Changing the corporate attitude towards working mothers
Interview with Amy Taylor-Kabbaz
I chat with best-selling author, speaker, journalist and matrescence activist, Amy Taylor-Kabbaz from Mama Rising. Together we discuss the challenges that mothers face in returning to work and the systems change required to support their well-being. At the core of this conversation, we explore why the well-being of mothers is influenced by their workplace’s attitude to working mothers.
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About Amy
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz is a best-selling author, speaker, journalist, matrescence activist and mama of three. She is the best-selling Hay House author of Mama Rising and the host of the ‘The Happy Mama Movement’ podcast with more than 400,000 downloads. She launched her world-first Matrescence Facilitator Training - Mama Rising - which is recognised by the ICF and currently has more than 200 accredited Mama Rising coaches globally.
We explore the following questions:
How did you find yourself speaking about returning to work?
What are the two indicators that lower a mother’s wellbeing in the first five years of parenting?
Why does improving maternal careers require systems change?
How do you teach students to have these conversations with individual mums and in corporate settings?
Additional resources we spoke about:
Mama Rising Enrolment 2023 - https://programs.amytaylorkabbaz.com/a/2147525357/CxrVCoDA
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello, and welcome to another podcast episode with Amy Taylor-Kabbaz. Now, we had you on the podcast back in episode 42. Amy runs a program called Mama Rising, which I know a lot of our listeners are familiar with. She's a bestselling author, speaker, journalist, and a matrescence activist, and I really am excited about our conversation today, because we've already sort of talked a little bit about your matrescence framework more generally, so if people want to go back to episode 42 and listen in on that, they can. Today, we wanted to take that a little bit further and chat about what matrescence looks like when we return to work, because there are lots of transitions that happen after becoming mothers, and the actual birth is just really the beginning of many transitions. So Amy, welcome again to the show.
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Thank you. Thank you for having me back.
How did you find yourself speaking about returning to work? When did that come up in what you do? (00:57)
Julia Jones:
What a great topic. I was excited when you suggested this topic. How did you, I guess, find yourself talking about returning to work, and when, I guess, did that come up in what you do?
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Looking back, it's actually always been one of the biggest struggles of my own motherhood and matrescence experience. Yes, I definitely had a really rough time when my first daughter was born and that immediate postpartum period, because as I have shared many times before, she was born with some pretty severe physical restrictions and pains. So those first few months were absolutely horrendous for both of us, but I personally got through that, remembering that when I get back to work, I'll know what I'm doing. I found early motherhood so confronting, that it was the first time in my life I really couldn't control everything and know what I was doing, or try harder and get better at it. I remember holding my breath, just waiting when I get back to work. I went back to work with my first two kids at nine months old, both of them, and I remember walking through that door on my first day back at the ABC when she was just over nine months old and feeling incredibly sad that I just left my baby, even though I'd been waiting nine months, in some ways, to do this, and walking in and feeling like I didn't fit in there anymore either. Feeling once again, this real split within me of when I'm at home I want to be at work, and when I'm at work I want to be at home. The fact of part-time work, the fact that therefore, I wasn't able to contribute like I used to. I was definitely treated differently in some aspects by some people because I was only part-time.I really struggled with that identity shift within me. So it's always been something that I'm super passionate about.
Then as I developed the Mama Rising certification and coaching certification, we focus very much, of course, on the experience of matrescence right from when you first fall pregnant or consider pregnancy. Of course, we've always talked about beyond that postpartum period, because matrescence doesn't end on that first birthday, as we both know so well. The more that I kept developing this, and teaching it, and getting feedback, and listening, the more demand there was to talk about this aspect of work. Not just her own experience and how we can support mothers around that, but actually also bringing into the training and into the work that I'm doing, how we can talk to workplaces about this. Because research is just so clear, that the reason why she often leaves, or pulls back, or resigns is because she feels so isolated and misunderstood at work and she feels like she's not doing a good job at home, and then she's not doing a good job at work. So if we really want to support mothers differently and change the way they feel in these early years of motherhood, we have to look at how she's being treated, how she's being viewed and valued in the workplace as well.
