The myth of the working parent: Why we need to stop pretending it’s working

Let’s talk about the myth of the working parent.

For many of us, especially women, the message has been consistent since childhood: you can have it all. A meaningful career. A family. A fulfilling personal life. We were told to dream big, aim high, and break glass ceilings. What no one told us is that you can have it all, just not at the same time.

I’ll never forget the moment I realized that. Or rather, the moment I was told – point blank – that I couldn’t.

I had just interviewed for what I thought was my dream job at the Privy Council Office, Canada’s hub for federal decision-making. The role was perfectly aligned with my skills, education, and passion: I would be the lead Analyst responsible for the public health file, supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

At the time, my first daughter Vaughn was two, and my partner and I were considering having a second. I hadn’t really thought about timing, I just knew it would be later. Though I was assured the team respected ‘work-life balance,’ the undercurrent was clear: this role would demand more. Much more.

Emails well outside core hours could be managed remotely through my BlackBerry (hello, 2016), which meant technically I could be home for dinner. But realistically, leaving at 5 p.m. would mean missing key meetings and face time with senior officials. It would mean that I would need to play catch-up with secondhand information. My presence, or realistically my absence, would be noticed.

Then came the real clincher. A candid conversation with a team analyst who had led on the Health file. She’d been in the unit just a year and already knew the score. She told me, bluntly: if you’re thinking of having another child, this is probably not the place for you.

That sentence settled it. I called the hiring manager to let her know I was turning down the job. She was understanding. Then she dropped a truth bomb of her own: We were raised to believe we could have it all. And we can, but just not at the same time.

I hung up the phone and was both grateful and enraged because she was right. 

Blurring the line

As a geriatric millennial, I had absorbed a deeply held belief that I could be anything. Thanks to the women who came before me – my grandmothers, my mom, my aunts – who had fought hard during the women’s liberation movement, the workplace was no longer off-limits for women. The world was supposed to be our oyster.

Somewhere along the way, the boundaries began to blur. The public service is a system where the work never ends, and the machine will take everything you give it. There’s always more to do and while it is filled with brilliant, mission-driven people, the system itself struggles to give back. It does not naturally replenish. Without intentional, caring leadership, the needs of working parents, especially mothers, are easily sidelined.

When I look at organizations in both the public and private sectors, they say they support working parents. They say they value flexibility, inclusion, and balance. But when it’s time to walk the talk, do they put their money where their mouth is? In my experience no.

As an executive in the federal public service, I had virtually no options to downshift beyond sick leave in seasons when my family needed more. Part-time roles didn’t exist. Job-sharing arrangements were nowhere to be found. Yes, there was always the elusive “special assignment,” but those came with reputational risk and in a world where credibility and perception matter, I wasn’t willing to gamble my future on a side door.

So what now? Do we just accept that working parenthood comes with an invisible tax on our time, ambition, and mental health? One that women disproportionally are still bearing the burden of?

I don’t think so. And I’m not alone.

The power of remote work

The Honest Talk recently released a particularly timely article: The work-life tightrope: Women are redefining career success. The article focuses on how the pandemic reshaped what women want from work. The key insights from the survey data include:

• The top two career goals for women: financial stability and work-life balance
• 60% of mothers of young children prefer a hybrid/remote work model
• Women are twice as likely as men to prioritize flexibility when choosing jobs

While I acknowledge an employer’s right to determine how and where work is performed, the nature of discussions around return-to-office requirements often reveal a troubling disconnect. My experience in Government was that – despite extensive consultations there was little follow-through. Many leaders characterized employees’ desire for remote work as entitlement rather than addressing legitimate needs. 

This approach created a significant chasm between senior leadership and staff. As an executive, I was expected to toe the line. Yet as a parent of young children, including one with special needs, I understood intimately the necessity of workplace flexibility. 

For me, and I think for many working parents, the pandemic didn’t just change how we work, it gave us a glimpse of how life could be different. For my household, hybrid work reduced the pressure significantly.

What is evidenced in the What Women Want survey is that women are ready to champion a more humane, sustainable vision of professional fulfillment. Women have long desired more balanced careers, and the pandemic simply exposed and accelerated existing needs. 

Many women I speak to now want their success to be about more. They want to be able to accomplish things like modelling sustainable work-life integration for the future generations; creating workplace cultures that honour wholeness; challenging systems that force impossible choices between career and family; and leading with approaches that embrace flexibility and humanity.

That change starts by telling the truth; by naming the cost; by rejecting the myth; and by building something better for those of us here now, and for those still to come.

This may be the most important professional legacy any of us can leave.