When high-achieving women become mothers

Becoming a mother is a huge transition. Every woman’s matrescence journey is unique. Women now have more opportunities than ever before to choose the timing of this transition and to be well-informed about children’s development and about research on parenting.

Yet, working in the corporate sector with bright ambitious mothers in senior leadership roles (and having been one myself), I’ve seen time and time again how educated high-achieving women can find the transition to motherhood especially challenging.

When you have built your identity around high performance, motherhood can be hard to adjust to.

One reason for this is the simple loss of control that motherhood brings. High-achieving women often pride ourselves on being organised and on top of things. Often, we have grown up being praised for being good, for getting things right and not disrupting.

But an optimised schedule in which everything is in its place just isn’t possible when you are parenting babies or young children.

When women are accustomed to finding calm through control, the chaos and unpredictability of motherhood can trigger overwhelm, anxiety or anger. We can feel like we are not doing a good job because things are not ordered. We resist rest and push ourselves to the limits trying to bring order to our world because that is the coping mechanism we are used to.

Only to find the chaos returns the next day.

Adjusting to just ‘going-with-the-flow’ and bouncing through the disrupted plans that inevitably come with parenting can be difficult when you have always prided yourself on having everything under control.

It’s really hard to maintain a sense of achievement through parenting. Achievement is a powerful reward. I absolutely pride myself on the books I have written, the qualifications I have achieved and the impact I have on families’ lives.

But when your personal validation has come through excelling at what you do, then the incessant interruptions of children (and the repetitive banal tasks of childcare) can leave us feeling like we have no value.

When a woman’s sense of who we are has grown around how well we do, this loss of opportunities to shine and to achieve in motherhood, can leave us feeling like we have lost ourselves and lost our identity.

Often, high-achieving women will try to compensate by striving to out-perform as parents – to be the best/perfect mum. And sometimes that will work and we will get things right and get a huge buzz.

But, inevitably, there will be failures. We will find ourselves snappier than we’d like or relaxing a boundary we know we should keep – and heap on the pressure to improve.

Perhaps we tie our own sense of success to our children’s successes or behaviour? Our self-worth becomes conditional on our children’s achievements or happiness. As long as they are doing well, then I must be doing well. But what happens when our children experience the inevitable ups and downs of childhood? The friendship issues, the disappointments, the negative emotions? We can’t hold a safe space for these, they are too unsettling, so we rush to manage them away….

These unrealistic expectations of ourselves (and of our children) are often unconscious but they serve to increase our anxiety and lead to guilt, burnout and disconnection. Trying so hard to be perfect, we end up emotionally detached and never truly present or playful for our children.

Of course, some of this is the same for dads too. But most women still take on a lion’s share of childcare. And the cake-baking at-the-school-gate version of motherhood many of us have internalised is very powerful. We are good girls. We should be good at this. We should be fulfilled by this.

So, what is this seething feeling inside that creeps up on us?

Maybe these patterns are familiar for you, maybe not. Every mother’s experience is different. But if these thoughts strike a chord, there are some helpful things you could do:

• Learn to switch between a high-achieving, driven and ambitious mindset at work and a slower, more relationship-focused mindset at home. (Read The Work/Parent Switch)
• Cultivate being present in small moments of connection, rather than aiming for perfection (Read How to rush less and connect more with your kids)
• Make space for playfulness and joy in small bursts (Read Why don’t we enjoy playing with our kids?)
• Be mindful of the metrics you use to judge your parenting and resist the relentless intensification of parenting that drives us to care too much about the small stuff
• Choose to face your mum guilt and unpick the beliefs underpinning it, rather than allowing it to drive your choices (Read Working parent guilt: use it or lose it)

I help high value professionals succeed in top tier roles without sacrificing family or career (and without burning out) – so firms can retain their top talent, protect their leadership pipeline, and keep high performers fully engaged. Get in touch if you need a parenting speaker or coach.