Julia Jones:
Yes. I think that's so true, and also, what you mentioned in there, it's not only just about the mum feeling good about herself, it's also about actually workplaces getting the best employees, because we know that women are very well-educated, and we know a lot of them drop out of the workforce when they have babies or pull back, and sometimes it's called the mummy track, and women get sort of stereotyped. But we also know that a lot of the brain changes that happen during that transition actually make them really great in workplaces, better at multitasking, more efficient, great leadership skills, more compassion and empathy. So we should be actually valuing the things that motherhood brings to a workplace rather than putting up with the inconvenience of having someone in the workplace, who happens to be a mum.
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
I totally agree. As part of the training, we're now bringing in presentations to make to HR managers and team managers about the benefits of baby brain and a mother in those years, because at the moment, there is one, there's lots of different research into this, but one in particular I found around interviewing and speaking to pregnant and new mothers in the workplace, found that 77% of them have experienced some form of discrimination around being pregnant or just returning. This is outwardly outward comments by employees or colleagues, or more insidious unconscious bias sometimes or conscious but insidious bias towards these women. Visibly pregnant women in the workplace are automatically assumed that they're not as committed, that they're more emotional, they're not as strong, they're more feminine.
There's all of these insights that we are hearing about how many of our leaders in workplaces assume that because she's pregnant, she's not able to do her job anymore. So many times I've heard, Julia, and I remember when I found out I was pregnant with my third, I had this feeling, of you find out you're pregnant, and one of the first or second thoughts is, "Oh my God, how am I going to tell my boss?" It is such a key part of this understanding how differently we feel about ourselves, and if we can change that in the workplace, and I think we're going to make a really big difference.
So what we want to be able to do is bring that understanding around baby brain and her greater skills and her greater contribution to the workplace now, and also empower her to understand how differently she feels about it. Because the other thing that we know, through matrescence and what you and I both do, is taking my own story, for example, being a journalist at the ABC was just such a core part of who I thought I would be for the rest of my life, and when I found motherhood so incredibly hard at the start, I hung onto that so deeply.
Then, when I walked back in and looked around, and I was like, "Oh, no, I don't think I want to be this person anymore either." In a way, that was more destabilizing than the experience of motherhood. It was more shocking to me that I wasn't as passionate about this huge career that I was building like I used to be, because I'd spent so much of my life, especially growing up, with feminism teachings around me and being that really empowered, independent woman, that my career was who I was, and then suddenly, I wanted to stay home with my babies? Like, what's happened to me? Again, we have to peel back these layers and have these real conversations about how differently we feel about these things after we've had children, make it normal, and also say that there'll be a period of time where maybe you won't be as passionate about your work. That may come back, it may not, but what are we going to do in the meantime?
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that. Everyone reacts to that experience of matrescence so differently because some people want to rush back to work and some people never want to go back to work, and often, that's not what we think it's going to be. Some people think, "I'm going to book the full year, or I'm going to stay home till my kids are in primary school," and then it turns out that they actually don't like being a stay-at-home mum. You can't tell how you're going to feel before you've had that baby, and it can change from year to year, so it is a really tumultuous time. It's unpredictable, but I think as well, a lot of what pushes women out of the workplace is flexibility and that sort of thing too.
Even if people do love their careers, they want to return to their career, but they often aren't given the working conditions that can fit around a family, so women often have to give up careers that they're good at, that they love doing because it simply won't be suitable for them anymore, and there's not enough childcare, and dads aren't really expected to help in the same way and that sort of thing. So there are so many different things to unpack.
What are the two indicators that lower a mother’s well-being in the first five years of parenting? (09:32)
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
There is, and we've recently, as an organization, as a company, started some corporate coaching contracts going in, and not only coaching and supporting parents, both fathers and mothers before, during and after paternity leave, but also, educating in a way the leaders and HR consultants, like I said before. In those conversations. Julia, do you know what? Pretty much every single one of those mothers and mothers to be talked about, love my job. It's really flexible.
I've got a great manager who says I can totally come in late and actually feel really supported in the workplace. It's at home I'm not supported. It's at home that I still do all of the housework. I feel like everything falls on me. It's me who has to organize the birthday party, the dentist appointment, all of that invisible load of motherhood, and so again, I think in the broader conversation around, "How do we change the system for mothers?," I think we have to acknowledge all of these parts, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, workplace, home, relationships.
