Senior “career” women - what did you do/how did you do it?

[2yearoldbattler]

Looking for experiences of both mothers who are in the thick of it and those whose babies are long grown up.

Am a very senior exec, currently on mat leave from a COO role in a very high growth, high profile business with my second baby. Have fun a number of mediums big (£500m+) businesses in the past as either CEO or divisional MD. Will be back to work in a couple of weeks. Also sit on 2 boards, one a charity non profit, the other a FTSE 100 coy.

My husband is also a career person (professional services) and we are having some discussions at the moment about how we make our lives work. Tbh the period in between me returning from mat leave with no 1 and leaving on mat leave with number 2 was not a success - we felt so stretched and it was primarily our relationship with each other that suffered.

So, what did you do and how did you do it? Both stayed full time and ground through it? One dropped to part time? How much help did you have? Would love to hear what worked and didn’t.

Have NCed so only have one post under this name, but am a longtime MNer - defo not a journalist. I just don’t have that many friends who are operating like I do (that sounds arrogant and wanky, but you know what I mean) to be able to have a wide pool of experiences.

Oh! And to the poster who lamented exercise (lack thereof). Yes! HOW do you fit it in? I don’t get it.

Similar role but single parent. Double the fun! My tips are much like everyone else’s which is to treat it the same way as you treat work. If you haven’t got capacity and the issue is time critical, you need to outsource. The reality is that serious family life needs someone to run the home and if that isn’t a SAHM then it has to be someone else, so:

• Live in Nanny. I had a proper qualified nanny in the early years then switched to au pairs when DS got to about 10. We only had two nanny’s in all that time and both were lovely women and are now family friends.
• Housekeeper, ie more than a cleaner. Someone who can deal with beds, washing, ironing, etc as well. Don’t dump that on the nanny, they are there for childcare.
• Ocado smart pass and place the order during your commute.
• Gardener
• DS went to a private school as a day pupil until he was 11. They had a boarding arrangement that allowed him to stay over for one night a week. He loved it as it was a sleepover with his mates, but it took the heat off a bit for me.

There is a lot of guilt about this lifestyle though. In retrospect it’s unwarranted and unnecessary but it didn’t stop it at the time. My biggest advice is to make sure your kids are surrounded by an extended family if you have a good one. I am so lucky that I have wonderful parents and two awesome brothers who have all been a huge part of DS life. It’s meant he has had huge family (and male, given my circumstances) input and has wonderful relationships and support. Plus it definitely assuaged some of my guilt.

Until DC2 turned 2 we had a full time nanny who cooked all the DC's food, did washing and ironing and top-up shops. We had food deliveries, a cleaner and did life admin in lunch breaks. I also did all non-food shopping in my lunch breaks/on the internet at home. I did no sport or hobbies and had no social life. DH ran once or twice a week.

I burnt out when DC2 was 2 (largely contributed to by DC1's health problems) and side-stepped into a less pressurised career.

However, we know lots of families who still have 2 career-focused parents. They cope by:

• Full time nanny (even after DC go to school) until 7/7.30pm. This nanny does food shops, clothes shops, cooks for the family, washes and irons (if DC at school, if not it's someone else). Takes DC to activities and non-urgent medical/dental/hairdresser appointments. Also does a lot of life admin like signing DC up for stuff/getting passport photos done, buying clothes.....

• A second babysitter who takes over after FT nanny leaves in the evening and until one parent gets home

• Cleaner

• Grandparents who take the DC every school holiday and some weekends

I am still much more stressed than before I had DC, mainly because they bring a lot of "work" with them (medical/hair appointments, school appointments, clothes and toys to buy, playdates/parties to organise or attend, sports activities to sign up for/attend, homework to supervise, emotional problems to support....) but I have found a better life-work balance. I work 9am-6pm 4 days a week and rarely have to work in the evenings or weekends (previous role I worked 9am - 8/9pm plus evenings and weekends).

I also swim twice a week and we go for family bike rides at the weekend.

