Issue #17: Lies we're told about maternity leave
And an interview with Danielle Pickens, consultant on work-life balance
Hi friends. It’s been nearly eight months since I went back to work after my son was born. In writing today’s issue, I was transported back into the torrent of emotions that defined those early days.
Below are the lessons I would’ve liked to have heard — and am grateful I learned. I’m joined by Danielle Pickens, a coach and consultant to mission-driven leaders who specializes in work-life balance and parenthood.
I was the first employee to take advantage of my company’s parental leave policy, and I was terrified.
What if leave set me back professionally? What if my company used this as an opportunity to eliminate my position? Or if they told me I couldn’t take as much time as I needed?
Then I found Parentaly’s program for expecting parents. I was looking for research I could share with my company’s leadership to help expand our existing leave policy; after I requested some information, Parentaly’s team reached out and asked if I was interested in an upcoming program cohort.
Over four months, I worked with an executive coach (Danielle!), met other expecting parents, and dove into a toolbox of planning resources. I learned…
1. Parental leave is an opportunity — not a sacrifice — for both a business and the new parent.
During my first session with Danielle, she asked what I wanted to come back to post-leave. I hesitated. “I don’t want to seem presumptuous,” I told her, “especially because I’m taking four months off. But I’d love to move into a new role at the company.”
She smiled. “Tell me more.”
In my next sessions, we built a leave plan around that goal. I started with an early conversation with my manager. Then I pulled together a high level, and very rough, description of a new position.
There were a lot of contingencies, and I acknowledged that: Who would take on my current role? Was there a business opportunity to validate my move? How might business needs change or evolve while I was gone?
The planning and prep turned out to be critical.
“We’ve been thinking about how to plug you into some new opportunities,” my manager told me when I returned, sharing a revised version of the job description I had written four months earlier. I was ecstatic.
2. It’s okay (even empowering) to delete email from your phone.
One of the best pieces of advice I got: Don’t forget to spell out communications preferences in your leave plan.
During my maternity leave, I deleted work email and Slack from my phone and packed away my work laptop in a drawer.
Before I left, I asked two coworkers to call or text me if anything urgent (like a company-wide funding announcement or team member transition) came up. Knowing they could find me was hugely reassuring.
They ended up contacting me only once. Weirdly, that was a little hard — I wanted to feel needed.
On the other hand, the freedom from work expectations was critical as I went through a parenting crash course. And it allowed me to embrace the small, finite period I’d have at home. I wasn’t sure how I’d respond to this period away from a desk, but in the end, I loved it.
3. Give yourself a transition period to ease back into work… and know that the transition is ongoing.
On Jude’s first day of daycare, Sam and I both took the day off. After leaving him, we drove to a nearby diner and cried into our pancakes.
Then we picked ourselves up and went to a matinee showing of The Fabelmans. I kept my phone on vibrate by my side, sure that Jude’s teacher would need to contact me at some point. When my phone finally buzzed, I opened it up to a photo of our smiling, happy baby.
For the following four weeks, I worked 80% of my regular hours at full pay — an enormous privilege, and one that my company introduced after reviewing the research on paid leave best practices I’d shared. This transition period helped me feel like I could keep my head screwed on straight.
But the transition isn’t linear — and I’ve learned I need to be kind to myself.
Several weeks ago, I called my mom crying after I dropped Jude off at daycare. “Am I a terrible mom for being relieved that I could drop him off at school and get back to work this morning?” I asked her.
She assured me that I was not.
And, on the flip side, there are days I rush to pick Jude up early as soon as my last meeting wraps; that’s how excited I am to see him.
When I was on maternity leave, I started to think of it as a simulation for parenting, and more broadly, for my life: a practice session for letting go of control. While I felt confident my team was equipped to handle things while I was away, I had to remind myself they wouldn’t do everything as I might have.
Maybe it’s how my teammate responds to a client email or the way Sam dresses Jude for school.1 These moments often spark similar emotions, leaving me to decide if I’ll step in or step back.
