Working-mom burnout: The high cost of having it all

2020 was not kind to Blair Westblom, chief financial officer at University of Phoenix. She was raising her two teenage daughters as a single mom after finalizing her divorce a year earlier. Then, suddenly, her parents passed away within weeks of each other.

The loss was tremendous, but Westblom powered on. She went to work, parented her children and began to attend to her parents’ estate. By external standards, she was successful. She always had been, whether she was breaking barriers in school (she attended a formerly all-male high school in California), working in investment banking or climbing the ladder at UOPX, where she’d moved from having one direct report to becoming CFO in the space of 10 years.

By internal standards, however, Westblom had hit her limit. Recognizing she wasn’t processing her grief, she requested six weeks of leave so she could attend to her family and herself. 

“As mothers and as women, we’re so accustomed to prioritizing everyone else’s needs,” she observes. “But I think I came to a point where I realized if I don’t take care of me, then no one else is going to care for my children.” 

Taking time off wasn’t easy for Westblom, who struggled with questions of whether the request would hurt her career. But she’d also worked hard to develop self-awareness and a set of values she could not ignore.

“It’s almost like a frog in boiling water,” she explains. “You have to check in with yourself and recognize, ‘This is not OK. I’m not on a good path.’”

From there, you have to do something about it. “It was truly one of those things where I was like, ‘What are my values?’” Westblom says. “Career is not actually number one. My family is number one. And that doesn’t mean I’m not prioritizing my career. It just means … [asking myself] ‘What am I going to be thankful for doing — or regret not doing — a year from now?’” 

Aside from the ethical concerns pertaining to nearly half of mid- to high-income working mothers feeling spread too thin, there are practical reasons to justify remediation. According to Koziol, well-supported working moms bring significant value to their organizations, including:

• Enhanced leadership and decision-making: “Their unique experiences with work and family life can enhance their leadership qualities, making them more empathetic, inclusive and effective decision-makers,” Koziol says.
• Increased productivity: No one knows how to multitask like a mother. Koziol notes that working moms who bring that ability to the office can benefit project management and team dynamics.

These advantages tie back to the transferable skills many mothers bring to the workplace. Westblom was a stay-at-home mom for four years when her two children were young. She’d heard the cautionary tales, which suggested she’d never be able to regain the ground she lost by stepping out of the workforce. Ultimately, her values trumped fear, and she ended up gaining more than she lost. Specifically, she developed skills like flexibility, adaptability and problem-solving, all of which benefit her at work.

More than anything, motherhood taught her to focus on the results more than the means. “Sometimes you need to be able to compromise in a manner where you’re not neglecting your overall objective but finding a way to honor what each person wants,” she says.

Anyone who’s raised a teenager recognizes the wisdom of this perspective. And anyone who’s worked in an office can speak to its value.

Other transferable skills identified in the M.O.M. report are:

Here are some additional methods:

Roper adopts a preventive approach to burnout. Her top recommendation? Set boundaries.

“I think women who are in high-level positions, they’re just naturally high achievers and people who want to do it all,” she says.

Creating healthy boundaries is partly about communication (such as letting your manager know your goals and helping you prioritize what to take on) and partly about understanding the same kind of values that drove Westblom’s decision to take time off when grieving.

If you’re transparent about your needs and your constraints, it lets others be more productive in helping you. It can also lay the groundwork for healthy relationships that “pour back into you,” Roper says.

This kind of value system helps Roper manage family and work life on a daily basis. “No one is going to be upset if you answer an email at 9 a.m. the next day versus 11 p.m. that night,” she says.

Although she’s grappled with her share of guilt over the years, her decisions on where to invest her time all come down to her values.

Guilt, by the way, is endemic among all mothers. But Westblom has some helpful insight on that topic: While guilt may be the default emotion, it’s also unproductive. “I can beat myself up as well as the next person,” she says, “but I’m more keen to think about regret, because if I reflect on what I could’ve done differently, then it’s more productive and progressive.”

As Roper observes, wanting to do it all doesn’t mean you should.

“I constantly have to remind myself that people exist in my community for a reason and that is OK. In fact, it’s very healthy to ask for help.”

Westblom concurs. When she went back to work full time, she quickly realized she was going to have to delegate if everything was going to get done. “I had to think strategically about my home life and what were the things that only I could do versus what were the things other people could do,” she says. 

Having a certain degree of autonomy with your schedule also helps manage burnout, although this one isn’t always up to the individual.

Westblom, however, counts it among the most impactful. When the pandemic rendered her job a remote one, it “completely changed my view of being able to balance working and motherhood.”

Why? Because she could time-block as necessary.

As any working parent knows, managing school pickups and drop-offs, sports participation, yearbook meetings and the whole gamut of child-based commitments takes a certain amount of finagling. Working from home, where you can stay later or start earlier to accommodate these obligations, empowers you to better balance both. 

Mothers who manage other employees are in an interesting position to break the cycle, so to speak. They can advocate for benefits, like tuition assistance or paid time off, at the larger level. They can also create a culture that supports working parents by how they communicate and schedule check-ins. Westblom takes care to not schedule big, in-person meetings during spring or winter breaks, when the parents on her team would have a harder time committing and engaging.

Roper also underscores the importance of self-awareness and empathy. She’s had to occasionally remind herself not to “get triggered when someone declines a project but rather talk about how to be involved another way.”

Roper notes that other benefits, like mentorship programs and career pathways, would help working moms as well, at little to no cost for organizations.

Koziol has additional takeaways. Like Roper, she acknowledges how improving child care and access to it for all mothers would directly and positively impact the productivity and stress levels of working moms.

Beyond that, she recommends the following:

1. Self-advocate: “Own your narrative with confidence,” Koziol says. “The skills you’ve refined through parenting are not just beneficial but essential for the modern workplace.” Whether on their resumé, during an interview or in a performance evaluation, moms can connect the dots between how managing a household translates to project leadership at work. Also, don’t be shy about leveraging those skills while pursuing opportunities and increased compensation.

2. Seek continual self-improvement: Education offers a pathway to complementing soft skills with hard skills gleaned through formal courses, certificates and degree programs. “This not only broadens your expertise but also showcases your commitment to professional growth and adaptability,” Koziol says.

In the end, the journey away from burnout may essentially hinge on something Westblom realized over the course of her career: You have to tap into your values and the strength to live by them.

“As I’ve matured, I’ve learned how to lean into my vulnerability,” Westblom says. “That’s very hard when you’re younger and trying to establish your credibility.”

Then, after a pause, she adds: “It’s been a journey.”