It's all part of this pie that contributes to her sense of well-being. I found this amazing research paper earlier in the year. I can send it to you to put into the show notes if you like, and it looked at the well-being indicators of mothers and fathers in the first five years of parenthood. Well-being, looking at their happiness level, how excited they were about their future, how they felt like their life was heading in the right direction. They found that a mother's well-being indicators, actually the thing that contributed to the lowering of her well-being the most in the first five years wasn't the experience of being a mother. In fact, it increased her well-being. She looked forward to her life more. Sure, she was tired, but there was bigger purpose.
Her future looked better because she had these children. The thing that lowered her well-being in the first five years was two things. One was she felt that her partner's career was advancing more than hers, and the second was she was doing more housework or home duties than her partner. They were the two biggest indicators to the lowering of a mother's well-being in the first five years of parenting. So if we're looking at how to support mothers, we have to be able to talk about the fact, how she feels about her work and how she feels about her duties at home. We can't do this in a silo, is what I've discovered, and I really want us all to be able to talk about, and workplaces have to acknowledge that too.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I would guess as well, that's probably a large contributor to marriage breakdown.
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Oh, yeah.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. I know my marriage has survived becoming parents, but absolutely, our biggest arguments have always been around those two topics, my husband's career advancing more quickly than mine, and I'm very ambitious, and people would probably perceive me as successful, and I'm like, "I haven't done half the things that I want to do."
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Tell me about it. Exactly.
Julia Jones:
Yeah.
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Isn't that sad? I actually think that's quite heartbreaking, and even as you said, if the marriage does survive the impact that has had on relationships in those early years of parenting. Where's the conversation support around that? That's also what I think, if we can talk to pregnant women about more than just the birth plan beyond all of that, to really have great conversations with the partner about support, and who does what around the house, and set those seeds right from the beginning, gosh, I mean, who knows? I don't know if I can say if that had happened 15 years ago when my daughter was born, if my husband and I would still be together. I can't guarantee that, but I do know that a great deal of the stresses over the last decade in our relationship came from the magnitude of raising three children on our own in Sydney, and having that disparate support around childcare, was a big contributing factor.
So yes, in this work that I'm doing and the conversations that we're all having, I'm so passionate about going beyond her experience of mothering and looking at work, relationships and support around her, because, my God, I believe that that's going to make just as big a impact.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, and I think we've talked a bit about some of the systems change stuff, like there can be better HR policies and better kind of understanding in corporate environments, but there is also some individual mindset work to do as well, because I noticed that on the one hand, a lot of men are really reluctant to ask for flexible hours or part-time work because they think they'll be mummy tracked, and I'm like, "Well, fair enough"
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Welcome to our world.
Julia Jones:
Then, also, a lot of women are reluctant to pay for help around the house. Even when they're working a lot and earning a lot of money, there's still a lot of resistance to things like paying a cleaner or simplifying their lives by outsourcing birthday parties and things like that, because we've wrapped up so much in our identity, as good mothers, not only parenting skills, but also all domestic skills, and we feel like failures, as a mother, if we're not personally the one who's wrapping the present, who's washing the dishes, who's baking the cake, even if it's 3:00 AM in the morning and we're exhausted. Yeah, and we've all done it, and so I think for men and women, it's really important that we all explore our own roles and our own understanding of gender and start to deconstruct some of that and make some of those difficult choices. If you're a man, go and ask for flexible work even if that makes you look like you're not devoted to your career, and if you're a woman, go and pay for a cleaner even if that makes you feel like a bad mother.
Why does improving maternal careers require systems change from the micro and macro levels? (15:51)
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Yes. It is really difficult because this is on both the micro and macro level. This change has to happen. Sometimes, I know myself and so many of the women in my community feel like we're just fighting this uphill battle against the system to try and change these gendered assumptions, and so we do have to do it on both levels. We do have to ... And that's what I really hope this training and this future of this work does, is that we come to it from top-down and from bottom-up.
