If you’ve found yourself drowning in summer activities’ plans, getaways, packing and unpacking for trips, all the while striving to have kids keep up with their summer work and you with yours, then you may have experienced a specific kind of mental load affecting parents from approximately June through September ever year… The mental load, which has been heavily discussed in the past years, consists in the invisible labor of managing your family and household.
This particular kind of mental load is the summer mental load, characterized by the heated (and costly) pressure of having to work, while having kids at home or on vacation, being the “fun” summer mom, and keeping all these hot balls juggling in the air without losing your last shred of sanity…
I’ve written before about the summer ceiling for working moms, as being this “conglomerate of professional and personal obstacles faced by working mothers during the summer months as a result of the scarcity (or complete lack) of childcare resources, couple equity and overall gender equality”. Add to this the constant mental weight of overcoming these obstacles through incessant mental planning, coordinating, organizing, and worrying, and you have yourself a special brand of mental load only sold to working moms in the summer, and not at a discount at that…
While I welcome the added flexibility in the summer as a professor, along with the gift of being able to be present with my children at home, I can’t deny the heavy day-to-day weight of the summer mental load. The responsibility to plan, organize and coordinate almost three months of travel, activities and learning, along with managing household, chores, grocery shopping, pick-ups and drop-offs, to cite a few, while keeping up with some level of work, gets uncontrollably weighty…even with a spouse or partner pitching in.
One additional component of the summer mental load for working mothers, especially for single working moms, is the financial aspect. Between the exhaustive (and often prohibitive) cost of childcare, summer camps, travel and other summer activities, not to mention inflated grocery prices, the added financial burden can quickly compound into financial loss and unending concern. This summer mental load is often overlooked by many, adding itself to the invisible labor of women, and further endangering their mental health.
I still remember being absolutely frazzled and mentally exhausted throughout the summer months as I ran from one thing to another, not having much time to myself despite it supposedly being a time of rest and relaxation. Relax, when? Yet, despite all the busyness, I never really got much of a sense of accomplishment, always feeling I was falling short somewhere, whether it was in my work, parenting, family relationships or friendships. Summer became a time I dreaded, instead of looking forward to it and appreciating the gift it’s supposed to be.
What can we do then to alleviate the mental load of working moms during the summer months?
Over the years, and after many a complaining session with the girls and exhausted ice cream binges late at night, I’ve made a few changes. Tiny, at first, then increasingly more significant at life became more demanding and my knees less forgiving. Here are a few of these changes that may help you, hopefully as much if not more they did me:
Acknowledge and talk about the summer mental load…loudly!
“Why aren’t there more women and moms talking about how hard this is?” This was one of my first thoughts when going through serious summer mental load, secretly resenting the fact that no one had bothered to warn me about it. Or about perimenopause in your 40’s, how annoying husbands become, or the reality of “underboob sweat”, but I digress… It seemed everyone was doing such a wonderful job at planning and organizing memorable summer moments, while I was nothing short of…struggling with frizzy curls and chafing thighs. I digress again…
There is power in sharing our struggles, rather than just putting our glorious moments on display, especially as working moms. Acknowledging and talking about how challenging summers can be for moms, can not only help other moms feel less lonely and isolated; but it can also prompt the solutions needed to alleviate the problem. Also, please note you’ve just been provided with a free pass to publicly vent throughout the summer, just saying…
Dare to seek and receive help!
Change happened for me when I stopped acting like “Supermom” and started asking and receiving help to face the summer months. This includes help from setting up and implementing a summer plan and budget, however loosely structured, to packing lunches, traveling, and keeping up with the daily grocery store trips. I’ve also learnt not to discriminate among the types of help and welcome it from as many sources as possible, including:
–Family and friends:
Ok, while the reality is that many working moms do not exactly have a full village to rely on, there can be some micro-villages to lean on. These may include our partners, family and friends, or even co-workers and colleagues at times, and may involve trading childcare services, taking turns, or even using bribery in moderate doses (gotta do what you gotta do)…
–Free local resources:
There are countless local resources in your neighborhood you may not have tapped into, from the public library to the local children’s museum and the local pool. Unfortunately, many of these resources are not used enough, and end up not being funded for lack of it. So the next time you hesitate to use your local library or neighborhood pool, just think you’re actually contributing to increase its funding. Also, consider your financial budget for some further incentives to save money for your next spa appointment…
–Technology
Can we talk about the “helpful” side of technology with parenting during the summer months? From free resources to city guides and budgeting hacks, technology, from social media apps to budgeting apps, has been an incredible help for me.