Organization is key as is DH pulling his weight with home/family life.

I think that’s the crux of it OP. You can’t have it all (I gave up and retrained). You can have the Nanny, the cleaner, the gardener etc but what you can’t find is extra hours in the day when you are working until 9pm every night. So exercise, life admin, time with kids will suffer. I also found I was constantly playing catch up at the weekend so didn’t enjoy family weekends.

It’s doable obviously but some things will suffer. I think there’s been lots of great advice on here though and it’s clear lots of women make it work.

What I failed to do was hand over 50% of life admin and school/kid/ home stuff to DP. Though he did travel a lot. If I had my time again I’d have been more forceful in this area.

Several of our close friends have a similar set up. It didn't work for us in the long-term because our second child has disabilities and needed one of us around more. Although the need for flexibility led me to set up my own business, which has been really successful. So every cloud, and all that.

Our friends in this position are, on the whole, knackered and stretched pretty thin. I think that's inevitable. However, the ones I know it works best for, it's not about 'hints and tips' ( like, use Ocado, get a gardener etc.). All that goes without saying and people in senior professional roles are generally doing all of that years before they have kids. The big thing that I notice is that the couples have a really strong sense of their family as a 'team' in which they look out for each other. Their value, and their jobs, are truly equal and they each go to lengths to make sure things are working for everyone. I would imagine the men don't flinch to identify themselves as feminists. They enjoy similar things outside work ( synagogue, smoked barbecue, running, whatever) and so really enjoy family downtime. I don't often hear one half of the couple moan about the other, or about their kids.

So, I think that a lot of it is down to having a really good partnership and a sorted family life.

The "having it all" concept is a lie. I constantly felt as though I wasn't giving the best of myself to any of my roles. However, this is how I did it:

Housekeeper who came in every day 9-1 and was responsible for keeping the house lovely and doing all those weird random things.

Nanny who was there just for the children. (Live out.)

Gardener once a week.

I also needed a huge degree of flexibility with my own hours so that I was "on call" should I be needed. Still, I eventually chose to go into a consultancy role because I just couldn't keep spreading myself so thinly. It worked a treat and I actually earned more.

While not in senior management, I am fairly high up in my organisation in a niche role and am often asked to mentor female employees. We live in London, so could not afford any help from cleaners nannies etc.

We managed by:

1. liberating every bit of money we had from savings and investments and paying off our mortgage.

2, DH gave up work to be a sahd.

I cannot emphasise how liberating having no mortgage is. We live in a small 2 bedroom flat we've not been able to upgrade but we do have the luxury of knowing we can survive on one income.

I'm nowhere near your level but here's my twopenn'orth:

Treat your staff like staff; have job descriptions. Don't expect the nanny to do cleaning, don't expect the cleaner to do DIY, etc or you will have unhappy (i.e. resigning) staff. Organise (several) emergency cover: family, agencies, friends.

I found early years were the easiest because you can plonk a baby anywhere. It gets more difficult as the DC get older and have their own ideas about how their lives should go! That's when I found it easier to go the consultancy route, rather than employment, because consultants define their own working patterns.

@crazycurry, sorry, I meant not big money compared to a lot of women on this thread but I’m aware that it’s a lot of money

No need to apologise!

I used to do the high powered career thing but stepped back to a more satisfying job after maternity leave. 25 years on I have no mortgage, work part time and am much more relaxed. I can see the financial reward for sticking at it but if it's stressing people out then why are they doing it?

We are coming out the other end of this now - though typically we are in the financial situation now that we could throw money at things and its less needed.
The biggest thing for us, was that we decided we were both going to stay FT in our jobs and I would keep my slightly mad travel schedule - and that meant that ds was first, our marriage/sanity was second, jobs third and everything else was going to take a big back seat for a number of years. No charity stuff, no 'me' time, no hobbies - just making our family life the best it could be and protecting the weekends.

