious things in that meeting. I felt like I was disempowered in that meeting. I’ll never forget how I felt. It’s like, “You forget how people said to you. You’ll never forget how they made you feel.” I will never forget how they made you feel. I thought, “This power dynamic should be different here. What I have to offer to this organization is clearly not being valued in how I’m being treated in this conversation.” That stuck with me. That drove some of my pursuit behaviors and also my research interests.

We need to tell more of the story about what these experiences are like, not only with birth, but what comes before and after that. Share on X

A second flashbulb moment was when I was in labor with my first child, the labor that took two and a half days. It was during the early stages of that labor process that I got a call from a co-author who was asking me about a decision that needed to be made on a research paper we were working on together. I told this coauthor I was in labor. Still, they were trying to get information out of me about this revision. I was like, “How do you not understand that I’m in labor right now?” No clue, no understanding, and no acknowledgement.

That experience stuck with me because I remember feeling how disconnected this person was from the reality of what I was experiencing, disrespected, and all those yucky feelings. I thought, too, that we need to tell more of the story about what these experiences are like, not only with birth, but what comes before that and what comes after that. Try to help folks have more of an understanding that when their co-workers are going through these different phases of what we call the maternal phase, there needs to be an acknowledgement.

Pandemic’s Pressure: Uncovering The Realities Of Working Motherhood

That’s a baseline aspect of that because that is so alarming to anyone who is not a mom. It happens so often. I applaud you for triggering those and taking them into action because you could have definitely been irritated or become a victim. That’s a choice. It is creating a path to, quite honestly, impact so many women. These untold stories are exactly what this show has exposed for me. I didn’t realize it. It has been so tender sitting with women to hear that story and how hard it is still to this day.

What your research has uncovered, and I love that you focused on the pandemic, I do want to go back, even though my blood pressure went up when I was reading your articles. I was like, “We survived that,” but to highlight how hard it was. I was curious what that research was born out of, living through it. Was there a specific experience that shifted your thoughts as a researcher and a mom to say this is the thing that needs to be uncovered?

I appreciate you sharing how it made you feel reading. It is triggering to be brought back to that time. It reminded me of those interviews. My coauthor, Mona Zanhour, and I interviewed 54 women, working mothers who worked at home, and with kids at home during COVID and the lockdowns. We interviewed them again a couple of years later. We had some survey data. It was a multilongitudinal data collection with them. Those interviews made us laugh. They made us cry. They made us think. I can’t tell you the range of emotions I felt during those interviews.

They not only connected with my experience, because I went through a lot of chaos, as we all did, during that time. My kids were in kindergarten and preschool at the time, at those young ages, at home. Also, I realized how I was far from the only one and how prevalent the chaos, the struggles, the challenges, the misidentification, the assumptions made, on and on and on. There’s so much nuance to that whole experience. My co-author and I at the time thought, “How can we make the time to study this right now, because we’re in the trenches ourselves?” That was a lot. We also were like, “How can we not do this because we believe these women’s stories need to be told? This needs to be captured. There’s a lot else going on.”

I’m sure that even by your outreach, asking these questions made them feel less isolated. That’s another aspect of research that I know is so hard, and what you’re expected to produce. Those interviews, how important they were. I bet you, if someone had called me in the midst of that and asked me five questions that forced me to ponder how hard it was, and then knowing other people were experiencing that, it was a very lonely time as a working mom. I’m sure that that’s probably uncovered. I’d be curious if there’s a story from your research that sticks with you to express that devastation, quite honestly. I’d be curious if there’s one person that you thought, “That woman had a hard time.”

There are so many that come to mind. For a while, that could be a whole other episode. I’ll share a couple of things that come to mind. One is actually to go back and respond to your earlier question about what drove the study. In addition, my co-author and I are both being personally inspired by it. I remember one time period, one experience when my daughter was in kindergarten, trying to homeschool on Zoom on her laptop in her room. My husband was in another room on a Zoom call. He was unfamiliar with Zoom, so he was asking me. My daughter was asking me questions because something was going on with her Zoom.

I was supposed to be on a work call and a department meeting call. I was logging in from my phone to that in one ear. My son, who was a toddler at the time, preschool, was bouncing off the walls and needed something as well. I had every person in my life and every domain coming at me in all these different directions. I remember stopping. It’s like during a wedding when you’re encouraged, “Just stop and soak it in for a moment.” I stopped and realized, “This is untenable. We are asking the impossible of working parents during this time.” Especially working mothers, because they tended to take on more of the workload during that time. That to me was a kick in the butt.

There’s no choice.

That was it. From the data, there were some specific instances that stand out to me in terms of representing the untenable nature, but also why there are so many layers to what was being experienced that we didn’t see as much in the popular press, in articles, and things like that. That is how unbelievably committed these women were to their jobs and how much they cared about still doing well in their jobs at this time, even when they’ve got the kids, the partner, chores, and house stuff, let alone public health guidelines.

We’re hearing stuff from the city, state, county, national, and federal. We’re supposed to interpret. “Can I go outside my house? Can I go grocery shopping?” It was stuff like that. They were life and death decisions. It’s all of that. They still were absolutely sacrificing themselves, their self-care, and their well-being to get their jobs done.