I think what I love doing so much is seeing the shift in a mama's perspective of how she's feeling and what's going on in her life, when she begins to understand the bigger systematic reasons why we're here. I love doing that. The feminist activist in me is like, "Yeah, but do you realize, just like you said, how much this idea of being a good mother is also wrapped up in these domestic duties, and this is the system that we live in?" For so long in my own healing in early motherhood, I didn't see it in a bigger perspective, I saw it as a very personal failure. I saw it as a very personal thing, that individual thing that I needed to fix if I did better with this, if I was on top of this more, if only I could get up more earlier, or if only I was more organized, and it was only once I started studying through my work with Dr. Aurelie Athan and around matrescence, and looking at it as more of a cultural story.
I was like, "Oh, wait a second. I picked up these ideas from before I was a mum," and, "Oh, the reason why he doesn't want to speak up and ask for the same things at work is because of the cultural assumption around men at work," and, "Oh." There was just so many layers of forgiveness, I think, is one way to put it, but also acceptance that I can do as much as I can to change this for myself, but there's also just going to be a level of acceptance of myself and others, that we're also all doing this in this system. I hope that makes sense. I think it's really powerful.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I think so. I think so, and we absolutely need both, because on the one hand, understanding those bigger stories can give us the courage to take individual action, but also, understanding that we're sort of swimming upstream can make us more accepting of why it's so hard like, "Well, I've asked for this, and I've done that, but nothing's happened. I'm still stuck, and it's still not changing.” And it's not your fault. That is because this is hard, this is big, this is intergenerational.
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
That's it. That's right. Like getting a mama to pay for a cleaner, if she doesn't really understand why it's so hard for her to say yes to that, then she's going to have that internal battle of, "I should do it, but I don't know why I want to, but I can't because I shouldn't spend the money on it." There's that internal battle where if we can sort of shine light on bullets because we still tell women they need to be able to do it all, that you feel like you can't spend money on this, then hopefully there's a little bit of that forgiveness and acceptance.
I was that mum who would be up until 1:00 AM. As you said, we've all done it, because I was working full-time, and so I was up until 1:00 AM making the birthday cakes. It was almost like I couldn't outsource it because I already felt like I was missing out on so much anyway. I was already not there for all the school pickups, so I was already not there for when they woke up in the mornings 'cause I was doing breakfast radio. So I just pushed myself to almost prove, "Look, but I'm a great mum because I made a Barbie cake at 1:00 AM," and, ah, they're the things that I hope we can change.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, and it is hard. None of this is to say that it's easy. It takes a lot of courage, and it takes-
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
It does.
How do you teach students to have these conversations with individual mums and in corporate settings? (20:00)
Julia Jones:
Yeah, and it takes a lot of revisiting these stories. So, tell me a little bit more about what you're actually doing here. In the course, you're teaching your students to be able to have these conversations in corporate settings, and also with individual mums. What does that look like?
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Well, we have the individual coaching and group coaching model in there, which has always been in there. It's a combination of life coaching skills that I was taught and have used for over a decade, and we have some amazing coaching trainers in there now, married with the, I guess the unique formula of support, the unique way that we support mothers using the understanding of matrescence.
What I found when I started coaching, many years ago, using the amazing but straightforward coaching skills, was that it lacked the compassion and empathy for the complete unpredictability of early motherhood. I started off coaching new mums and using the, in a way, very masculine, very corporate coaching model that most coaches use, like you start by setting a goal, and you have actionable tasks each time, and then you come back two weeks later, and, "What did you get done?," and, "What didn't you get done?," and, "Why is that?," and, "How can you support yourself better?," and all of those things.
What I found was that quite often, in between those two weeks of coaching a mama, she hadn't done anything that we said she would because she had three rounds of gastro she hasn't had a second to herself, and when she gets on that Zoom, or a decade ago when I started, it was Skype, she burst into tears 'cause it was the first time she'd had a minute to herself since two weeks earlier, and me asking her, "Well, did you do that thing and did you ask for more help, and did you take Saturday afternoon off to go and sit in the park like you wanted to?," and she cries and says, "No, I couldn't because everyone had gastro." I was just contributing to her feeling like she was failing.
