Work Series: The Truth About Stepping Back from your career — And Coming Back even Stronger, with Neha Ruch

0:07Welcome back to Motherkind. We are sponsored by Wild Nutrition women's supplements and this is the podcast that helps you navigate the messy, beautiful, transformative experience of motherhood with more clarity and confidence. Welcome, welcome. I'm so excited for this episode, the next one in our special work series. Here's something we don't talk about enough. The vast majority of ambitious, educated women will pause or shift their careers for a season while raising children and not because they're giving up, but because they're playing the long game. In fact, one in three women will fully pause one in two will downshift and 90 will eventually return to the workforce so these old labels of working mum and stay-at-home mum just don't fit anymore the reality is it is far more fluid than that and there is a new wave of mothers who are choosing intentional pauses not permanent exits and my guest today is an absolute expert in this area Neha Roosh is at the forefront of this movement she is the founder of Mother Untitled a platform that's helping to rewrite the narrative around ambition and motherhood.

1:14And in this conversation, we explore how pausing your career can actually be a power move, a time to deepen, a time to grow, a time to figure out what's next for you, grow new skills and become even more aligned. So if you've ever questioned your choices, your ambition or your timeline, then this is the episode for you. I know you're going to love it. I can't wait for you to hear it. Here it is.

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2:58Neha, I'm so excited for this chat. I love, love, love your book and I love the work. And I think this conversation is going to inspire and support so many. So I'm very, very excited. Welcome to the Mother Kind podcast. Thank you so much for having me. This conversation is so long overdue. The feeling is so mutual. Tell us your path to be sat here today in front of me. What has your career looked like up until this point? So, you know, quite like you, we talked a little bit about sort of our backgrounds in business. And I had spent quite a bit of my 20s and 30s really focused on my career. It was in brand marketing.

3:45Ironically, my first job out of school was focused on mom blogs and sort of uncovering social, you know, how social media works for women. And I loved it. I really did. I got lucky. I got to climb the ranks at an agency and derived a lot of self-worth and belonging from that. And then I actually ended up going to business school at Stanford. I sort of threw my hat in the ring because I wanted an out. I wanted to figure out what came next. And someone described to me, you know, business school as a train stop to surround yourself with smart people and figure out what comes next. And I say that because I don't think I found that until motherhood, really.

4:23But I left business school. I landed what on paper was my dream job. And then I had my first child in 2016, New Year's Day. And I, you know, in those early months, as you and I both know, I won't like paint it with, you know, rose colored lenses. but it was definitely sleep deprived. It was milk drenched, all the things, but I was rocking with him. And I think I finally found like that true sense of belonging or like comfort in my own skin. And it felt quite freeing. And I really wanted more time with him and more time sort of feeling that, feeling that sort of sense of, well, what could come next if I just let myself be free and here?

5:05And I call that out also because I didn't make that choice because I thought it was the better outcome for my child. You and I both know this. All the data in the world says there are happy and healthy outcomes for children, whether you work in or out of the home or exist in between. I chose because I wanted it for myself. But as soon as I started sort of circulating that I was going to initially downshift, so I went part-time in my role. And eventually I would pause. But as soon as I took my foot off the gas, I started hearing, are you giving up? Were you going to be bored all day? Did you waste that spot at business school?

5:39And, you know, of course it made me think like, no, I feel really quite happy. But this is making me feel quite bad. But I also was looking around and meeting all these other women like myself who are making similar choices that were really creative and interesting and self-trusting and ambitious. And none of them seemed bored or like they were giving up. And I realized that I think media had done a phenomenal job of sort of focusing on the traditional working parent. But we left anyone, any woman taking their foot off the gas for a chapter to lean into family life back in the 1950s with this really sad and tired caricature.

6:17And it was holding us back from really enjoying it. So I started what was, you know, really a small project to update the narrative for myself, you know, to chronicle all these women I was meeting that upended all the tropes. And it grew over the, you know, over nine years. And now it's sort of culminated in this book that I'm so proud to put out because I do think it's changing the conversation. Definitely is. And tell me how you navigated that financial conversation as a family, because there's privilege, isn't there? and being able to choose to step back? Well, I'm so glad you asked because it's obviously the second chapter of the book for a reason because I think it's predominantly one of the number one blocks after the identity piece, right?

7:05One of the, my husband always thinks he should get a byline for the book because every chapter is inspired by a fight. And that one in particular was inspired by the day he, you know, he said, well, it's a luxury to be at home. And I said, it's not, have you spent a day with children, you know, have you spent a week with children doing this day? Like there's nothing luxurious about it. It was a privilege for us to get to choose. And the reason I want to start there is because I think among the many tropes that have haunted the idea of stay-at-home motherhood, or as I like to think about it, career pauses for family life, one is that it's a luxury.