–Advocacy:
The summer mental load is a rampant issue for many, if not most, working women. This is where advocating for ourselves, as well as other working moms, whether at the local level or through national politics by voting, getting involved in the community and/or using your voice on social media.
Embrace self-care
Self-care? What self-care, you may ask, after a full day of running after the kids at the beach and washing sand-covered towels for days. Ok, I get it. But summers without self-care are a surefire way to lose whatever shred of sanity you may have left, plus your well-hydrated curls and skin, for good…
Whether you drop off the kids at the grandparents’, sign up for Parents Night Out at your local YMCA, or just take turns with a friend or colleague babysitting, please build in some time for yourself. And take it! Don’t ask for it, don’t apologize for it, don’t even negotiate around it, just take it! This means taking your work vacation you’ve been saving for the next emergency, allowing yourself a few hours while the kids are on a playdate, and yes, even locking yourself in the bathroom….
So, yes, the summer mental load is no joke at all for working parents in general, and working moms in particular. Yet, by acknowledging and talking about it, unapologetically seeking help and embracing self-care, this weight can be alleviated for so many working mothers.
What are you doing to fight the summer mental load as a working mom?
It is often said that moms make great leaders, probably the best leaders. The invaluable, often innate skills that come from motherhood, from intuition, to organization and effective team management, are also described as main leadership qualities; qualities which should logically translate well from the home to the office and vice-versa. Yet, I remember asking myself, in the middle of a rather heated exchange with my teenagers on a random Tuesday while trying to process the next batch of laundry and remembering the appointments of the day, how much of this holds true in my own experience. If motherhood makes for great leaders, does effective leadership translate into effective motherhood and vice-versa, crossing from the office to the home?
I grew up with a single mother who worked in and outside of the home. In stark contrast to the images of leadership I was exposed to through both my academic and my professional journey, where leadership was mostly male, my first image of leadership was female. It is not until years later as a working mother myself, that I began grappling with the concept of leadership and what it means for working women and moms at the intersection of work and home…
Despite the common traditional assumption that men are the leaders of the home, much of the home’s “silent” leadership is actually carried by women, whether they work exclusively in the home, or both in and outside of the home. As a matter of fact, the “silent” but oh so meaningful contributions of women make up $7.6 trillion of the Unites States’ annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Unpaid labor is defined by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as “non-compensated time spent completing domestic tasks such as caring for children, the elderly, or other household or non-household members, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and shopping for household goods, among others.”
Yet, what is not often talked about is what happens at the intersection of leadership at work and home for working mothers. How do we, as working moms, carry this leadership in our homes? How do we defy traditional norms that do not recognize us as leaders, in or outside the home? And how do we transition from leadership at work to leadership at home?
Let me preface by saying I strongly believe leadership, especially for women, is an innate skill, an ability that ought to be developed and nurtured internally first, rather than acquired and developed from the outside. This is why so many leadership trainings for women often fail to produce authentic and sustainable results. Instead of targeting the development of innate leadership qualities that already exist in women, they tend to focus on imprinting externally developed, and traditional patriarchal ideas of leadership. What these programs unsuccessfully attempt to do then, is to erroneously fix the outside, forgetting about the importance of authentically working from the inside first. Now imagine these same patriarchal models of leadership being brought back in the home, perpetuating a flagrant lack of alignment and authenticity in the process of raising children and running households…
As a working mom and career woman, I tried bringing back home this patriarchal model of leadership, based on so-called effective ways of leading ranging from assertiveness to even aggressiveness at times. And…need I say it did not work, and especially not with children, never mind rebellious teenagers…Children, as well as teenagers, can sense lack of authenticity from a mile away. While I observed our children effectively responding to my husband’s unique and very personal leadership style, I could plainly see they were not responding as well to my own professionally imported style of leading…This prompted me to continue exploring what leadership means for women at the intersection of work and home. This exploration has led me to these three principles that have helped me ease the confusion between traditional leadership, mostly applied at work, and leadership at home, and tie both into an approach to leadership for working moms:
Develop one uniform leadership identity across work and home:
What kind of leader am I? How do I lead, not just in the workplace, but everywhere where I can have an impact? And how can I ensure my leadership remains authentic while still acting for the greater good?