Working mothers absolutely sacrificed their self-care and well-being to get their jobs done. Share on X

Bring it back in. I was a healthcare attorney. My husband was a first-grade teacher. We had three kids who were in third grade, first grade, and kindergarten. I do remember sitting in my kitchen. He’s in the other room on a Zoom going, “Butterfly,” with first graders. I have a general counsel on my phone. All my kids come in. They were gentlemen. They said, “Can’t you get your kids under control?” I paused the Zoom.

I went to the other room, and I cried. I was like, “This is impossible.” Your recognition of the impossibility of it, I wish I knew you then, because to share that, even someone to say that out loud. Your research goes so deep into giving us a recognition of what was hard about it, but also hope in that we weren’t alone in it, even retrospectively. Looking through what you guys found in those interviews, what are the key things? It is not that there will hopefully be another pandemic, but what are the ideas and concepts that were clear recommendations for making this better for mothers in the future?

Shifting Gears: Reprioritizing Life After Lockdown

A few things come to mind. By the way, one of the codes that came out of our analysis was empathy ran out. For the first month, a couple of months, and a few months after the lockdowns, there’s a lot of empathy. “You got your kids in the background. I get it. Things are so hard.” As the months went by, the empathy ran out, yet the challenges and the realities were still there. Others were not as tolerant. Again, this box position here.

The first thing that stood out was the changing of priorities that we heard from so many of our participants. “I have totally reconfigured my priorities in my life. I used to care about getting to the next level. I used to care about always being perceived as the person who said yes. I cared about the face time I put in at work without extra hours at the office. I realize now I am not willing to sacrifice anymore for that. That’s no longer as high a priority for me.” It was this interesting phenomenon of women reshifting and rebalancing their priorities. It wasn’t always about deprioritizing work and increasing prioritization of family. It was different for everybody.

No one-size-fits-all way that this was either approached and handled in the midst of all the turmoil or how it has unfolded in the months and years afterwards since then, so a lot of variety. I’ll actually align that with some of the research I’ve done on post-maternity leave as well, returning to work, returning to the job after being out on maternity leave, however short or long it may have been. That is the shifting around of priorities. “I’m not going to have my office door open because I need to be ruthlessly efficient in how I get my job done,” and so on.

Just more broadly, this is how it could be applied to future crises, changes, and transitions. There’s going to be a reckoning with what’s important. What working mothers can do is use that time for themselves, with their own rules, what they care about, and what their external context is looking like, to make positive changes that will help their work-life balance be more workable in the future. The thing with work-life balance is that it’s always changing. It’s not this ultimate goal where it’s like, “I’ve achieved work-life balance. I’m at the pinnacle.”

All of a sudden, the baby goes through a developmental phase and stops sleeping. Work crisis happens and throws your regular schedule into disruption, and on and on. There’s always change. There are always ups and downs. All that to say that it’s the journey, not a destination. We have to capitalize on times of change, transitions, or anything that can disrupt what’s a normal schedule or set of priorities to be proactive and purposeful in how you’re going to build the new vision for yourself in a way that can work for you and make your life sustainable.

The Manager’s Role: Fostering Support For Working Mothers

Sustainability is a critical theme that I’ve been exploring with a lot of the women who have been on the show. Predominantly, I’ve spoken with attorneys who are in these very intense environments. Sometimes, that priority setting is still perceived as limiting. You’re right. One of the questions that a lot of women had to answer is, “Is it more important for me to achieve higher levels of growth professionally at the same time when I’m trying to feel great about my mothering?”

Is there any reprioritization process in that? One of the themes that I’ve heard you share about in the past is managers’ involvement and what they can do to reach out and ask when they’re seeing a working mom. It’s hard, especially in my industry, for us to ask and raise that as even a topic. It immediately feels like failure.

What is that signaling? That’s signaling weakness. There’s the fear. That’s signaling weakness, “I can’t do it,” or “I give up.” In many industries, especially highly masculinized industries, in more cutthroat industries, that is not culturally appropriate. That could be career-limiting or career-killing in some cases. There’s such a risk with that. That’s why this depends on so many different variables. It depends on the nature of your relationship with the manager. What’s your relationship with them? Is there trust? Is there understanding? Has this manager been there? Do they get it?

A big thing that’s come out in a couple of different studies is that the manager has, at all, recently had kids or currently has kids. They may have a clue as to what you’re going through and be supportive. Even if the manager has kids, let’s say they have a spouse, a wife who did all the work, then I’ve heard again and again in data sets, they’ve told me, “Why can’t your partner do it?” It’s not even on their radar screen what the day-to-day life is like in terms of juggling all the responsibilities.

Also, if someone has had kids but they’re older, then they very well may have forgotten how hard it is, the day-to-day, especially in the current context, which is different compared to decades past. All that to say that if you do have a manager or leader who is aware, acknowledges the reality of what you’re going through, cares, is willing to accommodate, and is willing to provide some flexibility, then that gives you a little bit more openness to be able to be transparent about what your needs are and to raise your hand and ask for help when you need it.

Even to stay in. A lot of the themes I’ve heard from women are that they leave, they’re about to leave, or they’ve contemplated leaving. I’m talking about brilliant legal minds in our industry who sat and thought about leaving the profession because there wasn’t that type of managerial support. What I have tried to message out to anyone reading that is a manager is to ask because we’re stubborn, some of us, and have all these notions about what asking for help looks like. I do want to share.