7:40And the reality is that one in three women pausing their careers for family life right now feel forced, right, because of the cost of child care. 60 % cite financial considerations. And it's not to say that working out of the home or existing in between is a luxury. It's to say that the privilege is to get to choose. We did have the privilege to get to choose. And the way we thought about it, which I think was really helpful, and I get into this in detail, even if it's a financial no-brainer for your family. Even if you have a security net, as we did, or you have a way in which you're equally resourced, so the math computes, being able to plan about six months ahead of time of that shift is crucial.

8:25And I think to my husband's great credit, even before we had children, he instituted something called money meetings, annual money planning meetings, which he basically treated our home like the most important organization we would run, right? So there was like a P &L, right? There was money in, there was money out, and the money out was sort of divided. We would budget and plan for was it going, what were the values in our home? Was it going towards health? Was it going to travel? Was it going to our home at the time and the mortgage? Whatever the case may be, we had that dialogue very early on.

9:01And so when we decided to initially for me to downshift, we were able to talk about, okay, well, this is how that number is going to decrease. Where are we going to shift things around? Or are we even going to need to? Because right away, what became clear was it was going to offset the cost of child care, right? So I think what we were able to do was have a really clear dialogue that what I was going to be providing in terms of care, even when we got in like a part-time babysitter or a cleaner, was providing value in and of itself. And we were able to have a dialogue that we are an interdependent household.

9:38So yes, even if he was providing more of the income at the time, I was providing a significant amount of care so he could single task outside of the home. And that sort of mindset about an interdependent household allowed me to walk through this stage of life with more confidence. And I think being able to come back to the drawing board every year and say, is this still right for our family? I've talked to a number of couples, one who, you know, for them, they had to make a colossal shift. They moved from the Bay Area, San Francisco in the States to Virginia Beach to offset the cost of living, right?

10:13Other people, they just moved the travel line item and said, let's put a pin in travel and entertaining and dining out for two years just so we can make this work. But the dialogue was together and the sort of mindset there was going to be value for the unpaid work was really important to have. I think that's so interesting, the value for the unpaid work. Did you have to educate your husband in that or did he get that? Because what I hear and see is a lot of partners, extended family, employers even, not understanding the value of that care work. Yes, there was a lot of education. And that's where that first dialogue around the luxury.

10:53I think we talked a lot about where did that feeling of luxury come from? And that association, when we deem one side luxurious, we assume that it isn't work. And we assume that it isn't worthy of support. And that's where it gets into a real slippery slope, right? Because I see too many women in my work who pause their paid work and then feel like they have to work 24-7 without breaks. Which is why these money conversations that can feel intimidating and sitting in the discomfort of where are those attitudes coming from? What are our associations with care? What actually happens in a day-to-day?

11:32And I think I did have to have a really clear conversation with myself around what is the value I'm providing and standing and owning that. I think that was the first step in unpacking for myself, my associations with worth. So then we could sit together. And I always say to couples, don't have this conversation while you're running out the door or like in a car. This is a conversation that you're putting on a calendar. You're sitting together across from the table. It might not even be one and done. You might be having the conversation over and over and over again. Sometimes you might need to bring in a marital counselor or a financial planner.

12:08I think one of the gifts for women who are navigating this stage of life now versus a decade ago is there's quite a bit more data and research around sort of the value of unpaid work. And I think there's a number of resources. Our colleague in this work, Eve Rodsky, has a great book called Fair Play. I've seen some great templates and examples of, you know, all the care tasks and how they, you know, what they amount to. But I think one of the biggest, you know, things that America has done wrong is we've dumbed caregiving down to diapers and laundry. And when we do that, we think of it as very, not just monotonous or boring, but also very easy and simple.

12:52and I think when we as soon as we start to think well it's also the planning of the play dates and the or the kin keeping and the communication with the grandparents if you're lucky to have them in the orbit it's the time management and organization around nutrition and if your child has some sort of delay the management and research around how what's covered under the insurance policy right There's so much that goes into that that frees up the mental and emotional space for our partners. And so that ends up being a very ongoing conversation. But I say it in the book. If there is a piece of you that you know that piece, that deep down in your gut knows that your partner does not value or respect this, that this is going to be a long road to get them on board, this is not the time to fully pause your career.

13:41Right? And or if you need to, because a child, you know, elder care or a child has specific needs or it's a family relocation, how can you protect your interests? And I, you know, talk a little bit about destigmatizing post-nuptial agreements. We enter contracts all the time with organizations. It's a way in which to shore up your marriage and be able to just make sure that your interests are protected. I think that's right, because there are so many women, and I think it's more common than we realize, who do stop their paid work and then find themselves in financial difficulty if that money isn't shared in an equitable way to reflect the care work.