I believe leadership is intrinsically tied to the very core of our beings. Who you are when no one is looking is who you are as a leader. I struggled with this for a long time, especially as a woman building a career in mostly male-dominated environments. I’m a quiet leader, so my style of leadership is not exactly aligned with the most mainstream and popular ideas of leadership either.
Reconciling my various identities as a Black woman, a professional and an introvert into one uniform leadership identity has been (and still is) a journey. One that is a precious opportunity to know myself better and evolve with the various seasons of my life; but also one that allows me to dig deeper into what my authentic style of leadership is.
No leadership battles! Create a multi-leadership environment
Am I the leader or is my husband the leader? If he is the leader, how can I lead? Should I even be thinking of leading?
As a woman raised in a single-parent, female-led home, in a traditionally patriarchal West African society in the Catholic faith, these questions were bound to cross my mind. Men are supposed to be the leaders in the home. Then how do we introduce the concept of leading as women? Yet, if we do not contribute to the leadership of our homes, then what are we doing? And if we’re learning to lead outside the home, do we just leave all that at the door when we get home?
I believe we are all leaders in our own capacity and in various roles. While we cannot all lead in the same areas at the same time, we can take various leadership roles at different times. What this means may vary from one marriage or family to another. But the fact remains that leadership can be shared, with various levels of responsibility and accountability being put in place between partners but also between partners and children.
Be flexible in your approach to leadership
As a working woman and mom, I know seasons of life and work rapidly change. What worked yesterday may not work today, and vice-versa. Learning to be flexible has been a key in my own growth and development as a leader in my own life and work. Being willing to gauge and re-evaluate my own sense of leadership, taking into account feedback from others, and forgiving myself in the process, has allowed me to continue to be true to myself.
Flexibility in how we approach and apply leadership at home and at work will allow you to adjust as you pursue your own leadership journey. It will also allow you to navigate the various, and inevitable, phases of life and work ahead, while authentically leading as yourself, from your very core.
For working women and moms, reconciling how to lead at home and how to lead at work, can create a world of confusion. By developing one uniform approach to leadership, sharing leadership at home, and allowing flexibility in the process, the journey can be made much easier, and most importantly, much more authentic and purposeful…
How do you reconcile leading at home and leading at work?
In this episode, I address the question of authentic (and different) leadership for working women and working moms. I discuss:
1)revisiting our beliefs about leadership,
2) challenging the foundations of leadership in the organizations and institutions we’re part of, and
3) redefining our own brand of leadership as working women and moms.
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This is a question I often asked myself coming up in my own career. As a young Black woman and immigrant starting my career in corporate America, leadership was hardly ever mentioned around me. After all, I felt lucky enough and happy to have “snatched” a job after college…Just having a seat at the table, any table of any significance, felt enough of a privilege…
Fast-forward many career ups and downs, a full career transition into academia, and my under-developed views on leadership have quite significantly morphed. What I realized along my journey is that given the opportunity and space to do so, women can not only bring their own, intrinsic leadership to the table of their careers, but they can also develop it in ways that are truly authentic to them and hence more effective and powerful overall.
Yet, it has taken me a long time to even begin to think of myself as a leader. Leadership was not exactly one of the topics discussed around the dinner table in my single-parent home growing up in Senegal, a majority Muslim country where the majority of leaders were (and still are) men. However, I had the privilege of seeing my mother as the leader of our matriarchal household. Without realizing it then, I was already being primed to seeing women as leaders. Yet, I was not prepared to act on this image of leadership…
It’s not until now, decades later, that I started asking myself the question” “What does it mean to lead as a woman in a patriarchal society struggling to move beyond gender bias and barriers?”
Does it mean breaking the glass ceiling, or the concrete ceiling or wall for Black women, or the bamboo ceiling for Asian women? Does it mean ascending to the highest levels of one’s career? Does it even mean being recognized for your work? Is that leadership for women? Or is it merely the reflection of leadership we’ve received from the remnants of a patriarchal society we’re still holding on a feeble, yet sustained pedestal?