I’ve been super blessed with an incredible male partner at our firm. One of my favorite things he did when I was having a hard mom time was this. I’d actually been sick the week before. I canceled a call and said, “I’m not feeling well.” He called me right up and said, “You’re not sick, are you?” In the most loving way, I’m like, “I’m not. I’m having a hard mom day.” We talked it out. It was so impactful to have someone whom I trust so much who was only reaching out in the best of ways. “What can I take off your plate? What works better?” That is impactful. I feel like that makes a difference.

That was all over our data in the women who did have managers who were empathetic like that. It is not just empathy in terms of “Tell me what’s going on,” checking in, showing care, but following up with tactical support. “What can I do to help lighten your workload? How can we adjust your schedule so that you can make that morning drop off less stressful?” That magic combination had very tangible outcomes, including, most prominently, I am so committed to this employer. I liked my job before, but because I’m getting the support when I need it the most, when I’m most desperate for it, I will work my butt off for this person. It is the level of gratitude.

Challenging The “Ideal Worker” Myth

It’s so true. It’s so interesting because it’s not always about the money. It’s not even about the hours, but it’s about what’s sustainable. It is a real accomplishment of that. We were on a call. One of my colleagues, who’s the hardest working, amazing, brilliant lawyer, asked, “Is this call going to end by X because I need to pick my kids up?” I loved that because there was nothing apologetic about that. We support that. The more we can create environments where that empathy goes into the tactical, and I love how you stated that, that means something to people. You will get people to stay longer and to work harder.

It’s on the shoulders of women and other allies, male allies who are on board with that, to help normalize that because not every woman can say that in the meeting. We know from research on career stages that if you’re earlier in your career or if you’ve made a change and you’re new to an organization or new to a profession, you don’t necessarily have the safety to be able to be honest about those non-work needs. That’s someone who’s more established, has a reputation, has a longer tenure, and so on. There’s the threat of ideal work norms.

I love to share more about that for people who aren’t aware of it, where that came from.

Once I started learning about this, I started seeing it everywhere. It’s this image that centers on devotion to work. The ideal worker is one who is always available for their job, never says no, and deprioritizes other aspects and parts of their life for work. That is a notion that is very much assumed in many industries and occupations, especially here in the US. Just like human behavior, what employees tend to do, which we know from research and what’s called passing or masking, is that not everyone is the exact ideal worker. There’s a lot of pretending or acting as if and masking what’s going on behind the curtain while pretending to be the ideal worker.

Research shows women do this, and men do this, too. Everyone does this. What happens is there are certain groups who are more stigmatized, not meaning that I’ll do a worker image. Oftentimes, it’s groups who are not as represented in an organization or in an industry, which is different depending on what type of space you’re talking about. Working mothers are certainly subject to that type of discrimination or those types of assumptions. The stereotyping is what we’re talking about.

Because you now have kids, I’m going to perceive you totally differently. I’m going to perceive you as not as committed, not as devoted to work, and not as willing to raise your hand. In fact, I’m going to maybe assume you’re not going to raise your hand. I’m going to go ask this next person for that to take on that client, to travel, to go to that conference, or whatever, because I’m going to assume you’re too busy with the kids. You don’t want to. This is what systematically ends up disenfranchising women and their opportunities.

Discrimination and assumptions systematically disenfranchise women and their opportunities. Share on X

We definitely have seen it. I’ve seen it improve over time. One friend shared this in an interview. One of her friends was asked, “Are you planning to have a family?” It was straight up. This was years ago.

That is illegal.

I know. That was before it was illegal, quite honestly. The fact that that was even part of the conversation goes to all those assumptions that you were sharing about. It’s alarming, though, that we still are confronted with that. In my experience, the mothers that I’ve worked with are the hardest-working women. They’re able to work through and set boundaries in a healthy way. I’ve learned from them how to say, “Yes, I can do that, but it’ll be done tomorrow by this time,” versus rushing to please that day and exhausting yourself.

Especially in our fast-paced world, especially with COVID, everything was expected to the impossible, but immediately. It’s interesting that in your study, instead of that fading away, it became more entrenched. That blew my mind a little bit. I was thinking the empathy aspect would deflate those expectations. Was that a surprising output of your study, or were you like, “Of course?”

It is such an interesting question because I remember going through a lot of ups and downs as we were analyzing the data and proceeding to go through the pandemic ourselves.

That’s the thing, building the plane and flying it. I love that.

It was surprising to a certain extent. Similarly, we had thought and hoped that we would find more evidence of empathy, support, and all this stuff. Folks would be more concerned about helping each other get through instead of slamming with more expectations and, “Let’s get back to normal as soon as possible,” without recognizing. This was a driver for the study. We were at a period of time there in a broader social context where we realized we were going to be building this new normal, whatever that looks like.

In 2020, 2021, and even 2022, none of us knew how the norms were going to settle in terms of work arrangements, in terms of work-life balance, and in terms of employee-employer power relations. That power dynamic has gone back and forth when you look at more economic data and labor statistics data. There have been a lot of swings back and forth with all of those issues. I don’t know if we’ve landed yet on what the new normal is.

It’s still emerging.

Remote hybrid questions haven’t been answered. We have a lot more data now than we once did. We can at least start making these decisions in a more evidence-based way, which we hope will be helpful. Here’s the thing. One of the big things that came up with regard to support is that what probably made these working mothers feel either like, “I am not at the right employer, I’m going to make a change, I’m going to leave, I’m going to work less,” or something like that, is what we captured as inauthentic support.