14:21I think that's really smart to pull that out, to say if there is any of that. What I'm hearing you saying is try to keep some level of financial independence. Yes. And I think another piece of this is also that it doesn't have to be permanent. I mean, I think that's part of the biggest sort of mindset shift around this. There are a number, but one is that this is not forever, right? You know, and part of that dialogue around money parties is that it happens annually. And how might you come back and revisit this the next year? Have you sort of trialed this for a year and seen, I don't feel like I have access to our joint household income the way I thought I would.

14:59and how might you then revisit where you might need to invest in childcare to allow you to start working again. It should be an ongoing dialogue. And besides protecting your interest financially, there are other pieces, how do you mitigate the risk from a career perspective in really creative and fun ways? And that's the sort of big piece of the book as well. And I love how you talk about the fluidity that actually we need to completely update these phrases, which is, you know, you're a working mom or a stay at home mom, because you say the reality is one in three will pause, one in two will downshift and 90 % will return.

15:35So this idea that you're kind of opting in or out of paid work is nonsensical. Exactly. I mean, and I think what it also does is it allows us to come together as women more. You know, when you date back and you look at, well, where did these divides come from? In the 70s, in the States, we saw that sort of second wave feminism, right? That really had to prove our capacity in the workforce, but we left anyone doing care work at home with this idea that they were defending tradition and everyone dug their feet in and heels in, right? Because as soon as people started saying, and it's why I started this conversation saying I chose for myself, because as soon as people started saying, well, I chose to work out of the home because I want to model ambition for my daughters.

16:23and the other person said, I want to stay at home because I want to have secure attachment for my children. As soon as we do that, of course you get defensive, right? And the media saw that wedge in the nineties, just like glommed on and created this idea of mommy wars, which became this divide. And if we know anything right now, we know that parenthood is demanding. We know that the sort of fiction of the sort of June Cleaver caricature that haunts at home parentsly isn't actually true. Women choosing a pause today have clocked in a decade in their career, right? So they didn't trip and fall into motherhood.

16:58Like they assembled an education, foundation of education and work experience, which just gives them more options. Their partners are spending three times the amount of time with their kids than any generation before. And they have access to digital tools and technology and freelance and creative work. And so this sort of vast gray area between the black and white ideas of stay at home and working mother, I think could be really unifying if we can sort of lean into, we are all making the best right choice for right now. And there's no one choice that's better for the children. There are better ones that are better for us uniquely, and they're not permanent.

17:37We're always shifting. And I love the phrase power pause. What makes it a power pause as opposed to just a pause? What is the powerful element of it? Because I know that when I paused and downsized, I don't feel very powerful. I felt kind of the opposite of powerful. What makes it powerful? So the power pause, you know, by definition, what I offer is this reframing, even the framing of stay at home motherhood implies stagnant, right? It implies shut in. It carries these tropes we've talked about that you're essentially that your sort of brain and network withers. And instead, what I offer is the power pause is a chapter where you may shift time and focus energy away from your paid work.

18:24But actually in doing that, you open yourself up to new experiences, new interests, expand your networks in new ways, and actually deepen your sense of self and what you want. So that when and if you return to the paid workforce, you're coming back stronger than ever. And the framing of that relies on a couple of things. It relies, like we talked about, on sort of setting on the shelf all the things, you know, that you think of as a stay-at-home mother, right? Where we've established that for all the historical reasons and the sort of generation we're living in, that that is, it always was a fiction, but it definitely is now.

19:02And it's all due for an update. And then the second piece that it relies on, which is I think the really exciting part, is that you have to shift this mindset that if you're pausing your paid work, you are now purely defined by the health and happiness of your children. And that's what your success is measured by. Instead, I want you to think about it as you're stepping in to this shift to focus on your family life. and you're going to make sure you're going to grow alongside them and you're going to keep small ways to keep yourself moving forward. I think one of the real traps we fall into as women, when and if we pause or shift our paid work is, well, I've been on this trajectory that was defined by my title, by my salary, and the milestones of success were sort of laid out for me.

19:54And now I'm at home with either with teenagers who are working through school and diagnoses, or we're going through a family relocation and our kids are eight and five, or we have two little kids and I, we don't, you know, my success is now entirely measured by their success. And if you know anything about children, you know, that's like a surefire way to feel like failure all the time. And I think there's a real gift in being able to say, instead, we're going to get intentional about the ways in which, when we look back on this time, how we grew ourselves. And when we do that, it also shifts our relationship to, well, then what does my day-to-day or week-to-week look like?

