Defining Our Own “Power Pause” in Motherhood, Career and Life
My son was about 7 weeks old when I got the phone call. I was being laid off from the media company I was working at in the wake of an acquisition. I looked over at him curled up in his bassinet. General injustice of being laid off while on maternity leave—and creeping financial concerns—aside (but, umm, never fully aside), at that moment I felt relieved and mostly indifferent. For a few months, I wanted to be “just a mom.”
I should have taken that relief and run with it. It was a welcome opportunity for me to take a true mental break from paid work and reconsider the type of work I wanted to do and the schedule I wanted to do it on. I did take a pause—a blissful pause of many contact naps. But just a couple months later, work opportunities started popping up and I kept taking them. Not all of them necessarily felt 100 percent “right” for me, but at the time I was super-anxious about being unemployed—which overpowered everything else, including my internal peace and wellbeing. Looking back, I wish I had taken a more intentional pause, one where I was pursuing non-work interests instead of worrying if and when I was going to get back in the game. It would also have helped me feel more present as a parent—and certainly less anxious postpartum.
Now that I have a job that does feel right, I have the mental and emotional space to ask myself: What else do I need? So for the first time, I’m taking a deep dive into my mental health, my physical wellbeing and my beliefs—and figuring out how to parent in a way that improves on previous generations. It’s heavy work that feels long overdue, but I’m glad I’m finally doing it.
In the last few years, many of us have reexamined how we view our careers and what happens during our working hours. And thank goodness for that; the old ways just weren’t working, especially for women and parents. More importantly, many of us are realizing that it can be amazing for our mental health to slow down, take a break and figure out what we really want in life. What if we took an intentional break?
One of the thought leaders who beautifully embodies the crazy new notion that we don’t have to work ourselves to the bone is Neha Ruch, author of new book The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids—and Come Back Stronger Than Ever. After 10 years of working in brand strategy and earning her MBA from Stanford, she decided to put her career on pause following the birth of her second child. In Power Pause, she guides other parents on laying out a plan (i.e. get your finances in order) to take a thoughtful step back in your career, discovering who you are outside of your work, finding joy in everyday life without guilt and returning to paid work feeling empowered and well-rested.
“I think we as women, especially in the millennial generation, were raised on a pretty black-and-white version of ambition and success. We’re definitely at a moment of reexamination right now,” Ruch tells The Bump. “I think we’re all ready for more options.”
I think we as women, especially in the millennial generation, were raised on a pretty black-and-white version of ambition and success. We’re definitely at a moment of reexamination right now.
When she initially chose to pull back and work two days a week with her first child, she says she was met with judgment and dated stereotypes of the stay-at-home mom. “‘Do you feel like you’re giving up?’ ‘Are you going to be bored all day?’ ‘Did you waste that business school education?’ Of course it rattled me, but it really made me wonder where this was all coming from,” she says. The “tradwife” stereotype connected with stay-at-home moms doesn’t sit well with everyone, and staying at home with our kids isn’t what many of us imagined ourselves doing when we were younger. Many women worry about losing their edge.
Ruch’s goal is to help redefine stay-at-home motherhood and empower moms to take a pause on their own terms and come back to their careers feeling excited and ready. She also started Mother Untitled, a platform designed to help ambitious women who want to take a career pause. Mother Untitled is currently partnering with Momcozy, a maternal and baby care retailer, to provide free classes on taking a pause and/or transitioning to a more flexible work environment.
While most people who consider a pause like this are moms, the whole conversation doesn’t need to be gendered. “We’re seeing both men and women make shifts in their careers for family life. We see dads spending three times the amount of time with their kids than any generation prior,” says Ruch, adding that all parents want lives that feel more balanced. With more flexible opportunities and hours, there are also more gray areas nowadays between stay-at-home parent and working parent. Ruch says that her book is for many types of moms, including those who’ve downshifted their careers and those who are between stay-at-home and working motherhood.
If you’re looking to take a power pause yourself, there are a few things to consider.
Line up your finances
Ruch encourages couples to ask, “How are we shifting our income to make room for what matters to us? What are our fears about money?” She suggests having this conversation at least six months ahead of a proposed pause, if possible. Of course, Ruch recognizes that pauses aren’t always voluntary. According to research commissioned by Ruch, 62 percent of moms pausing their career do so because of the prohibitive costs of childcare, and one in three feel forced to pause their careers due to financial needs. “So it’s not always necessarily a privilege to get to choose, but if you are choosing that one partner is going to downshift or pause their paid work, then you’re both deciding together that this is an investment into the household,” Ruch says.
Assess your values
Renée Goff, PsyD, PMH-C, a licensed clinical psychologist and owner of Orchid Wellness & Mentoring in Cincinnati, Ohio, suggests thinking about the times in your life (both big and small moments) when you’ve felt happiest and the most at peace: “It’s likely that whatever you were doing or whatever was happening in those moments aligned with what you value. Lean into that!” She adds, “Determining your values will help guide you into understanding what’s most important to you and who you are outside of your title and career.”
Tap your community
“It’s easy to become isolated during any transition because your routine will be undergoing a shift,” says Goff. She recommends prioritizing social connections—coffee dates, mom groups, etc.—as much as you can. “Feeling heard, understood and having parallel experiences with these social connections is incredibly helpful and validating,” she says. “If you plan on returning to your career, stay connected with former colleagues. You could also engage in job-related activities such as webinars, continuing education courses, listening to podcasts or reading articles.”
Prepare to make new connections
There are so many opportunities for networking to be found in the stay-at-home mom world, says Ruch—those moms on the playground can be a huge catalyst for your next professional self. In Power Pause, she says she aims to “dismantle the myth that our network has to dry up in motherhood,” adding that digital resources can help new moms “start to explore what lights us up in a new way.”
Returning to paid work after taking a pause is understandably something that many moms worry about. One in three stay-at-home moms are concerned about the gap in their resume, according to Ruch’s research. Not knowing what the future holds for our careers makes it difficult for many to pull back. Ruch hopes that, in time, the return will be more accessible and less scary. “If you’re taking an intentional pause, we want to shift the culture so that it can be respected and understood, and you have options available to you when you transition,” she says. “We want women to have more ways in which to advocate for part-time, flexible or mobile work if it works for them.”
At the end of the day, the “power pause” relies on the radical notion that we can “have it all,” just in a different way than we perhaps previously thought “it all” would look like.
For me, it’s about prioritizing wellbeing. Looking back at that day three-and-a-half years ago with my then-7-week-old, I now see what happened as a gift. I realize it was my internal guide telling me to slow down, respect myself more and look at the big picture of how my career fits into my identity versus the other way around. And that’s made me more present at work and a more thoughtful parent.
Plus, more from The Bump:
Renée Goff, PsyD, PMH-C, is a licensed clinical psychologist and owner of Orchid Wellness & Mentoring in Cincinnati, Ohio. She received her doctor of psychology from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.
Neha Ruch is the author of The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids—and Come Back Stronger Than Ever and the founder of Mother Untitled, a platform for ambitious women interested in taking a career break. After 10 years of working in brand strategy and earning an MBA from Stanford University, Ruch decided to pause her career after having her second child. She now helps other women reshape the narrative around stay-at-home motherhood.
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