There was, “We have these online virtual Zoom sessions for how to do chair massage or chair yoga. We’re going to have chips in the break room on the days that we’re back in the office or these feel-good things,” that are superficial support that’s not helping the real problems. After, the participant was like, “I don’t want this fake crap support. I want less work. I need a more manageable schedule. I need a reduced workload. I don’t need chips in the break room.”

Beyond Superficial Support: What Working Moms Really Need

It’s so interesting. I was always curious at that time because we worked with a lot of clients who were in companies. Who was coming up with what would help? Maybe they were not relying on the right resources to understand, unless there was your study. It would have been impossible for pandemic risk reasons to come into my house to help assess what I needed. I have a very awesome Italian mother who called me one day. I was running the firm at this point. Everybody’s kids were home. All these women are amazing and doing all this hard work.

She said, “You know what you need to do? You need to get all these kids back to school.” “Mom, that is an awesome solution. If somebody was listening, let’s do that. That would be helpful.” Those were the solutions that would have been great, not chips. That’s fascinating that inauthentic support, even looking beyond the pandemic environment, some of the policies and things that have become available are not actually right-sized to support mothers to succeed in the workplace as much as they’re intended to. I do think the intent is there.

I believe in the best of people. There’s a real, clear recognition of the value of mothers in the workplace. I’m a much better lawyer because I’m a mom. I feel like it has enhanced so many strategic, logistical, and intellectual aspects of my being. I feel a lot of moms feel the same way. We share that. It doesn’t mean that it wasn’t easy in that experience. This is a trickier question. With all these policies and this inauthentic support, and this is a conspiracy theory question, do you ever think that the real hope is that we step back, that we don’t engage?

In some organizations, absolutely. A goal is, you can either meet these exceedingly high standards or else, sorry, clearly not cut up. It can be a way of passive turnover, bridging what’s called passive turnover. All that to say that, as you mentioned, all the advantages, this again is if I were working at a place where I felt like, are they setting me up for failure, and everyone perhaps, but are they holding us to these standards that are not able to be realized or are hard for anyone who doesn’t meet that ideal worker norm image? Maybe this isn’t the place I want to be. This is my trigger to start looking elsewhere, which obviously is easier said than done and is not an option for many people.

That doesn’t make it right, certainly. The hope is that you look at the talent labor market as a labor market. There is a reason why we make choices in where we choose to work and where we would never choose to work. Collectively, if there was an understanding that, employer, if you’re going to have these draconian policies, these unfair expectations, toxic work culture, and all of that, that means that you are going to have a shriveled labor pool to draw your team. It’s all these other potentially fabulously talented people that could be contributing to that, by the way, your competitors are going to be picking up.

The Burden Of Invisible Labor In The Home

You triggered one of my questions for you. It was around the invisible labor concept, because that was another one that I was curious about what that means, and why it’s so damaging when it goes unseen.

It is huge. That term, when I first heard it, I was like, “That’s it. You’ve captured it.” It’s the cognitive work, the executive functioning work that goes into managing a household. I had some participants refer to it as being the house CEO, or something like that, yet the unpaid version. Luckily, there is a decent amount of research on this now. It’s captured. There’s a way we measure it. There is an acknowledgement that this is a part of a parenting workload or a family workload.

It affects relationships, it affects the ability to perform one’s job well, it affects well-being, and so on, because fundamentally, we all want to be valued for the work that we do. We get recognition for the things that work. We get recognition for things that are more explicit, but this type of cognitive, invisible work is totally unnoticed, unless you’re the one doing it and unless you’re patting yourself on the back.

Fundamentally, we all want to be valued for the work we do. We get recognition for explicit things, but cognitive, invisible work often goes totally unnoticed. Share on X

There’s no patting. I struggle because a lot of women, working moms that I’m friends with, don’t feel empowered to renegotiate that once you’re in it. Sometimes, I feel like it’s a slow creep. No one notices it at first, and then, all of a sudden, it’s 90%-10%, as far as your partner. I don’t know how that happened. Unwinding it, even for me, seems untenable. I’m curious if you have any tips or suggestions around how to reshift that and make it less invisible.

A colleague of mine at Pepperdine, Bobbi Thomason, has this great Harvard Business Review article. It’s titled something like Stop Expecting Women to Have an Equal Partner or Stop Telling Women They Should Have an Equal Partner, 50/50. She’s like, “The whole premise of that is ridiculous.” Oftentimes, that’s the solution that’s put out for how we, mothers especially, can be able to balance things better. It’s like, “Why isn’t your partner doing more?” In many cases, that is not an option for many different reasons.

We can’t ask that of others. We can’t assume our own values, assumptions, and our own experiences in other people because every household is different. Every relationship is different. There are unequal partnerships. One of our main points was, they aren’t always foreseeable or easy to avoid. We can’t blame women. We have to resolve to give them more support when they have what might not be important at home.

One part of this, too, which came out from our research, is interesting, and that we didn’t expect, is the nature of, in this case, the husbands. Fifty-three out of 54 of our participants had male partners and husbands. The nature of the husband’s job had a profound impact on the extent to which the mom was able to go about doing her job and also attend to the home and family needs. We went in thinking we needed to ask about the partner stuff, but we didn’t realize how important the nature of the partner’s job was. The husband was working outside the home, if he were a healthcare provider, or if his job demanded a lot of synchronous video meetings.