What is leadership, authentic leadership for women? What does it mean to lead in your own life, in an authentic, compelling manner? When I think of all the outer signs of career success and leadership, and the paradox it creates in so many women’s lives, pitting them against their own personal choices and sense of balance, I tend to ask: “But…is that leadership?” Or is it just about reaching an ideal that has not been set by women or for women?
Leadership as we know it, is not made for women. This is why so many leadership programs targeted at women, fail miserably. This is why as much as some companies are investing in women empowerment programs, they are not seeing expected returns. It is because the very foundation of leadership as we know it, is not adapted to working women and moms. This is what has been defined as the “second generation bias” largely explaining women’s under-representation in leadership roles, due to cultural assumptions and organizational structures reinforcing the lack of women role models, gendered work favoring and rewarding men, lack of network and sponsor access for women, and the mismatch between traditionally feminine qualities and leadership qualities.
In order to be a leader, you have to see yourself as a leader. In the absence of women leaders, and the absence or scarcity of leadership values that align with the reality of women’s lives and values, how can leadership as we know it be effective for and to women? How can women really lead, effectively and powerfully, in systems whose foundations were never made for them? Here are three ways that may help:
Revisit your beliefs about leadership
What are your personal beliefs about leadership? How have they been shaped in the course of your life? Do you even see yourself as a leader?
These are a few questions that started my own leadership journey, and may also help begin or continue yours. Oftentime as women in general, we may not see ourselves as leaders because we have not been exposed to leaders who look, think or act like us. Leadership is after all, very much a gendered and patriarchal concept, which has been modeled after men for the longest time. Only in recent years, have we begun seeing women leaders in various areas, from politics to business.
Similarly, the models of leadership we’ve grown up with have most often reflected the patriarchal society we live in. Despite the increasing presence of women leaders, and all the benefits associated with women in leadership position, this foundational model has not evolved much. This has in turn literally forced women to conform to a way of leadership often not in alignment with them, holding on to the belief that there is no other way to lead.
This is where revisiting your beliefs about leadership may help in changing how you view leadership, and start reframing leadership in a way that serves your values, purpose and principles.
Revisit the foundations of leadership in the organizations you’re a part of
In the same way, organizations, companies and businesses’ foundations of leadership have been modeled after patriarchal models. In most modern organizations, women are not seen as leaders, even when they hold a leadership position or title because men have been the leadership norm and default for so long. This is why so many leadership programs targeted at increasing the number of women leaders in organizations fail miserably. Leadership is deeper than just reaching a certain title or position, it’s about embodying the role of leader which requires seeing oneself and being seen as one.
This is where organizations must strive to identify , acknowledge and address what they define as leadership. In the process, they must seek to educate, empower, and steer their people toward a more diverse and inclusive concept of leadership.
Redefine your own brand of leadership as a working woman and mom
Because leadership has been modeled after men, and too many women have in one way or another adopted styles of leadership not aligned with their values or purpose, leadership has revolved around how it looks for too long. What if instead, each and every one of us started asking ourselves the question: “What is my own way of leading?”
Being an authentic leader means acting in alignment with one’s values and purpose. As a working woman and mother, it means leading myself, leading in my home as a mom and wife, and leading in the workplace in my capacity. To me, it means leading with compassion, with integrity, and openness.
What does it mean to you?
So all in all, can I really, truly and authentically lead as a woman?
As I write these words, the answer is: It depends. It depends on how I reframe and redefine leadership as a working woman and mom; but it also depends on the spaces in which I can fully lead, in integrity and authenticity. There is much work to be done on both sides, yet the prospect of a future where women can lead as themselves is worth it…
Have you ever considered becoming an entrepreneur and literally shirked at the prospect of putting yourself out there? Do you feel you don’t have the confidence it takes to launch your own entrepreneurial dreams, especially in industries and areas where women are in the minority and unfavored? Are you wondering how to be more confident as a woman entrepreneur?
