Millennials' Guide for Working Parents: Balancing Work, Parenting, Life, and Everything in Between

By Megan Gillespie

How can Millennial parents been seen as "professionals?"

Millennials have been raised in a career-focused culture. As we start to become parents and navigate through our parenting journey, there is often worry that we will no longer be seen as professionals, an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Winding Pathway Books
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954374454

Book preview

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

If you’ve read Millennials’ Guide to Work, Millennials’ Guide to Management and Leadership, Millennials’ Guide to Relationships, or any of the Millennials’ Guides books, you know how this works. Millennials’ Guides are not books best read cover to cover. We encourage you to review the table of contents and identify a challenge you are currently having or recently experienced. Turn to those pages to start finding answers! 

Each challenge includes a brief description and several strategies you may want to try. Many times, you can see success after trying one option. You’ll see some solutions repeated across different challenges because they’re likely to be helpful for many problems. For complex challenges, you may want to attempt several interventions at the same time. 

It’s important to have patience and give the solutions a little bit of time to work. Some ideas that you try won’t solve the problem but will make it a little better – that’s still success! If you don’t feel comfortable trying a solution or if it works partially or not at all, try something else. Some of the solutions are very low risk, such as changing your expectations of the other person. Others can appear more challenging, such as directly discussing a concern with a colleague or asking for a raise from your boss. Start with solutions that feel like lower risk to you and work your way up to more challenging solutions. 

This book is divided into sections. Section 1, What is a Working Parent? introduces the concept and describes how working parents create their own version of balance, seek support, and be overall badasses. Section 2, Becoming a Working Parent, deals with transitions of how to prepare yourself and your team at work for your impending parenthood and how to return from parental leave like a superstar. Part 3, Acing the ‘Professional’ Part of Being a Working Parent addresses the basics of how to start your day in order to make it a success, how to delegate, how to set boundaries, and more. Part 4, Working From Home as a Working Parent, describes challenges many of us have seen about how to work when there is a newborn, toddler, or school age kid with us, plus advanced activities of how to create side hustles or start a business from home. Part 5, Managing the Home Front: the Working Parent at Home, addresses common challenges about scheduling and housework. Part 6, Having a Life While Being a Working Parent, addresses managing your expectations, staying present, and even having a social life (!). Part 7, Managing Anxiety, Depression, and other Mental Health Issues, outlines when to be concerned about your mental health (or your kids’) and how to seek assistance. We close with Part 8, Moving Forward as a Working Parent, to wrap things up and help you become the best professional – and parent! – you can be.

Each of you reading this book is a unique person with talents to share with the world. Our hope is that this book can make it easier for you to do so. Good luck improving your life as a working parent!

FOREWORD

You only have to look at the plethora of TikTok accounts dedicated to making light of Millennials’ anxiety to see that, as a generation, we’ve got a lot stacked against us. We started our careers in a financial crisis, laden with student debt. We shouldered expectations from a generation of well-meaning baby boomer parents who felt like we could all be president, if we only worked hard enough. But the chips fell where they wanted to, and the ratio of salary-to-cost to buy a home skyrocketed. It’s no wonder we’re a generation that loves to share: ride sharing (Uber), vacation home sharing (Airbnb), music sharing (Spotify), and—as parents—we’ll even rent a bassinet if it promises to get our babies to finally sleep (the Snoo). When push comes to shove, it can feel like we don’t have a lot that we can call our own, that is truly ours.

While we put off parenthood later than our own parents, becoming mom or dad was finally our time to have something we could call our own: kids. But we wanted to do it our way. Millennials are statistically more likely to hold onto their hopes, hobbies, and dreams after they become a parent than previous generations. Yes, we’re mom or dad, but we’re also wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, besties, bosses, athletes, wine connoisseurs, CrossFitters. For us, being a parent is only one part of our identity. And please, don’t put it all on us moms, either. As students of gender theory and the daughters of second wave feminists, many of us felt there was no way that as women, we wanted to do any more parenting than our partners. Why should we? We all know your gender is not a reflection of how well you can parent.

Despite knowing all of this, we still have the mental load. Somehow, consciously or unconsciously, moms are still doing the lion’s share of parenting … or at least the thinking about parenting. From knowing the school vacation schedule, scheduling the next doctor’s appointment, worrying about whether your kid is getting along with their friends at school, despite eager and willing dads, moms still feel like they’re doing a lot of that stressful side of parenting—that parenting with a capital P. Much of this comes down to the balancing of work and life. After all, much of this imbalance starts with parental leave: Moms are still taking more time off than dads and until we have both parents taking equal parental leave —something that has to be demonstrated from the top in corporate culture and the policy that drives it —and we stop calling it maternity vs. paternity leave, moms are always going to be on the front foot, and dads on the back. What we want to get away from is moms teaching dads how to change that diaper, what setting on the white noise machine baby prefers, how baby most likes to be rocked to sleep. The minute moms and dad truly have equal share in parenting, the better it is for everyone. And research shows that dads are happier when they’re equal parents, too. 

So yes, there is so much riding on us as a generation, not least in how we parent. Anyone who’s ever labelled a Millennial lazy has clearly never actually met a Millennial. The good news is we get so much right when it comes to parenting. Where previous generations subscribed to the helicopter parenting mentality of watching their kids like a hawk as they navigate every bar of the jungle gym, Millennial parents are much more laid back. Where our parents might have valued academic excellence as the apex of success, we just want to raise good kids. Research shows that Millennials prioritize raising good, kind citizens over anything else, and we don’t worry so much about grades. We also value independence in our children: We recognize that taking a bench at the playground and letting our kids fend for themselves is beneficial to them (and it gives us a break, too). All this is tied to this idea that we are more than just parents, we’re humans who are overworked and overextended and hey, if something that makes our lives easier as parents is also good for our kids (cue: the importance of letting them play by themselves), then everyone’s a winner.