There were so many circumstances, or the tolerance for the blending of work and family needs, with work meetings and things like that. Is it more or less okay for me to have the kid jump on my lap when I’m on a video call? That differed widely across our sample. Especially for folks who were homeschooling and had elementary school-age kids at home, this is one example that we saw replicated again and again. The mom is sitting at the kitchen table with the kids while they’re homeschooling. They’re all on their laptops. Mom is right next to the kids.

She’s available for help. “Something happened with my Zoom link. Here’s a question.” Dad is in a separate room, other side of the house, separate office, closed door, whatever it is. He’s able to focus and concentrate on his job. Mom has to constantly be multitasking, talk about cognitive load, invisible labor, and so on. It is not recognizing how hard it is, but our brains are not meant to work that way. We’re certainly not going to work productively that way. The moms were continuously disadvantaged. It was not all of our sample. There were definitely exceptions, but in most of our sample, it was more like that.

It’s hard because you said disadvantaged. Also, I remember being so disappointed in myself that I could not do this. It was hard to rise above and through it, because it was also, ironically, as a working parent, a very precious time when all your kids were in the same place all day. I get it. It can get overwhelming and annoying, but I did make myself step back to recognize that this unit and this time and space of us all being in the same space all day long, all night long was something to try to enjoy, versus feeling disappointed. It was a complex experience, especially when you’re young.

A wonderful and unexpected part of our analysis was that we had this code called silver linings, where so many women touched on that. A lot of it was, “I’m stressed, I’m not sleeping, I’m overwhelmed, I’m overloaded,” this and that every day. There are these wonderful, precious moments. “My family is going on bike rides together. We didn’t do that before. I was there for my daughter’s first steps, or I was there for her first word. I wouldn’t have been there if she had been in daycare when I was working. I was there for all the firsts.” There were so many stories like that.

I hope that from what we bring out from that time in these years later, how can we retain the emphasis and prioritizing that? That doesn’t mean, “I’m always going to be deprioritizing work so I can be around for those precious moments,” but like, “How can I make choices about when I work, where I work, and who I work for that can accommodate my ability to be able to retain that part of it?”

Honestly, my plea is that we create more environments that make that possible for people, because that is the struggle that I am noticing more and more through talking with women who have gone through that. I’m also super impressed with your Harvard Business Review study. I want to make sure we create time for that because that transition is so pivotal in every mom’s experience. One of the stinging mom moments, and I had my dream job when I got pregnant with my son, was way before COVID. I had asked if I could work remotely two days a week because I was driving three hours a day to my job. The answer was no.

It was crushing because it was a place that I would give my left arm to work at. It pivoted me into creating a firm that is 100% behind parents practicing law and creating all the things that I desire for everybody else. That’s my passion and my mission. It worked out, but I do remember going back into those conversations. I would love to hear more about your research in this space, what you learned, and how it can be better for people coming into that part of their life.

The Double-Edged Sword Of Flexible Work

I appreciate that. That example was a very important finding. That has come out of not only some of my work, but that of others. There’s this great research article by Villamor et al that was titled something along the lines of Virtuality Is a Double-Edged Sword. We have to be so careful with flexible work arrangements, remote and hybrid work, and so on, especially we women, we’re working mothers who are already stigmatized in a way for being insufficiently committed and who have all of these different ceilings and walls that we’re battling against and trying to grow our careers.

By the way, the best one I heard of lately is the grass ceiling for women who don’t play golf. There is the glass ceiling, this wall. There’s another, the grass ceiling, all these new ways that we can be excluded. What that means is flexibility and remote work are a wonderful advantage and option to enable us to be able to manage all the different obligations of our different needs and our different domains. I know before this call, while I was on a work call, I was listening only. I was folding laundry while I was doing it. This is how we get by. This is how we do it.

What can happen if we are too remote? If we are remote in a way that we’re not engaging those connections, we’re not continuously warming up our network. If others aren’t aware of what we are doing, our accomplishments, the value that we’re adding, then it’s out of sight, out of mind. That can limit our career development. There’s more and more research coming out on this. It’s up to every working mother to decide and make the choice themselves on those trade-offs, the advantages of remote and distant forms of work versus the potential disadvantages, especially long-term, given one’s career. I don’t think that either completely on one side or the other is at all ever correct.

Don't be afraid to showcase your accomplishments. Often, women are reticent, but no one will champion our work if we don't do it ourselves. Share on X

Again, it can change over time, but it’s at least recognizing being conscious and purposeful in how you make those choices over when, where, and how you work, but also as you’re doing so, ensuring that you’re doing it in the right way. For example, if you are not working in person, face-to-face, make sure that you schedule one-on-one calls with either colleagues or maybe a former manager or network partners, mentors, and so on. Make sure that you stay on people’s radar screens.

Make sure you are not afraid to showcase your accomplishments. Often, women are reticent to do so, but no one is going to champion our work if we don’t do it for ourselves. It is making sure that, over time, when there are face-to-face opportunities, you take advantage of them when you’re able to and maximize them by engaging, collaborating, showing up, and being present and engaging so that you can make sure that you’re not forgotten about.