More and more, I’ve learned how important it is to step back.
In professor Alison Gopnik’s book The Gardener and the Carpenter, she writes how children are “designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative — and to be very different both from their parents and from each other.”
Eleven months into our own parenting journey, Sam and I hope that we can follow this. It started with how we approached parental leave.2
This summer, I went back to Danielle and asked if I could interview her for platonic love.
Aliza Sir (AS): As a career and leadership coach, you talk with hundreds of current and expecting parents. We met when I was starting to plan my own maternity leave. What are the typical client “profiles” or “modes”?
Danielle Pickens (DP): There are three main profiles:
First, the Overworkers. They’re very successful; consistently work until the wee hours of the morning; and might micromanage their team.
When they have children, they begin to realize they can’t — or maybe, don’t want — to work like that anymore. They feel stuck because overworking has been the only way they know how to succeed, and it’s no longer sustainable.
Second, the Purpose Seekers. They liked their job fine prior to having kids; now that they have children, they’re realizing they need a job that feels worth leaving a child for every day. They’re searching for greater meaning in their lives and work.
Third, the Overwhelmed Working Parents. They enjoy their work but feel like they can’t do it all; they’re often in dual-income households with multiple children. They’re trying to fit it together Tetris-style.
AS: How do you work with each of these parents?
DP: With all of these profiles, my goal is to help you feel safe — before potentially pushing you outside of your comfort zone a bit — so that you can align your life and work with where you want to be. This means asking the tough questions while sharing practical tools and tips.
I find the Overworkers particularly fascinating. They’re so used to grinding and hustling that shifting their mindset to more ease and simplicity feels completely unnatural. They’ll often fight the process the whole way — even if they want to change!
With the Purpose Seekers, our job is to tap into their inner desires. In general, these people already know the answer but have to give themselves permission to break away from certain habits or beliefs that they’ve formed over the years.
With the Overwhelmed Working Parents, we pinpoint the source of the tension. In other words, what’s overwhelming them: Time management? Boundaries? Mindset? All of the above?
AS: Is that how you adopted the tagline of “Work Less; Live More”? I’d love to know more about what that means.
DP: We live in a society that’s fixated on work. We must “do more” to be successful and productive.
It’s exhausting, and it’s a trap.
Work Less; Live More is a different way of being; it’s about recognizing when you’ve done enough — at work and home — so you can be present and experience the other enriching moments in your life.
A study from the Harvard Business Review found people who take 11 or more days of vacation are 30% more likely to receive a raise than those who don’t. Stepping away from work makes us better at work.
We live in a society that’s fixated on work…It’s exhausting, and it’s a trap.
And yet, so many people stay chained to their desks and miss out on special moments because they’re striving for a raise or recognition. Taking time away is antithetical to how we’ve been programmed.
AS: Have you seen this in your own life?
DP: Absolutely. When have you had your best ideas for work? Were you at your desk or out for a walk?
I’m willing to bet it’s the latter, when you’ve let your mind wander.
AS: That’s so true. What’s the one thing that you wish every person knew about parental leave?
DP: Parental leave is a forcing function for your life and your career. It accelerates changes you likely should have made already.
AS: You’ve built a career around lifting up working parents. Why did you decide to start your own business?
DP: I started my business out of sheer desperation. I was working in education policy, I had a three-year-old son, and my husband and I both left the house before our son woke up in the mornings.
Parental leave is a forcing function for your life and your career. It accelerates changes you likely should have made already.
I’d tried part-time work several years earlier, but I received less pay for the same work. I was exhausted and resentful.
At this time, my husband and I were also starting to go through IVF treatments. I realized if I wanted to continue doing the work I loved and being the parent I wanted to be, I had to figure out a different way.
AS: How did you get started on your own?
DP: An opportunity came up to consult with a former manager on a new project, so I formed an LLC and started working as an independent consultant. For the first time, I was able to work from home and craft my “work hours” around my life.