So very quickly, I threw that whole coaching model out the window and started to try and find a different way. Still moving forward towards how she wanted to feel, but doing it in a very much more compassionate way. So that's still very much what we teach and we practice in the training. Now, we've added out other elements to be able to do that in a group setting. Also, what we found is, to be honest, the memorizing coaching model is quite spiritual. It's deeply feminine. It talks a lot about rites of passage, honoring the feminine within you, letting go of those masculine ways of being.
We had some amazing coaches have opportunities to go into their workplaces and make changes. Some of our previous students have brought a change to post-maternity leave support in LinkedIn in Australia, in a huge commercial real estate business, in a bank. We've got some amazing coaches in there, and the feedback they were giving me was, "It's really amazing, Amy, but I can't talk about that part because it's a bit woo-woo for them. I can't talk about the spiritual awakening of matrescence."
"I can't talk about the feminine in a workshop or in the boardroom," and so we started to tweak the way we were presenting it and the language around it to make it more accessible for those corporate clients in those workshops and workplaces. And so now, as part of the training, we very much have built out a model of the Mama Rising way of doing things that kind of is a bit more ...
Julia Jones:
Acceptable.
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Palatable. Exactly. That's right. I mean, for example, the Engineers Association of Australia asked me to do a presentation on matrescence, and when you're talking to an organization that has like ... I can't remember, I'm sorry, something like 90% male members, and they're wondering why they can't keep women in the organization. So you're looking at the presentation, you're like, "Oh, I'm going to have to change some of this," because we want allies, right? Again, if we're looking at the top-down change, we have to meet them where they are. We have to have conversations that's about productivity and investment in their staff retention and all of these things, and so when you talk about the rites of passage of women being ignored for generations, they don't care about that. They just want to know why they can't keep their working mothers employed and company loyalty. So that's what we've done. We've built out a second part, really, of how to talk about this in workplaces, how to do a presentation to a corporation around the importance of understanding matrescence, and then using that model.
So yes, it's definitely been, as all of our beautiful businesses and work is, it's trial and error, feedback, listening to the people who are out there doing it 'cause that's ... We've got over 200 coaches and facilitators now, and they come back to me and like, "Oh, Amy, we think we need this," and so we just keep adjusting it, and tweaking it, and updating it.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, because this is emerging work. I mean, it's a culture where postpartum doesn't really exist. We think it's depression, and so we're reviving a lot of stuff, but adapting it for these situations that aren't really familiar with it, and, yeah, it really is trial and error, and it's a joy to have colleagues like you, Amy, who've also been doing this for such a long time, and keep expanding, and growing, and tweaking, and it's so great to see those changes happening.
Where is the entry point to changing the systemic issues with careers within motherhood? (25:59)
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Thank you. Thank you. I feel the same. I will add that it's actually really exciting 'cause workplaces are starting to be interested in this. They do know that there is a great lean out. There's a great resignation around the world, especially of working mothers. They do recognize that there is a gender burnout gap. That, in particular, women, especially post-COVID working mothers, their progression to equal pay and equal roles has actually gone backwards by decades, post-COVID. Companies are really looking for, "How do we do this better?," so that's super exciting, although we have to change the language and make it palatable for them. In a way, they're still asking for it, and that, I think ... It's our in, right?
It's our entry point, because like this bank that I've been working with, they want it for the dads now too, 'cause they're looking at equal paternity leave in the near future. The next group of employees, the next generation of employees are going to demand so much well-being and support from their workplaces. So that gives me goosebumps. I feel like this is the top-down change we might be looking at, that we've all been waiting for while we also support the mamas one by one.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, that's so great. I think that reflects a lot of how my work is evolving and changing too. It's really exciting to see over time, how we're able to make these bigger cultural shifts as well.
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Absolutely.
Julia Jones:
Thank you so much, Amy. It's been really great to chat. We'll pop some links up for people who want to learn more about Mama Rising. I know it's enrolling now, and we love it. We have lots of students in common, so if any of our students have studied with Newborn Mothers and are thinking about, "What else?," I would definitely think that there's a lot of really great kind of values alignment with Mama Rising, and I always love collaborating with you, Amy. Thanks for being here.
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz:
Same. Thanks, Julia.
Julia Jones:
All right. Bye.
