Is the Grass Really Greener? The ambivalence between motherhood and work

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As a mother, how do you manage the tension between your work and family roles? What trade-offs do you make? How do you decide? Do you revisit these work/family decisions often?

Years back, my friend left her law practice to stay home with her new daughter. She went to see her OBGYN wearing casual, stay-at-home clothes. When her doctor came into the room and noticed her clothes, she said, “Tell me you haven’t quit!” My friend panicked and lied, saying she was in casual clothes because she’d taken the day off. Shaking her head in disbelief, she told me the story: “I can’t believe I lied! I respect her and want her to respect me, so I told her I was still practicing.” 

My friend is as honest as they come, but her shame and loss of identity at that moment led to her uncharacteristic lie. She loved being home with her infant daughter, but her doctor’s question evoked the ambivalence she’d pushed down.  

What is ambivalence? It is simultaneously experiencing contradictory feelings and attitudes toward the same person, event, or situation; these contradicting emotions are often found in the interplay of motherhood and career.

I recently spoke with Melinda Wenner Moyer about ambivalence in parenthood. In this post, I will focus on the ambivalence mothers often experience around feeling that the “grass is greener” on the other side of the working mother/stay-at-home mother fence. Do I work? Do I work part-time? Do I stay home?

I first became interested in ambivalence while working on my dissertation about highly educated, stay-at-home mothers. There’s a saying that “research is me-search,” and I’d struggled with ambivalence during my eight years as a stay-at-home mom. I’d worked hard to earn my master’s degree in psychology and enjoyed my practice, but I also wanted to stay home full-time. Although I was able to, I missed working and questioned my decision.

What was my problem?! Did other stay-at-home moms feel this way, or was it just me? So, I went back to earn my Ph.D. and set out to understand the experience of women who’d spent years achieving high professional success - and then switched gears, choosing to stay home with their children.

Each woman’s story in my research was compelling and unique, but one common emotion stood out: ambivalence.  

I found these women eager to talk about their ambivalence. They described their feelings of being pulled in two directions and the emotional and mental gymnastics required to be at peace with their decision to stay home. Ambivalence reverberated throughout their stories. 

In my  research, one physician and stay-at-home mom said it so well:

I think with being a female, the access is there. We can do anything. We can go be authors; we can go be lawyers, whatever. But the problem of managing it all - managing our role in our family and/or our aspirations. That’s where the lack of revolution is. 

Reckoning with the Trade-Offs

Over the last twenty years, I’ve worked in my psychotherapy practice with women in many places along the work/stay-home continuum. I’ve learned that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, there are trade-offs. And it’s within these trade-offs that ambivalence lurks - for moms working full-time, part-time, and staying home to raise their children.

It’s well known that women report carrying much more of the childcare responsibilities than their spouse or partner. In a 2019 survey, 78% of mothers said they did more than their spouse or partner in managing their children’s schedules, which didn’t change much during the pandemic.

With so much on their domestic plates, mothers must make difficult trade-offs. Let’s look at these trade-offs more closely. 

Trade-offs: The Three F’s

Freedom, Focus, and Flexibility. On the one hand, these three F’s are expected gains from staying home. On the other hand, they’re what’s lacking for working mothers. Women who’ve decided to stay home talk about having more freedom in their schedule to spend time with their children, more mental space to focus on their children’s needs, and more flexibility to take care of last-minute needs like staying home with a sick child, or swinging by the school to drop off a forgotten lunch.  

Working mothers talk about the stress and loss they experience from the absence of freedom, flexibility, and focus. Pamela Stone writes about high-achieving women “opting out” of work to stay home with their children. In her article, she highlights how the rigidity of the workplace and the juggling of their work and mothering roles leaves women in a no-win position:

On top of their demanding mothering regime, these women received mixed messages from both their husbands and their employers. Husbands offered emotional [not logistical] support to wives who were juggling career and family.

Trade-offs: The Three I’s

Identity, Independence, and Intellectual (and social) stimulation are other gains of working, and, on the other hand, it’s the loss of the three I’s that’s so challenging for many stay-at-home mothers. Working moms get more external validation from their job regarding identity. Their role as a professional is a big part of their identity. With the choice to stay home, women can feel like they are losing an essential part of who they are because feedback from the work environment, and society, is missing. 

Looking back on her transition to staying home, one attorney and stay-at-home mother described her loss of identity this way:

My whole being had been defined by what I did. I’m an attorney, and that’s what I do, and so from one day to the next to give that away, and then all of a sudden, well, who are you, you know? I’m this mom; well, what does that mean? I don’t know who that is. 

Independence through income and professional autonomy is another gain for working mothers. But many women who stay home feel an economic dependence on their partner, which limits their independence to buy things for themselves or their kids. Women talk about “asking permission” and feeling vulnerable when asking their spouse something. 

Working moms benefit from the intellectual (and social) stimulation of work. Stay-at-home mothers talk about missing the Intellectual (and social) stimulation of their paid work - the high of winning a case, completing a project, and camaraderie with their colleagues. 

Different Shades of Green Grass 

While it’s a privilege to have the option to stay home or work, it is also a difficult choice for many women. One that they revisit often.

My conversations with women over the last 20 years have taught me this: ambivalence is a normal part of decisions about working or staying home to mother. And yet, as mothers, we expect it not to be and are unfairly hard on ourselves when these inevitable internal conflicts arise. It can feel like a tug of war between the “I” and the “we.”

I wish I could go back and tell my younger self this! Knowing what I know now and understanding and accepting my ambivalence would help me be more present in all stages of my mothering/working journey. I would have had more acceptance and self-compassion. Accepting your ambivalence with self-compassion, gives you space to see your green grass and adjust as needed.

Questions to Consider

• What, if any, ambivalence do you have about your choices around working and mothering?

• How do you make sense of these feelings from a place of acceptance? What are your unique pushes and pulls, pros and cons?

• If you feel you’ve gone too far to one side of the work/stay-home continuum, are there minor adjustments you want to make? If so, imagine these and what they might look like.

• Suppose you feel like you’re in a swirl of ambivalence. Can you set a time in the future to intentionally revisit your decision and put the swirl on the shelf until then? Remember, ambivalence is normal, but managing it can be challenging.