I didn’t start my business because I had a brilliant product or service. But I wanted to do interesting and impactful work while being available for my growing family.
Looking back, I shouldn’t have needed to leave the traditional workforce to get this necessary flexibility.
AS: You’ve definitely modeled how someone can be a parent — but also nurture and grow other aspects of themselves too. What does this mean to you?
DP: I ask every new parent that I’m working with, “What’s something about you that is not work- or parenthood-related?”
At least in the beginning, work and parenthood are all-consuming.
But it’s important for us and our children that we continue to cultivate interests and connections outside of them. What are we telling ourselves or modeling for our children when we abandon the things in our life that sustain us?
At the same time, give yourself permission to evolve. What you need when your kids are little will shift as they get older — and that’s normal.
AS: Can you give an example of what that might look like?
DP: I’ve always been an avid reader. When my kids were young, I near-exclusively read children’s books. I’d ask friends what they were reading and add those names to my list — but ultimately, my expectations for myself looked different.
As my kids have gotten older, I’m back to curling up on the couch or the porch and reading for hours on end.
AS: Platonic love has been such an important outlet for me as a mom.
But I’ve also been thinking about the pressure we place on ourselves to be able to “make it all work.” I wrote recently about perfectionism, and I loved
’s piece Stop telling me to find the magic in the everyday. She writes:I am on a lifelong quest to live a more present life and derive meaning outside of striving and doing and consuming. But I don’t think we should view ‘seeing the beauty in the everyday’ as synonymous with moral goodness…Some moments aren’t magical, some moments kind of suck, and they’re only going to suck more if we feel guilty about our inability to trick ourselves into viewing them as wondrous.
How can we better address this?
DP: Without greater systemic changes, we continue to treat parenthood like an individual responsibility, and that keeps us — parents — tired and overwhelmed and unable to mobilize.
It’s not a coincidence that parents’ voices are rarely heard, or elevated, in our broader policy discussions.
I support candidates that are outspoken on issues like paid parental leave and universal childcare; I share my own story; I try to push the envelope — but it doesn’t feel like enough.
I’d love to see more parents with young children in office at all levels. I keep looking for those candidates, but unfortunately, they are few and far between.
AS: Would you ever run for office?
DP: I’ve thought about it! I’m not there yet — but maybe one day.
Danielle Pickens is a coach and consultant to mission-driven leaders with expertise in career and leadership development, work-life balance and parenthood, and K12 education policy. She lives with her husband and three children outside of New York City, on Long Island. Find her on LinkedIn.
Bonus Content:
There is a lot written (for women!) about how to prepare for returning to work after leave, like 13 Things Every Woman Should Know Before Returning From Maternity Leave and The Heart-Shattering Feeling of Going Back to Work After Having a Baby.
But, it’s “A Moral Imperative, an Economic Necessity” for parents — and especially fathers and other non-birthing parents — to speak out about the need for paid leave too. As the ACLU writes:
Employers may think that offering more leave to moms supports women employees, but in the long run, it only feeds the presumption that it is women who will — or should — take responsibility for childcare, stymying their opportunities for workplace advancement. And it feeds stigma against dads who do want to take leave. 📢
Free, downloadable resources from Parentaly like “Return-To-Work Best Practices” and “A Parental Leave Guide For HR;” resources are targeted to employees, people managers, and companies.
Moms First is a national movement to center mothers in our economic recovery from the pandemic and value their labor.
In Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture,
draws on her own fraught relationship to momfluencer culture to explore the glorification of the ideal mama online with humor and empathy.
Our most popular link from Monday’s issue was the bathing suit that’s about to make a dent in my bank account (and apparently many of yours too!).
See you next week!
Love,
Aliza
A real conversation topic when my expecting parents cohort came back together after returning from leave.
Sam and I were extremely fortunate to have eight weeks of paid leave together after Jude was born.