Are Working Mums Quietly Quitting All This Time?
I returned to my professional work ten months after giving birth to my first child. I’ve been so desperately craving some adult conversation and being able to be part of something again that I couldn’t wait to go back and pick things where I left off.
In my return, I naively thought I could perform the same way I used to before having a child, where I’m always connected with my email and phone no matter the time or day, dialling in late-night calls and working on client proposals over the weekend.
How could that be hard, right? I enjoy my job and never thought of it as a chore. Surely, now with a child in tow, I should be able to pick up my corporate life like I never left, right?
Boy, was I wrong!
A month into coming back to work, I was in tears because it was hard to admit it — I was (both) overwhelmed and underwhelmed by it all.
The reality was I could no longer perform without boundaries like I was in the past. Part of me mourned that I couldn’t anymore. Because now, I have physical limitations to set. I have to have dinner ready by 5.30 pm because that’s when my toddler eats, and then prepare her for bed by 7 pm. For work, it means I could no longer have late-night meetings or me promising that I would look into matters later in the night. I couldn’t because I was exhausted by the time my child went to bed. The overwhelming part was trying to keep up with my own work performance expectations.
The underwhelming part is that I no longer have a hot set of clients and a streak of winning accounts. I lost them all when I handed them over to people when I left for maternity leave. It felt like restarting my career all over again as if I had something to prove as if my wins never happened nor mattered.
A career phenomenon has been sweeping the internet in the last few weeks. The term is called Quiet Quitting, which describes that you do just what is needed of you no more or less within your paid hours of 9–5. The idea is sweeping workers because it promotes that work is not your life — or that there is more to life than work.
Being a working mum made me think about how mums worldwide have managed work and children while having dinner at the table when the kids get home from school. Could the term Quiet Quitting apply to our working lives also?
Have working mums all over the world been quietly quitting all this time? I think not.
The word quiet quitting sounds passive-aggressive towards your employer. It implies that you are blocking or consciously will not be helpful outside your job description.
From my experience, although coming from maternity leave felt like I’m back at the starting line. I never thought I could and would only do what the job description says. My approach, as I’m sure most returning to work mothers do, is to go above and beyond in my working hours.
It is never about quietly quitting but purposefully working. Because I know that I want to do a good job that I can be proud of, and I know that I’m not missing out on that 6 pm meeting. I know that I have something more critical outside my working hours:
- Bringing up my children.
- Having a meal with my family.
- Cuddling my loved ones to sleep.
They are worth walking back to starting the line for; they are worth purposefully working for; they are worth all my time.
So are working mums been Quietly Quitting all this time? No, they have been Purposefully Working!