Conquering Mom Guilt: Self-Compassion And Small Changes

I’m a people person as well, showing up and being in a room with other colleagues. Having to get dressed and all that stuff is an extra step, but I also feel like you receive a lot from that that we’re missing out on. You can get overwhelmed in “I’m on a screen.” I love that encouragement to show up when you can, when it works. Sometimes, it doesn’t. Pulling the trigger on when it doesn’t work should also be okay, and being authentic about that. I respect that so much from my colleagues, partners, and clients. Some of that does not come without guilt.

From either personal experience and in your research, where has guilt come in and been a factor? How have people managed that? I do think that’s something that generally, moms carry more than dads. I struggle personally. I know a lot of the readers probably do as well with getting over that guilt. It is the guilt on both sides, quite honestly. It’s the guilt for not always being there for our families, and then the guilt that comes with not always being there for our colleagues.

That has come out of my research during COVID. There are so many expressions along the lines of, “I feel like I’m failing at all of my jobs. I feel like I’m failing as a mom. I’m failing as a lawyer or as an employee. I’m giving so much of myself, yet I’m not meeting these expectations anywhere.” How difficult that is to reckon with. A lot of the folks who are tuning in will tend to be high achievers, overachievers. It’s my personality. My son was joking with me, “Mommy, you’re like the girl in class who’s always raising her hand.” I was that girl. I still am that girl. You see me, son.

The point is, we have those very high expectations for ourselves. We probably have higher expectations for ourselves in both our mom role and our work role than anyone else even has for us. That came out a lot in the COVID data. I remember. It’s like, “It’s me who is making these expectations.” Sometimes, it can be externally imposed, but more often than not, we have this identity that we consider ourselves to be. We have a vision of who we believe ourselves to be. When we don’t match or meet those expectations, then we feel like we have failed. We feel like we’re not doing our best. That’s very frustrating.

There are a couple of things. One solution that came out of our COVID data was looking at how we can right-size expectations. At the time, it was this COVID crisis, but to translate that out more broadly, it’s whenever there is a disruption. It is happening more and more these days. If there’s any disruption, change, or whatever, right-size your expectations. Where can I give a little? Where can I give 80% or 85% instead of 100%?

The next step is one immediate next step, which is communication. If you’re going to be producing work or not showing up for the ball game or producing work, that’s not going to help you. Communicate about why, if appropriate. Be transparent and communicate that. You’re being transparent about it all. That’s fair to your coworkers or your significant others. This is the phrase I hope that if you remember anything from this conversation, it’s this self-compassion. You need to forgive yourself. You need to have compassion for yourself.

We, moms, tend to have compassion for everyone around us, but not ourselves. We need to give ourselves a break. Please google the term self-compassion. There are great sites out there. There’s great research out there. Use some of those best practices to engage in self-compassion. Give yourself that break when you need it the most. This at least gives you the best chance possible of not only right-sizing expectations, but forgiving yourself and moving on proactively if you don’t meet those expectations.

Moms tend to have compassion for everyone but themselves. We need to give ourselves a break. Share on X

I love that. Those are some of the micro moves that you were suggesting. I love that terminology because that’s a very safe idea for working moms, micro moves. It’s a tiny little shift. That was brilliant. I loved that because it was more palatable. These things that you shared aren’t massive undertakings, but they will have massive impacts if you start taking them in tiny little chunks. For exhausted and depleted parents and moms, that’s pretty much all we can take on.

That’s a great suggestion, to look at one small thing that will align with being compassionate to yourself. That’s going to be different for all of us, but picking one and being consistent, quite honestly, every day doing that for whatever it takes a habit. I was not moving my body at all. I decided to walk 10,000 steps a day. My husband, who is a teacher, was like, “That’ll be easy.” I’m like, “That is not easy.”

I’m 75 days in. I got an accountability partner. My kids got involved. It was a double whammy of a compassionate thing I was doing for myself to move myself. I’ve gotten the benefit of walking with each of my kids at different intervals of the day. It’s a very healing thing. It’s a possibility. Maybe even you do 5,000 or 1,000, but it was a little thing that had such a big impact. It’s also been an opportunity to do something for myself. The kids are seeing you.

That’s another thing. I love that about your son. I want to talk about that because the fact that he sees that means you’re definitely doing something right. I love how you’ve interacted with your kids, knowing all that you’ve learned to help them bring into the knowing of what it’s like to be a mom. It isn’t even, as you said earlier, showing your work concept of making sure everyone knows this is hard. I’ve been applying that with my kids. Show them their work of being a mom also isn’t magic. Are there any conversations, and I know they’re little, but still, that you’ve had with them that give you hope that they’re seeing you in addition to being the girl in the front of the class?

Intentional Parenting: Being Present with Your Children

How many times as parents do we say to ourselves, “Someday, you’ll appreciate this driving back and forth to all these hobbies and this and that.” We can only hope.

I’m still hopeful. I’m not giving up on that.

Along the way, I definitely shifted in how I talk about my job with them. Going back to something you mentioned earlier, which I so agree with, I am a better mom because of my role, my identity, and my job as a professor. That helps me be the best version of myself. I’ve worked a long time to get to where I am. I’ve invested so much in all these degrees, this work experience, and this and that. I remember another flashbulb moment. During COVID, the peak of the lockdown when no one could come in or out and everything was at home, I remember thinking, “I have my PhD, and all I do is the dishes.”

Everybody can relate to that.