I remember starting a side hustle a few years back, wondering how in the world the introvert in me would ever find the confidence to start and grow it. Even though I could somewhat hide behind my laptop screen while blogging, I still needed to put myself out there, which was scary to say the least. Fast forward over a decade, I’m still growing and putting myself out there, somehow building the confidence that I believed was severely eluding me when I first started…
In general, men are shown to own three times as many businesses employing people than women. However, in 2021, more businesses were started by women (49%) than by men (42%), mostly as a result of pandemic-related business opportunities. Women were also shown to own more younger businesses than their male counterparts, at the rate of 75% of 15-year old or younger businesses for women and 66% for men. However, despite these significant advances, there is still a notable difference in average annual revenue and funding opportunities between men and women-owned businesses, to the disadvantage of the latter. According to Biz2Credit, women’s businesses earned $199,136 less than men-owned businesses in 2021. On the funding side, while men were approved for 67% of the loans they applied for, women could only achieve about half of this.
With these dismal statistics in mind, how does one muster enough confidence as a woman entrepreneur? Is it even worth the try?
From my own unconventional experience as a side hustler, an introvert, and a multiple minority in the entrepreneurial world, here are a few tidbits from my own experience that may help:
Start with your strengths and desires!
This may be the most unconventional business advice you may have ever received. Much of the business advice out there will recommend that you create and grow a business in a profitable field or industry. While this is valuable advice, it often skips the part where your strengths and desires should also be considered.
What has served me best (and still does) has been to focus on my strengths in areas where I can find the joy, motivation and strength to keep going despite the odds. It’s also what I refer to as my “zone of confidence”.
Focusing on your strengths, your core skills and desires, especially when you’ve already gotten positive results in those areas, will help you develop and cultivate the confidence and resilience to get started and keep going. This is especially important when the going gets tough, and all that’s left most days is the sheer will to keep forging ahead…
Grow slowly and incrementally
In the era of continuous metrics and overnight success, slow, incremental growth is not the most popular business concept out there. Yet, in terms of raising your confidence levels, it may be just what the doctor ordered.
In my own experience, solidifying one area before growing another one has helped me develop the assurance needed to keep going. It may be tempting to give in to the “shiny object syndrome” affecting so many, especially in the online space, trying new tools and gimmicks every other day. However, focusing and developing one key skill and area at a time, may help boost your expertise, thereby increasing your confidence in the process.
Get your numbers straight!
As you could tell from the discouraging statistics above, women-owned businesses, while growing more in recent years, are still lagging behind men-owned businesses in revenues and funding. This is also where many women lose their faith and confidence in starting and growing successful businesses.
As a CPA and consultant, I’ve had the privilege to witness the evolution of some women-owned businesses, many of them plagued by financial inaccuracy and lack of financial confidence. This in turn has significantly reduced their opportunities to go after various sources of funding, and increase their revenues.
Getting clear on your business’s financial goals and objectives, as well as its financial results, can help alleviate some of these doubts. This can impact the business’s revenue generating ability, as well as increase its chances to obtain more funding.
Own your stuff!
With the advent of social media, many women entrepreneurs, and many entrepreneurs in general, are hosting their businesses on online platforms like Instagram or TikTok. However, as has been shown through algorithm changes and technical outages, these may not be as reliable as most may believe. As a matter of fact, many entrepreneurs and creatives have been painfully griping about the loss of revenues and influence they’ve been experiencing on these same social media platforms for the past year or so. Talk about a loss of confidence…
As a woman entrepreneur, the more control you can have of your business, the more confidence and motivation you can muster to continue growing. This can be achieved by actually owning and managing your own business platforms, whether it’s your own blog, website, or physical location.
Avoid the trap of comparison
One of the most precious pieces of business wisdom I’ve gathered over time is to avoid the trap of comparison. There is always going to be a business that is more successful, generates more revenue, has more followers on social media, etc…That in itself is enough to destroy any entrepreneur’s confidence…
While I have certainly succumbed to the temptation to compare my micro enterprise to other solopreneurs, especially in the online space, distancing myself from it has helped boost my confidence levels over time. For me, this means observing some social media cleansing periods, not overly focusing on popular metrics, and developing my own goals and objectives.
Overall, developing a solid sense of confidence as an entrepreneur, whether at the micro-level as a solopreneur or side hustler, or on a larger scale, does not have to be an impossible task. By focusing on your own “zone of confidence”, growing incrementally and avoiding the trap of comparison, you can actually leverage your entrepreneurial venture to boost your sense of confidence.
How are you developing more confidence as a woman entrepreneur?
