According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 57% of young men look forward to becoming fathers and having a family.

In a world that has historically emphasized motherhood as a primary facet of life for women, how come only 45% of women say the same?

“I had to be willing to cut my hours back a little bit here and there at certain times and focus more on my children,” said Mona Dena, owner of Mo Music Voice Studio.

Dena is the mother of two college-age students and has been teaching music and coaching voice for most of her career. After attending college and majoring in vocal performance, she received her teaching credential and taught public school before being approached by a colleague with an offer to take over a children’s music business. The opportunity allowed Dena to still be in a field she was passionate about while also being able to structure her hours according to her maternal life.

But despite the position offering flexibility, Dena still felt she needed to give more.

“Many women work as fast and hard as they can at all things, but I felt like I was never doing anything quite as good as I wanted to,” Dena said.

According to a Pew Research Center study, nearly a third of women in the United States share Dena’s struggle, and only one-tenth of men have done the same.

Since the rise of women in the workforce in the mid-20th century, working mothers have become increasingly prominent as parents. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2021, 71.2% of married women were employed in some form, compared to 43.3% in the labor force in 1970.

For many women, career advancement is a priority. Historically, working has given women a sense of freedom and fulfillment previously unattainable in a male-dominated society. In recent years, women have achieved landmark breakthroughs in the workforce. According to a research summary by McKinsey & Company, women make up 29% of C-suite positions in 2024, compared to only 15% in 2015. Still, successfully having a family is high on the list of priorities for working mothers.

The socio-cultural expectation that women play a more significant role in child development contrasts with the male expectation of being a household breadwinner. Enter the “social structural theory”: a phenomenon that sociologists define as how biological aspects and sociocultural pressures surrounding specific societal roles lead an individual to adopt psychological traits that align with that role.

According to the theory, men and women undergo more incredible psychological changes depending on how much their social role is altered.

A National Library of Medicine study found that parents adopt more “traditional” roles over time compared to egalitarian ones at the beginning of their parental careers. This leads mothers to take on most responsibilities associated with their children, while fathers are expected to provide for the household.

The Parental Identity Salience concept, developed by sociologists, states that parenthood places more salience, or emphasis, on women taking on a more prominent role than men. Men perceive fatherhood as something that they “do” rather than something that they “are.” As a result, men feel as though they have less pressure to perform as fathers and, therefore, undergo less psychological change than women do when they become moms.

As women become mothers, the psychological change they experience aligns with the traditional definition of motherhood: they begin to increase family salience in their lives and decrease work salience.

“When you’re with your kids, you kind of have to turn off the concern for your work,” said Julia Pelligrini, a mother to two kids and founder of the San Francisco-based architectural firm 35th Collective. “And that takes a certain amount of spine to have confidence that everything will be okay.”

Striking the Balance

While these changes have proved their prominence in typical parenting situations, many moms attempt to balance work and family life. Especially for new mothers, the issue of navigating one’s own changing identity is challenging.

“A very common low with moms is feeling guilty that I’ve left my child behind and going to work, or I’m feeling bad that I had to take time away from work to take care of my child,” said Swarnima Ashwikumar, the Program Innovation and Expansions Manager for the Seattle-based Program for Early Parent Support (PEPS).

PEPS, founded in 1983, offers 8-12 week parental support programs that bring together new moms and dads in similar situations.

“Often, women have to think about things that men don’t need to when considering returning to work,” Ashwikumar said. “Women must consider where they will breastfeed or pump, or what support they need.”

In PEPS support groups, members give personal accounts of their lives and discuss common challenges and experiences.

Ashwikumar has witnessed several reasons on either side of the internal debate about returning to work after having a child. A major one against returning is childcare, which has become unaffordable for middle-class families.

“I’ve heard a statement in a newborn support group where a woman was thinking about getting childcare, but the money she would shell out for it would be more than the money she would earn if she returned to work,” Ashwikumar said. “So it’s not a financially viable situation for some.”

Support groups like PEPS help facilitate the transition between maternal caregiving and returning to work, but mothers must find ways to strike the work-life balance that works for them. One way of doing this is by self-owning businesses and companies like Pelligrini and Dena.

“I think the cool thing for women and mothers who can be entrepreneurs is it’s one of the few ways that you can completely control your hours so that you can craft the life you want,” Dena said.

Devising strategies for balancing childcare duties with work hours is a prominent part of life for working mothers. During her kids’ early years, Dena cooperated with her partner to arrange childcare responsibilities and ran her business during school hours so she could spend time with her kids.

“My husband and I chose to raise our kids without any childcare or nannies because we wanted to do it ourselves, which meant tag-teaming all the time,” Dena said.

Despite concerns, Dena felt that her hard work paid off.

“I feel like I have a great relationship now with my kids that I don’t think would have been possible if I couldn’t craft that time when I wanted to,” Dena said. “I could go to every concert and every ballet performance because I’m a business owner.”

