Seven Motivators for Relaunching, Part 3

Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work
by Carol Fishman Cohen, Vivian Steir Rabin

(Page 7 of 7)

Although your sixties may still be decades away, be aware that if you wait until your decks are completely cleared of all child-rearing responsibilities (which your mother will tell you will never happen anyway), you'll find it even harder to pursue professional dreams. So while it may feel a little early in terms of your obligations at home, some of you plunge back into careers, not wanting to put your professional life on hold any longer.

Lindsay, a former chemical engineer, described the life events that propelled her back into the job market: "When my youngest was still in high school (the other two were in college and grad school already), my older brother died suddenly. I also went into menopause. I was faced with my own mortality. I realized you only get one shot. I thought, Is this it? I realized I have to take care of doing everything I want to do. Even though I still had one child at home and I was busy with the parents' association, I could see that soon I was going to have a lot more spare time. My husband works seven to seven, five days a week. I decided the day my youngest gets her driver's license, I'm going to look for something to do."

6. Serving as a Role Model

How do your children view you if you've been home since they were born or since they were young? Do they see you as an intellectual being, a warm, loving soul, or even just a servant? How do you want them to view you? One of Vivian's motivations for returning was a desire for her children, especially her daughters, to see that there was a dimension to her life that went beyond running the household. "As I watched my oldest grow into adolescence, I began to think about what kind of an example I was setting for her, and for my other children as well. I wanted them to see that mommies could do more than just be mommies. I wanted them to have a better sense of the possibilities that life holds."

In the March 2005 issue of Parenting, Jill Johnson, a mother of three boys returning to work after five years at home, said she wanted them to see that "mommies can go out and earn a living just like daddies can." Lindsay, the chemical engineer, wanted to demonstrate to her three daughters that "you can remake yourself at any point in your life. I wanted to show them that if their lives aren't going the way they want it, they can pick themselves up and reinvent themselves, at any age. I wanted to be a role model for them." The unspoken implication is that if you wait until your children are all grown up before you try to go back to work, your kids will never observe that it's possible to both work and mother.

7. Ambition

You may have been hugely ambitious early in your career, but when you made the decision to stay home, your family commitments combined with, in some cases, diminished confidence may have whittled down your ambition. The Center for Work-Life Policy's "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps" study of more than 2,443 women with high-honors undergraduate degrees, or graduate degrees, found that 39 percent of women aged twenty-eight through forty are "extremely/very ambitious," compared with only 31 percent of women aged forty-one through fifty-five. Among women in business, the "ambition gap" is even wider; 53 percent of younger women in business consider themselves "extremely/very ambitious" versus only 37 percent of older women.

For the relauncher, the difficult part is often balancing reemerging ambition with the reality of daily life at home. Dinner's not the only thing cooking on the back burner; your ambition probably is, too! Recognizing that you have unfulfilled career ambitions is one of the first steps of a successful relaunch. When we tell you that relaunch time is time for you, part of that message is it's time to unleash your stifled ambition. You don't have to announce it to the whole world. The only one who has to know is you.

The "Aha" Moment

The floundering period can go on for some time, as you toss the idea of returning to work back and forth in your head and with your husband, family, and friends. However, in the midst of this, you may experience an "aha" moment, as some of our interviewees did, and that motivates you to explore work alternatives.

Celeste, a social worker before and after her relaunch, summed it up this way: "I never felt cut out for full-time motherhood. When I was running a big fair at the kids' school, another mother called to say that if I couldn't use the school's puppet theater, I could borrow the one she had made for her children. Right then and there I realized I was no match for some of these perfect at-home moms, who set up educational craft projects and other special activities for their kids. When I was working, I had an excuse for not doing these things. Now I had no excuse. I'm also very performance-oriented, and I hated to have a day go by with nothing to show for it, which is so common in the lives of stay-at-home mothers."

"I decided to take a scrap booking class," Marcia, a former nurse-MBA, told us. "I had boxes of photos around, and that was bothering me. The class was held at someone's house, and there were five or six women of a variety of ages attending. I only wanted to get my photos in the albums! But the other women were into making masterpieces. One woman was spending the whole session on one page creating a beach scene with real sand for her family's beach vacation pictures. It was beautiful. But sitting there, watching the other women create, I suddenly had this overwhelming reaction. I said it right there. 'I have to go back to work. (a) I can't make this album page, and (b) I don't want to make this album page. I need to go back to work.' It was a turning point for me, and I began a job search in earnest shortly after that."

Copyright © 2007 by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin

About the Author

Carol Fishman Cohen is a frequent speaker and consultant to employers, universities, non-profits and individuals on the topic of career re-entry. Carol graduated from Harvard Business School in 1985. She was on maternity leave with her first child in February of 1990, when her firm, investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, dissolved. After five years working part time followed by six years at home full time with her four children, Carol relaunched her career in 2001 at age 42 by taking a demanding, full time job at a major investment firm.

Vivian Steir Rabin is currently Vice President, US Operations for retained executive search firm Salovey & Associates, where she focuses on recruiting for the real estate industry. In addition to her work in executive search, Vivian consults and speaks on the topic of career re-entry. Ms. Rabin graduated from Harvard Business School in 1986 and joined Lehman Brothers as an investment banker specializing in the media and entertainment sector.