All I do is the dishes. It’s a very privileged thing, by the way, to be able to have other people help. Another quick tip is anything that you’re doing that you don’t have to do, think about outsourcing because that money you spend outsourcing is probably worth the time that you will gain back, whether it goes to yourself, your job, your kids, your partner, or whatever. Outsource that work because it is not worth your time. I talk about my job differently.

I do my job differently in front of them. I try to be visible with certain things. I try to read more hard copy and hard paper documents instead of going on a computer screen when I do need to work in front of them, whenever I can, to signal that life isn’t just about being on a screen. I try to talk to them about the things I do in my job because they don’t see it a lot. If I’m teaching in the classroom, if I’m working on my research, some paper got published, or whatever, they don’t necessarily see that. I try to talk about it so they get a sense for what I do, why I do it, why I love it, and why I care about it.

The flip side of that is that I try to make my time with them very intentional. When I’m with them, I’m with them. Something that came out of the COVID data is that many moms lamented about how they used to be able to separate their job from their kids. “I would go to work. When I was home, I was with them.” Post-COVID and especially when remote work became more of the norm and continued with such prominence, it was, “I’m constantly back and forth. I’ve got my laptop in one hand, and I’m nursing in the other,” or “I’ve got my kids playing, and I’m on my laptop in front of them.” It’s like, “My relationship with them and my time with them became different because it was always split.”

That’s another consideration that we can make those choices purposefully with, “Do I need to integrate in this moment?” That very well may be the case. It may be comfortable for some people. That should at least be a choice made purposefully because there is an impact to that. The kids see you differently and experience their time with you differently. When they see you on a screen, they know you’re distracted. They are smarter than we ever think they are. They get it. They see that you’re not paying attention to them. By immersing yourself in those precious moments with them, you soak in that time with them such that when you do get back to your job, you’re that much more refreshed and ready to work.

I love that. When my kids were little, I would take them to the park. I would have my phone. Someone would text, email, or whatever. I would pay attention. One of the best advice, and I don’t remember, it might have been some person at the park, was, “Do you need your phone for fifteen minutes?” From then on, I got super shamed. Honestly, from then on, I put the phone in the car and I’d be swinging. The experience was different.

It was still fifteen minutes. In my line of business, there’s not an emergency every fifteen minutes. I am encouraging myself and the women who work with me to also be able to be present. It does go by so fast. The span of your career is 30 or 40 years. The span of in-the-weeds parenting is so short. I don’t want to do it in a way that I regret the choices I made. I don’t know if that theme has ever woven its way into your research, but I would love to hear how people have overcome that regret.

That’s inevitable. The mom guilt is inevitable. Something you haven’t brought up and we haven’t talked about yet is the intensive parenting. It is not all self-expectations, but it’s intensive parenting. It’s social expectations, which are hard, if not impossible, to meet. What has come out of it, from what I’ve seen, is that it’s one of those things that it’s not a final destination of perfect, that I have met these expectations. The perfect mom was always going to be available to her kids while also being the perfect employee.

Through the day-to-day moments, as you mentioned, the small things, the small choices, you can make day to day. It’s about having reminders in place or making different decisions. Even very tactically, it is putting my phone away and not having it in front of me. By the way, there’s research that shows when your phone is visible to you, it’s distracting you. It’s eating a part of your attention because a part of your cognitive processing is wondering what’s happening on that phone, even if the screen is turned down.

That’s very innovative.

It’s distracting you. It’s that powerful. I like having limits on using the different apps and things that can set limits on things. That is a good reminder to me to get off when I have certain special minutes. For example, if there’s an app that you like to use, whether it’s a social media one, a game, or whatever, think to yourself, “What is my choice for how many minutes per day I would ideally want to spend on this app?” Maybe it’s fifteen. Maybe it’s sixteen. Whatever it is, what’s your limit? Set that limit using the timer functionality or whatever. When that notification pops up, “It’s your time limit,” then you can make the purpose of choice. Do I want to do more of this? It has been fifteen minutes. I don’t need to spend more than fifteen minutes on LinkedIn. I’m doing something else.

I love this. I’ve never heard of that. That’s a great feature.

I fully agree. It’s so important that your kids are seeing everything. You’re setting such impressions for them. You’re normalizing what my off-work behavior looks like or how a parent should spend time with their kids. For example, I’ve always been a reader. I went down when I got my PhD because I was doing so much reading for my job. With leisure reading, I got to prioritize.

As I’ve been trying to encourage my kids to read more and more, I’ve been trying to purposely read in front of them. It’s almost like performative. I’ll always have a book with me. During my downtime, instead of grabbing my phone, or maybe I will for five minutes, but I’ll set a timer, it’s like, “Turn to the book now and read the book instead.” It is things like that that I’m hoping to set the right impressions for them. I’m not perfect in that.

These are all good suggestions. I love that term, micro moves. I don’t know if you consider those micro moves, but these little shifts that would help us feel better and be more intentional and more present in a meaningful way during the time we have with our kids, versus the chaos. I will admit publicly as well. I am not perfect at this at all. It’s insanity. There’s a lot of imperfectionism. I love this one woman when I was in a music class. My kids were 3, 2, and 1. It was chaos. They were all over the place.

I don’t even know what they were doing. She leaned in and said, “What you’re trying to do is actually impossible.” I was ashamed by that. I never went back to that music class. I was so embarrassed by the chaos, but that’s how it has been. Everyone adjusts and does the best they can. That’s the other part. I would love it if you would share, speaking to a woman who is at the beginning of this journey, and maybe looking back at your own journey. It obviously took some twists and turns. What do you think you would tell your younger self about what this was going to be like and how to make it as joyful as possible?