20:34And how may I give myself a little bit more support so that I can actually move forward against those goals? What would that growth look like practically? You talking about, you know, I'm a coach, so I think a lot about personal growth and personal development. And I know that I emerged from my time as, you know, outside paid work, a completely different person? Or are you talking about practical skills like doing a, you know, AI course in the evening or is it all of that? I think it's both end, right? I think it's very unique to the season you're in. So I'll tell you the best way to think about this.

21:09Once you decide, I've stepped into this chapter. I want to make the most of it. Yes, I'm with my kids and I want to move myself forward with the time I have available. If you do nothing else, there's one exercise I always talk about, which is write in great detail where you want to be in five years, right? Like an ideal day. How do you look? How do you feel? Who are you spending time with? What does your family look like? What is the connection? You know, what are you working on professionally or creatively? And it's not to say you're going to teleport to that like immediately, right? You're just going to look at that, read that, and see what it reveals to you.

21:51And I think about goals in three buckets, personal, professional, and family. So I'll use my own example of, you know, I was really in it. I had a four and two year old at the time. We didn't have a lot of paid help. And so my time was somewhat limited, but I was definitely feeling like I could no longer measure my success by my then four-year-old son's behavior. So I did this exercise and what I saw was a couple of things. I saw from a personal perspective, I really wanted to work on reactivity and calm. I think it had been something that had been left unchecked in the workforce for a long time because nothing triggers you in the workforce like a child does.

22:29And so when we talk about, and you and I just talked about, that's the kind of work that you do in this chapter that you may never have been able to. That's why you emerge a different self. So my personal goal in that year was to work on that aspect of myself. But the way I could do that, the sort of metric of success for me was tailored to how much time I had available. And so it was, I'm going to listen to a podcast every single week on anger and women, communication and women. And that was my way of moving myself forward. On a professional level, I'd always wanted to explore writing. I loved words.

23:07I was almost going to go to journalism school, didn't, went the advertising route. And I'd never gotten to sort of experiment with that in my professional life. And I said, okay, well, I can open like a free Squarespace and like write two, you know, three posts a week. That's what's possible. I'm going to do it during naps and nighttimes. And that was obviously the seeds for this. For other people, their professional goal might be, you know, I do want to take that AI class, or it might be, I want to volunteer at the school just because I like that'll let me explore, you know, different interests.

23:38And on a family goals is not it was really simple. It was I wanted a silly household. That's what I imagined. I wanted a dance party every single Monday. Like that was in and it sounds so small, but it was that level of intention made it feel like life wasn't happening to me. I think so many women step in and just you hear like, I feel lost. I feel stuck. I feel like I'm not moving. And I think just giving yourself those little bit sized pieces. And of course, as my kids aged into school, I was able to expand those goals. Yeah. I think it's so interesting how, especially when our kids are young, you know, we get so into how they are developing and their milestones.

24:17And I've always thought to myself, I will develop and grow alongside them. Like I've always, I don't know where I got that from, but the moment I had my little girl nearly a decade ago, I thought I am just making the decision. We are going to grow and develop together. And, you know, in many ways, she's learned about regulating herself. You know, that was never a skill that I learned before, as you say. I don't have to really. It's so easy to mask many of those skill gaps before you have kids. But I think when you have kids, you can no longer sit in perfectionism. It just doesn't work. That's had to completely rewire my thinking on.

25:05What else? So you talked about, you know, you've really grown through that power pause. What, in what other ways did you grow and how have you positioned that or how would you position that now to an employer or a brand or the outside world? Because That is what I see so many mothers who step out of paid work struggle to do. You know, it's only parenting was only added into LinkedIn as a job option. Was it two years ago? Not long ago. Yeah. You know, I think that piece around moving yourself forward is so crucial. But I think also getting, you know, realistic about, well, what other ways? And I thought that this was one of the best pieces of my time fully at home was really the way in which I was able to expand my network and expand my passions, really.

25:56I think that, you know, and it's interesting because now I can sort of tell the story and I talk about what I used to do for my work, my paid work before my time away from the workforce. And it all makes sense, right? Like the dots connect, but the dots don't always connect while you're in it. You just have to keep moving forward, which is why so much of the footing is gained by giving yourself permission to go alongside. But then the other piece is dismantling this myth that, you know, let's start with the network. I had always known a very specific type of person in sort of my professional settings.

26:30And then I was on in play spaces, right? I used to do this baby movement class and this baby music class, Rambling Dan. And there was this grimy little indoor play space that I would go to every day. And, you know, they say friendships are formed best. They often talk about researchers will say it often happens in college because it's repeat chance encounters. It happens again in motherhood. Right. And there's like a very easy layup of small talk because you say like, oh, diaper bag, how old's your kid? What pediatrician do you go to? And suddenly you have yourself in conversation in that way.