A life saver over the past 13 years has been my works very slightly flexi time policy of being able to leave at 12 on a Friday (alas I have a standing tele con at 6.30pm on Friday now which has emphasised how much this has worked). Those few hours meant I could get my hair cut, go to the dentist/optician, take ds for jabs and so on.

You also get used to using tiny bits of time - birthday cards from moonpig while standing on a train platform, kids clothing from your phone in an airport lounge, check insurance stuff on the train.

But I think the telling thing for me is it sounds like you are both looking to continue your lives as before but with two small children - this just doesn't work for anyone, so you both need to commit to the reality that this doesn't happen for anyone with tinies and cut back to what does work. It doesn't get any easier when they go to school either!

House renovations use up huge amounts of time and energy. I think focusing on finishing that might help hugely.

but if it's stressing people out then why are they doing it?

Because the rewards are immense:

• My job is interesting stimulating and at times exciting.

• I get to meet interesting people everyday and I'm constantly learning.

• The financial rewards give me the opportunity of independence should I wish to take it.

• My DC have a lifestyle that I could only dream of growing up. They travel, have great educations, opportunities to learn and experience things I never did.

More than anything I know what being broke feels like, the feeling in the pit of your stomach, the stress of juggling bills. Work stress I thrive on, the other type would send you to an early grave.

I do think think some people are good with work stress and maybe stress in general? They can switch off when they need to and it doesn't affect sleep etc.

The stress of working full time in a highly pressurised role with two young children made me quite ill.

I do admire those who can do it. To be honest that’s probably why they are in a senior role!

I commented above but it’s something I’m thinking about a lot. We will be having another child and we are contemplating buying a house. I can’t decide if signing up for a big mortgage is a good or a bad idea- it means we will need two solid incomes so although we could get by on my ft job if I could do it 3 days, I don’t know if I would be allowed to do that or if part time jobs would be a level below. So we might be trapped into 2 ft busy jobs. It’s a lot of pressure even though I like working.

I had the corporate career, OH worked even more insane hours than me. Circumstances were my job moved me over an hour away from home during the year before DD was born (this was over 20 years ago so perfectly legit then), and consequently we decided in our best interests I went freelance while DD was small - we managed with stints in nursery. DH subsequently changed jobs, more responsibility far far better pay and less hours so I've never gone back to corporate life, although I'm now employed locally for a smallish company who pay me extremely well for my experience as a manager, and are flexible on hours (which suits me as I do a lot of charitable/voluntary stuff that they encourage). I love the job and the team I work with and it was honestly great while DD was a teenager as I could come and go after school as needed between her activities. Now she's at Uni I realise the job perhaps isn't as stretching as I'd like and perhaps I'm not earning enough to pour as much as I'd like into savings/pensions, but I do so love working there it'd have to be a really super job to entice me away.

But I think the telling thing for me is it sounds like you are both looking to continue your lives as before but with two small children - this just doesn't work for anyone, so you both need to commit to the reality that this doesn't happen for anyone with tinies and cut back to what does work. It doesn't get any easier when they go to school either!

This. You can only do three things well. For most of us that’s work, kids and marriage ( not necessarily in that order ).

You simply CANT fit in a regular social life, volunteering or a major hobby. Most marriages like ours fall apart because men ( it’s nearly always men ) think that they can live the life of a carefree bachelor and their partner will do everything else (just like mummy used to do ) while they cycle every weekend , go to rugby and sit on the opera board.

Your weekends are not your own anymore, they are there for your kids and your partner. That’s the reality for most people in well paid professional roles. You need to accept this cold hard truth and forget about almost everything else.

Your social life will be reduced to family events, otherwise you would never see them and a weekend with friends once a year.

And as for exercise - that will be 20 mins with a YouTube video, not gym membership and a leisurely lunch with the girls after Pilates. (That’s why is very important to watch what you eat because you don’t get the chance to burn out off stuck on your laptop).

Sorry to be so harsh but I sense you can take it .