Thank you for asking that. First of all, that phrase self-compassion comes up again. Throughout, from the beginning onward, give yourself a break. Realize we are never going to meet those perfect expectations, especially the ones that we hold for ourselves. Part of that is recognizing when things are out of whack. Sometimes, we cannot be consciously or explicitly aware. When we are stressed and our bodies are feeling it and are keeping the score, when we start snapping at our partner, maybe getting sick more often than we’re supposed to, or have more aches or pains, that’s your body and that’s your mood telling you that something is not right.

Just give yourself a break. Realize we are never going to meet those perfect expectations, especially the ones that we hold for ourselves. Share on X

I’ve tried to remind myself more and more that I’m going to be grateful for that information and use it to make a change. If I’m going off and not myself snapping at this, that’s telling me something that I need to make a change with how and where I can make a change. Maybe there are little changes or a little change, but something needs to change. We have to look at that as information. I would be better at inserting self-care into my calendar. I would treat it like a meeting that cannot be changed. You’ve got those meetings that you could wiggle that around, then you’ve got the meetings that you can’t touch. Treat yourself with care, like a meeting that cannot be touched.

Maternal Optimism: A Hopeful Outlook For Working Mothers

That’s a great one. I did try that once. In my calendar every day, I put breathing between 2:00 and 2:30. One of my colleagues said, “I see that you have breathing. Can I make a schedule over that?” I’m like, “Honestly, I need ten minutes to have a cup of tea and then we can chat.” It is a good idea. I should have been more adamant about that. You’ve been amazing. I have one question, to be sensitive to your time. I am so grateful for this conversation. I wanted to know in all the research that you’ve done, what is giving you the most hope for the future of working moms?

I love this. Thank you for adding to this. This is so great because this is my thing. All the stereotypes with all this stigma, with all the assumptions, and with all the tough parts that we’ve talked about and that we all have experienced, I still believe that there is reason to be optimistic. We can help to shift this stereotype such that working moms aren’t perceived as deficient or less than, but instead can be perceived as even more powerful and value-added because of what they’ve been through.

I will plug a quick book called Maternal Optimism by author and friend, Danna Greenberg, and Jamie Ladge. They are fantastic scholars. Maternal Optimism is the title. It’s so good. There’s evidence-based research supporting the gains and advantages that working mothers bring to their work roles and their companies and industries. The key is support. They need the right support at work from the organization, manager, or coworkers. They also need the right support at home from a partner, family, or externally. The point is, there is so much coming back to my research.

What my original coauthor and I weren’t expecting from the data that we collected from several hundred academic working mothers were the advantages, the skills, abilities, and things that they gained, the ways that they were empowered, and all these positive aspects of their return to work after maternity leave. It is becoming more efficient in how they did their jobs, how they viewed themselves, their confidence, self-esteem, and how they were motivated. It is the fulfillment when things go well. A lot of times, things didn’t go well, but when things did go well, they did achieve fulfillment from that. “I did it. I made it.”

There is a vision of their career, having a more balanced perspective of what their jobs mean to them, the priorities that we talked about, setting an example, being a role model for my children and for future generations, the connection to the next generation, and what they’re doing in their work. This is a whole stream of research on relational changes, how their relationships with others change because of their beginning, becoming a working mother, and also how they themselves describe themselves as becoming more passionate, more compassionate, more understanding, more nurturing, and having more patience.

It is saying things like, “I’ve practiced patience so often now with my toddler. I feel like I’m applying it to my coworkers better.” Also, think tactically about the network. Can we talk about the network that we make? Preschool friends and families, elementary school, sports teams, your network blossoms when you have kids because of all these other ways that you’re connecting with different people that you wouldn’t have already. All that to say, there’s more there.

This is so helpful. In launching this show with zero experience, except for that I’m a mom who works, being able to network with people like you, that you exist, that you’ve devoted your career to caring about these issues, on behalf of all working women, I want to say thank you. It is super meaningful. It has been a true pleasure to talk to you and learn more from you. I can’t wait to absorb all of this conversation and make some micro moves to make being a mom and a professional even more fun.

Thank you so much, Carrie.

Thank you so much.

We are all in this together.

We certainly are. I appreciate you taking the time. It means a lot.

Thank you so much.

Have a great rest of your day.

You, too.

Important Links

About Dr. Dana Sumpter

Dana Sumpter is a professor, researcher, and former corporate executive who believes work and workplaces should be more humane. As an Associate Professor of Organization Theory and Management at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School—and a former VP of HR at Citigroup—she’s spent her career studying how people can thrive at work while still showing up fully in life.

Her award-winning academic research and TEDx talk, “Don’t Underestimate Working Mothers,” have informed and inspired audiences around the world to rethink how we support caregivers and leaders alike.

Dana’s work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, and MIT Sloan Management Review, and she’s coached executives across 10 countries. Beyond academia, she’s an athlete, artist, and traveler who’s visited more than 31 countries (and counting!), and most importantly super mom to two amazing kids.

Carrie Fogliani

Your podcast host is Carrie Fogliani, President of GeneralCounselWest. Working for nearly two decades with some of the nation’s leading hospital and pharmaceutical companies, her practice focuses on transactional, operations, and regulatory healthcare law..