Parenting & Work: More Connected Than You Think

Everywhere I look, Adolescence is still being discussed, for its shocking but enlightening content. People talk of missed perspectives, male lenses, and lack of advice on what to do next as the main drawbacks. And I agree with all of those.

Sending it straight into senior schools without training and insight doesn't seem like the best move.

But there are experts out there who can help. Here are a few of my faves...

Rachel Vecht 🌞🏡, one of our Careers After Babies experts, is an ex-teacher and highly experienced educator and works with people on parenting, inclusivity, work-life integration and much more.

Lee Chambers has been working for many years on male allyship and gender equity. He is a business psychologist and a leading UK voice, having worked with schools and organisations for many years.

Elliott Rae and Joeli Brearley are working together to talk about boys and how we bring them up with positive male role models. Their podcast is storming up the charts as they interview different experts.

Parenting & Work are inextricably linked

What's interesting about all of these people is that, like us, they work mostly through companies.

You know why? Because organisations employ parents.

Parenting and work are inextricably linked. We're normally at a critical points in our career around the time we have children. We need to keep growing. And we need money.

Yet another reason why workplaces should be thinking about their working parents.

Our mental health, attendance, performance, productivity is all driven by our circumstances. When we are unable to keep everything in check, something falls over. And any parent will tell you that their children will come first.

Any organisation not thinking about working parents is setting itself up for failure. You will lose talent. We know that 9 and out of 10 mothers leave the full time workforce after having kids and more and more dads are demanding flexibility too. If you're not thinking about it but your competitors are, it's going to happen. Do I need to remind you that more than 80% of people will become parents?

At Careers After Babies, we do that with you. We understand what's happening now, then work with you for months, even years if that's what's needed, to ensure you are doing everything you can to retain your talented and highly experienced working parents.

We need your voice

So that we keep at the forefront of thinking on this front, we're re-running the Careers After Babies survey, which started everything. And we need to hear from you! We're aiming for 3,000 parents to share their experiences and we especially want to hear from dads and parents in non-traditional setups.

It takes 10-20 minutes of your precious time, but in return, we commit to doing everything we can to make employers listen. Our last report was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and featured in major news outlets, including Raconteur | B Corp™. This one will be bigger, better and EVEN MORE!

Take part now 👉 https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L93M6V7

Next up...

Easter holidays! I'll be working strictly evenings only for the next couple of weeks as I try and enjoy some sunshine with my four little munchkins. I'm currently producing Careers After Babies reports for Mishcon de Reya LLP and Salesforce, two companies serious about being the best they can be for their working parent communities!

See you soon!

Jess

PS I'm thinking of doing a launch event for Careers After Babies EVEN MORE....what do you think?!