Thank you all. Some real food for thought here. And yes, I think you have hit on the actual issue - we need to cut back on the amount of stuff we are doing. I fear this will be a source of tension with DH, and I certainly remember arguing about this last time. For example, he is adamantly of the view that we should each have 4hrs to ourselves each weekend day, and cannot understand why I find that unreasonable. He is completely fine with seeing the kids for 30-60mins a day (repressed British upbringing...). Sigh. Here we go again.

On a more prosaic note, has anyone used virtual PA type services to do household admin? Am considering it.

And to those who asked why do it - unfortunately I don’t seem to have a “medium” setting. I wish I did and could happily just take a step back. But it seems to be all or nothing.

Nothing to add that hasn't already been said; throw money at the problem and ourtsource!

I looked at a virtual PA for a work thing but failed because I didn't have time to on board them Can't imagine how it would work for home life. But I'm all ears!!

I coach a number of people in this situation. Families vary but things that have helped people include:

• outsourcing as much as poss
• routine for weekdays that reduces cognitive load of decision making so knowing what you are wearing/eating/doing in advance and have it ready
• in home childcare (nanny/au pair/housekeeper) as gives you flex
• possible family PA or virtual PA support for specifics
• weekly family diary review
• managing boundaries at work well and clearly and being bold in what you state
• enduring excellent PA/diary support at work including someone who can push back on your behalf
• minimise commutes if possible so be near where one of you works, school close to job or home
• ensuring male partner steps up as default is often ‘mum’ eg school sick days, school events
• enduring holidays booked in advance and a break of some sort every 6 weeks even if it’s just a Monday or a Friday off

-using all your time very efficiently. Thinking on the treadmill, emails on the commute.

• looking after your mental and physical health and relationships with the same commitment as a work meeting. These things are vital. Especially sleep. House cleanliness, broader social stuff, hobbies etc can be lower priorities

Even with all this, dual career during early family life is hard and I have seen some make other choices. Eg leave MNC for National financial services, move to start up from Corporate, move to public sector etc.

I think the practicalities of juggling two senior careers are totally secondary to the key issue of making sure you and your DH are absolutely on the same page when it comes to your priorities.

Working very long hours, being a decent parent and expecting to be able to pursue significant hobbies just isn't a workable combination - especially without a SAHP to pick up the slack.

There are lots of things you can outsource but spending time together, and having a spouse who prioritises making that happen, isn't one of them.

Oh and the most important stuff is the open communication between you and DH so you can support each other. X

I'm a single parent and a director in investment banking. I moved from a sales role to risk management when DS was born which means less after-hours.

I've worked 4 day initially after maternity leave and then 5 days with one day WFH. I've been promoted a couple of times since and now 5 days full time in the office. I've used childminder before school age and now au pair for wraparound, plus a cleaner.

It works fine for us, but I think not having a DH or DC2 means fewer things to juggle.

We did:

• FT Nanny (even when both kids started school)
• additional babysitting
• fucktonnes of Cleaner hours
• OH and I diarising all evening and early morning appointments so we know who's going to be at home.

In the end, I have struggled to cope with:

• feeling I wasn't meeting the kids' needs
• living in a house managed by other people (nanny and cleaner)
• feeling that I was constantly running from one thing to the next without time to think or reflect.

I also have some MH issues.

We have both decided to go PT (our respective places of work have been fantastic) and move to the countryside.

What would I do differently? Depending on finances, pay to have a proper old-fashioned housekeeper to run our lives exactly as we want them. Probably as well as a nanny if I could but depends on the people. That's serious money though.

I’m not in the same league as you op, but I’m director level in an emea job at an it company. DP is consultant in another IT company. Kids are 2 and 8. It’s a massive juggle but as someone said earlier the key is flexibility we both work from home a few days a week if possible. Also, throwing money at it. We have an au pair, full time nursery, a cleaner and a gardener. It’s possible though... although my aspirations are COO so maybe you’ll tell me I shouldn’t!