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While struggling with parenting responsibilities, Babette Lockefeer considered leaving her business.
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Her husband disagreed with her decision to stop working and become a stay-at-home mom.
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Lockefeer was angry at first, but later realized that she wouldn’t be happy if she didn’t work.
This essay as told is based on a transcribed conversation with Babette Lockefeer, 35, from the Netherlands, about experiencing motherhood throughout her career. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Four months after the birth of my second child, I wasn’t living life the way I had imagined it.
I was in the middle of a large project for my company as a team leader and facilitator and I was struggling to balancing my career and motherhood. I felt overwhelmed, stressed and sleep deprived.
In the summer of 2021, I told my husband I wanted to leave the business. He immediately said no.
At first I was angry. I always enjoyed doing meaningful work and my career, and I was ready to stop doing that for our family, but I felt like he wouldn’t let me.
Over time, I realized that he was right: I would not have been happy as stay at home mom. Talking with my husband and understanding my feelings helped me realize that being a mother wasn’t detrimental to my career. I had to face some insecurities and make some changes at home to understand that I could do both.
I have always been very successful at work
I started my career in 2014 as a consultant at McKinsey. I spent two and a half years there, but in 2016 I joined Alibaba as a Global Managing Partner. I spent around six months in their Dutch office, helping Dutch e-commerce players connect to the Chinese market.
In the summer of 2017, my husband, whom I met when I was a student, and I moved to Chinaand I worked for Alibaba in Hangzhou.
I really enjoyed it. We attended monthly trainings where we learned more about China, e-commerce and leadership. The training made me realize that my real interests lay in leadership development. In 2018 I left Alibaba and started my own leadership business, TheoryY.
I was also pregnant with my first child at this time. Five months after his birth, in December 2019, we decided to leave China and return to the Netherlands.
Shortly after our return, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. I became pregnant again and had a second child in February 2021. Due to the pandemic, it was difficult to have family support for childcare or access to daycare.
About 10 weeks after giving birth, I started a new project with my business after being referred to a new client. Our newborn didn’t like to sleep, so we had a lot of interrupted nights.
For me, motherhood was about having a healthy attachment with my children, being present and meeting their every need.
This was impossible to achieve at any time. I was too tired, overwhelmed and full of doubts. Looking back, I still did a good job as a mother, but I had internalized the myth of the perfect mother.
Society’s image of an ideal mother is in direct conflict with that of an ideal employee. The employee is always available and willing to go the extra mile, but the mother must also be fully involved and always have the space to meet the needs of her children.
I had always been a high performer at work, but now I had less time and energy to go the extra mile. I was working fewer hours than before I had kids, but when I was with my kids, I wasn’t always present because I was thinking about work. I felt like I wasn’t doing a good job at work or motherhood.
My husband didn’t think quitting smoking would make me happy
My husband worked full time. He was very involved as a father. When our second child was born, he took a little parental leavespread over the year, plus six weeks of maternity leave. But because I was self-employed and had more flexibility, I was always picking up things that fell off the wagon – which was most of the time during COVID.
I spread out my hours, sometimes working evenings so that I could continue to complete the tasks I was hired to do. We never had a consistent schedule and I felt like I was fighting a fire. Every time a child was sick or had a doctor’s appointment, the mental load fell mostly on my shoulders.
When I talked to my husband about stopping, he told me he didn’t think it was the right decision. He also wanted to spend time with our children and thought it wasn’t fair if he was the only one supporting parent.
He also said he didn’t think I would be happy as a stay-at-home mom. I disagreed, saying I wasn’t happy with the current state of things.
I talked with my husband, processed my feelings and decided to continue working
From our first conversation, it was clear that we were not aligned, so we continued to discuss it.
I shared that I felt I was undervalued and not appreciated by him unless I achieved something professionally. He told me he still liked me now that I was a mom and I wasn’t on a steep career path at the time.
I decided to continue working, but we also changed some practical things about our household. When our third child was born in July 2023, my husband was granted 26 weeks of parental leave by his new company, and he took all of that leave, taking on full responsibility for the end household for the first time. at the end.
This allowed me to fully trust him with the children and family tasks, so our dynamic became more egalitarian. We don’t always split things 50-50, but regularly discuss how best to divide responsibilities between us.
Looking back, I’m grateful that my husband was able to see that in the long run, it wasn’t a good idea for me to stop working. I need the intellectual stimulation that a job provides, and my job fills me with the energy to show up as the mother and partner I want to be.
Do you have a story about balancing parenting and your career? Email Charissa Cheong at ccheong@businessinsider.com
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