Others, like Pelligrini, keep strict schedules for their personal and work-related tasks, which helps them to stay organized.

“I wanted to be a mom so bad, and it was such a wonderful thing to have a kid,” said Palo Alto mom Casey Cleve. “I just wanted to savor every moment of it.”

Cleve, a mother to her 11-year-old son, felt not only a calling to motherhood but to the environment as well. After studying geography and resource management at San Francisco State University, Cleve began working full-time for the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) doing Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping.

Cleve has worked at the MROSD for 14 years and has recently been promoted to a managerial role overseeing GIS and Information Technology.

“It was my dream to work at a government conservation agency,” Cleve said.

Dedicated to raising a child, Cleve knew she needed to map out a system where she could successfully juggle being a mom with her full-time job.

It has become increasingly complex for women to juggle both working and caring for children simultaneously. According to a Pew Research Center study, among working women with children under the age of 18, 51% say being a working parent has made it harder for them to advance in their careers, compared to just 16% for men.

Despite achieving two of her longtime goals, Cleve’s 40-hour work week and providing child care and support to her newborn baby took a toll.

“It didn’t feel like I was giving anything up, but it was tiring,” Cleve said. “The one thing that I know absolutely as a mom is that you learn and do things so much slower.”

Recovering passions

So, Cleve called upon another longtime passion of hers, one that wasn’t in any way associated with her work or personal life – dancing. Cleve grew up in ballet and figure skating, but it wasn’t until college that she discovered the dance style she would stick with for the rest of her life.

“When I was 19, I moved to Santa Cruz and started doing salsa dancing, but I got sick of dancing with guys all the time. So I started belly dancing so I didn’t need to have a male partner,” Cleve said.

Years later, Cleve is still dedicated to both belly dancing and women’s salsa.

“Especially when my son was a baby, I needed to dance because otherwise, I just didn’t have any time for myself, so I needed to go and dance,” Cleve said. “It was essential.”

Cleve’s Palo Alto-based belly dancing troupe participates in weekly practices and community performances and, most importantly, is led by a fellow mother.

“Being a mom, it is so much easier to be on a performance team that a mom is leading,” Cleve said. “They’re super flexible and understanding that I work full-time and have a kid.”

“If I’m learning new choreography or refining steps, I’m not thinking about work or anything else. I’m just experiencing joy,” Cleve said.

Participating in activities like belly dancing helps mothers integrate exercise into their otherwise busy schedule while cultivating community and appealing to their longtime passions. Outside of exercise, self-starting educational groups have proved to be an effective way for moms to participate in their passions.

Claire Seda moved from Point Reyes Station, where she was a member of an established writing club, to Belmont in 2020. She struggled to find a group similar to the one she was previously a part of.

“There were a lot of writing groups that met during the day, which I can’t do because I work full time,” Seda said. “There were other groups that met weekly, which I can’t do because I don’t have enough time to spend on my writing to engage with that level of commitment.”

So, she devised a solution: starting her own writer’s club. After contacting a mother’s group on Facebook, Seda hosted her first meeting in the summer of 2023.

“I think we had about six people come and maybe 10 interested,” Seda said. “Who can come fluctuates with who’s available and what’s happening with their families. Over time, people have had to drop out due to work and personal life.”

Despite these challenges, Seda has consistently kept up with the group, and their monthly meetings have been ongoing for over a year. Outside of meetings, members work on personal writing projects that are put in a shared Google Drive folder. Then, the pieces are peer-reviewed by other members, and they give feedback to writers.

“If we have time somewhere in there, we’ll fit in a five-minute writing prompt activity as well,” Seda said.

Despite the minor nature of the group, Seda and others feel that the group has positively affected their lives.

“This group completely meets the needs I set out for it,” Seda said. “Last year, before I started this group, I didn’t have that little nudge to keep writing regularly. And so my writing would kind of take a backseat.”

Seda feels that spending some time for yourself on things you’re interested in benefits your mental health. Writing can be relaxing, whether she’s writing about a fantasy world or a personal memoir.

In addition to scheduling challenges proving to be an obstacle to keeping the group going, Seda acknowledges that there is a mental barrier to keeping writing as a hobby.

“Often, when moms have a little personal time, it’s tough to prioritize something creative because you need to have your brain on board,” Seda said. “The problem with writing as a hobby is that you can’t do it in three-minute increments. You have to get in the mode to do it. So you have to block off some time where you’re not interrupted and where your brain’s functioning.”

Whether they’re working, self-employed, writing, singing, or belly dancing, one thing is sure — the nature of motherhood relies on the vitality of balance, a characteristic that has been pioneered by women of the past, present, and future.

“Women can juggle so many things, so I get excited when I see women become business owners and follow their passions,” Dena said.

This story was originally published on Scot Scoop News on December 12, 2024.