With International Women’s Day just behind us this week and Mother’s Day fast approaching this Sunday, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to be a working mum in our industry today. As a proud mummy of two young and demanding children, balancing nursery dropoffs, school runs, and this week in particular, two school parents ‘evenings’ and nursery events, I’ve lived the reality behind all the statistics. Following two maternity leaves and returns to work, and the realities and emotional labour of raising tiny humans I know this to be true:
New or postpartum mums return to work sharper, more focused, more ambitious, and more efficient than ever before as we have a point to prove.
Motherhood demands resilience, multitasking, fast decision making and emotional intelligence, which are strengths that translate directly into the workplace, especially in the fast-paced world of communications and agency life.
In our sector, where strategic thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, and adaptability reign supreme, this is nothing short of a superpower.
Working mums and the extraordinary load
The numbers speak volumes:
This means mums are juggling significantly more cognitive responsibility even before they start the workday. My colleagues regularly comment on this and hear me say, it feels like you’ve just returned from a night shift or something as you rush through the office door just after 9 following the school run.
Not only have we just taxi-ed the children to their nursery/school settings, but we’ve also got them up, dressed, fed, negotiated songs to listen to and snacks to have in the car and wrestled them into car seats and prams, all before getting ourselves ready and on our trains to commute to the office. Sometimes, the sitting on the desk with a coffee can feel like a refreshing break, before you dive into your project list and start your ‘actual’ workday.
All of these are skills that map perfectly to agency life and communications. This rings so true that as soon as that dreaded call from nursery appears on the phone, your mind starts to work out all the details as you deal with yet another personal crisis and work out pick up logistics, call your husband/partner/another school mum and map how the rest of your working day will get itself done, with a small child on your lap, dozed up on Calpol.
This highlights key capabilities such as organisational skills and multitasking, prioritisation, and resilience. Ask any mum who has managed a toddler tantrum while replying to an urgent client email. We get the job done, no matter what.
The laser focus of a working mum
Something shifts when you become a mum. Alongside the heavier mental load that can only be described as a thousand tabs always open on your Google Chrome browser, your focus becomes sharper and you learn to prioritise.
With school runs, nursery hours, and evening routines limiting the working window, mums don’t have the leisure of wasting a minute. There’s no better deadline to motivate you to get the job done then the nonnegotiable pickup time and the inevitable mum guilt if you happen to be late.
Mum maths kicks in, helping you work backwards to get the right train that gets you to your school/nursery/after school club bang on before 6pm. Working mums learn to prioritise with ruthless efficiency, to produce high quality work and make decisions quickly and confidently.
We don’t have time to waste, and we are focused because we must be.
And we are driven to get the job done, even more so than before having kids. This is because:
In my opinion, motherhood doesn’t dilute ambition, quite the opposite. We now have additional mouths to feed, childcare cover to pay, and let’s not even begin talking about the cost of living and housing prices.
Employers should embrace flexibility and trust mums to deliver
One of the biggest misconceptions is that flexibility equals reduced commitment. In reality, the opposite is true.
When employers give mums autonomy to manage their hours, hybrid schedules, or flexibility around school pickups, the output is that productivity increases. Working mums already operate under tight time constraints; if you give us the space to structure our day, we’ll deliver the work, often faster and with more focus.
Yes, I’ve had to disappear for the school run at 4.30 but guess who is back online making sure they’ve made up for any ‘lost’ time and ensuring any unfinished work is squared away, well ahead of any deadlines. I can proudly say, I’ve never missed a deadline and I’ve always been able to get the kids home, fed, bathed and in bed. The sequence of how I’ve got there, is down to me and might be different to the ‘norm’.
Does it matter it wasn’t executed in the ‘core working hours’ if the delivery is on time? I’d argue it depends on the client/boss/and your relationship with them and ultimately, trust. Luckily, I work for an understanding employer, perhaps I’ve built trust and proven myself.
And the data supports this:
When companies lead with trust, they unlock the full potential of working mothers. We need cultural and structural change, moving away from “mummy issues” stereotypes. Despite the progress, workplace culture hasn’t fully caught up with the reality for mothers.
Too often, needing to leave for a school pickup is dismissed as an inconvenience or brushed off as “mummy issues.” But surely this is not a personal problem, it’s a national workforce issue, and it requires structural support.
Something has to change, surely, and it is not just for the benefit of working mothers and families, it will support UK workforce, including our industry and agency life.
As Anna Whitehouse, founder of Mother Pukka, and the force behind the campaign Flex Appeal recently put on her Instagram story, which sang so true to me:
- Maternity leave is 12 months, but you only get paid for 12 weeks (and that’s based on many variables)
- School hours are 8.30 to 3pm, yet the working day is 9-5.
- 13 weeks of half term/school holidays, yet 5 weeks of annual leave.
- All whilst expecting to work like we don’t have children, and parent like we don’t have a full-time job.
Realistically, what we urgently need is:
- Nationwide normalisation of school pickups and childcare commitments and a culture to match
- Government backed policies that guarantee flexible work as a right, not a perk
- Better parental leave standards
- Affordable childcare, including after school and wrap around care
- Career progression pathways that don’t penalise flexible hours
Supporting working mums isn’t just a compassionate thing to do, it’s economically smart.
Plate-spinning as a strength
Research from Harvard found that during lockdown, children observed their parents, especially mothers, multitasking, demonstrating healthier models of work family balance.
This shows what many of us already know: Multitasking isn’t a flaw. It’s a training ground for leadership. Mums bring a level of focus, perspective, emotional intelligence, and operational efficiency that workplaces should prize and see the benefits of.
As we celebrate mothers & women this week…
Let’s reframe the narrative.
Working mums aren’t struggling to keep up. We’re driving value, holding families together, and bringing unmatched depth and capability to our professional roles.
To every mum balancing campaigns with car seats, KPIs with cuddles, and strategy decks with school runs: You are not a burden to the workplace. You are the backbone of it.
And to employers – all we request is for you to empower us, trust us, give us autonomy, and we’ll show you just how hard we are built to work.