It’s good that we’re working: the benefits of working parents—especially moms—on kids has been shown time and time again. Yes, work puts a roof over their head, but it also demonstrates drive, a work ethic, and an identity that is beyond that of just Mom. You become something for them to aspire towards. So if everything we do is ultimately right—why are we so stressed? Somehow the idea of balance has become somewhat of a fallacy. In the world of Slack and email at your fingertips, we’re not always good at shutting off when we need to, but that’s not always our fault. We end up always feeling like we’re either not a good enough parent, or not a good enough worker. (There are plenty of memes on Instagram to back this up.) So, we get a reputation for reaching for the glass of wine. And then we get grief for that too. But when we have no time for healthier ways to decompress, it’s no wonder the Malbec looks so appealing. Sure, we should meditate, take yoga, and go for a run, but when we feel like we have to ask permission just to do any of these things, because we’re still shouldering so much of the parenting, it’s no wonder the Wine Mom has become a cliched trope.

So we’re overworked, expectations are high, we’re doing too much of the parenting, we don’t have enough time for self-care (and no, a shower is not self-care), we’re still paying off crippling student loans and somehow, in all this, we’re supposed to do those things we all associate with adulting: buying a home, car, saving for retirement, etc. It’s too much. When you add to this mix the climate crisis, an increasingly heated political divide in the US, and ever-growing tensions around social justice. It can feel overwhelming to be bringing up kids amid all this. And this is my perspective, as a white, cisgender, urban mom who has benefited from the privileges afforded to me—I cannot even begin to imagine the burdens felt by Black, indigenous, and moms of color.

Well, enter the perfect storm: The pandemic.

Never has there been a harder time to parent as the last 18 months. The pandemic became a pressure cooker of all these stresses and pressures that were already mounting—and more. Add to it working full time without the help of child-care, and suddenly parents became teachers and child care providers on top of full-time employees, wives, girlfriends, husbands, boyfriends, and partners -- and good luck if self-care is anywhere in that mix. We reported on Parents.com that during the pandemic, 70 percent of women said they were responsible for the housework and 66 percent were in charge of child care, according to a New York Times poll. So when daycare centers and schools closed, and babysitters and nannies no longer an option, it’s no wonder 2.5 million women -- many of whom were moms -- left the workforce in 2020. Many moms had to make the impossible decision: career or kids. Or, in my case, a single mom who shares time with my daughter equally with her dad, it meant that for those weekdays I had my then-3-year-old with me, I was somehow working and watching her at the same time. Needless to say, I don’t remember a lot from the spring of 2020.

According to an Axios report, economists worry that when moms leave the workforce, they won’t come back. According to the United States Department of Labor, 85 percent of working women will become mothers during their careers and 41 percent of women are the breadwinner in their family. This many working mothers leaving the workforce is hugely problematic to the economy. Experts worry this departure of women from the workforce could take decades to recover from, with moms — especially moms of color—bearing the brunt. A Washington Post survey of 2,557 working parents during the pandemic found that women of color, those without college degrees, and those in low-income households are losing more hours at work to care for their kids than people in other groups.

So what do we do with all this? It’s clear we’re at a moment of crisis, the impact of which is serious and wide-reaching. At best, Millennial parents, especially moms, are burning out, struggling to stay in their careers, and falling under the pressures of being good enough. At worst, the impact on mental and physical health, as well as the health of the economy, could be irrevocable. Moms and dads need that support to help balance work, parenting, and life. It truly takes a village and the expectation that we should all shoulder this on our own when it’s a universal experience is nonsense.

The book you’re holding — Millennials’ Guide for Working Parents: Balancing Work, Parenting, Life, and Everything in Between — offers just that, in the shape of tangible tips to help you make small steps to feeling a little more in control (something I know I’m not the only Millennial to appreciate). With helpful challenges, like setting realistic goals for work/life balance, how to manage child interruptions when you’re at work, writing reasonable work goals, how to delegate, and learning to ask for help, this is truly a guidebook to managing mid- and post-pandemic life as a working parent. While there’s no instruction manual for raising kids, there’s guidance to at least support you while you figure it all out.

On a recent much-needed weekend getaway to the Poconos with mom friends (which was supposed to be adults only, but one inevitably had to bring her baby), I asked them how they manage to balance work, life, and parenting. Their answer? They laughed. To them, this idea that you can have it all and excel at it feels about as realistic as the rainbow, sparkly unicorn that adorns our kids’ favorite t-shirts. If balance feels impossible, at least we can seek out the support and guidance that helps us cut ourselves some slack—since I think that’s half the battle.

If you’re reading this as a stressed-out working parent who feels like the world is on your shoulders, know you’re not alone. We all feel like we’re not doing anything right. As I write this, my 5-year-old is petulantly complaining that I’m not listening to her as she explains that she can use her Trolls hat as a fan. I feel like pointing her to the plethora of research that says multitasking is a myth, and, um, hello, mama’s working. Not that she would care one iota. She, like our bosses, partners, friends, can be understanding up to a point, then for the rest of the time, it’s on us to somehow make it all work. May this book be your companion as you — let’s not say juggle or balance — as you survive and learn to thrive as a working parent. At the very least, let it help you feel less alone.

Julia Dennison

Digital Content Director, Parents magazine

Queens, NY

August 2021

PART I. WHAT IS A WORKING PARENT?

Challenge