Tag: pandemic

Women’s History Month

leahjorgensen

Navigating Burnout: A Look at What Has Happened To Working Moms

Exhausted mother trying to work from home

I have been doing a deep dive into subjects that I relate to as a working mom and mompreneur. I used to hate that term, but, nothing else sufficiently defines owning a business in the midst of motherhood.

Since becoming a mother in 2019, followed by barely running my business in a postpartum fog followed by the blind-sided devastation of the pandemic, and now a pseudo aftermath, because let’s face it, we’re still in the pandemic’s trenches, there is an evermore cycle of doom burgeoning each season of this heavy, existential American life: from gripping financial stress and potential crisis, to ominous murmurs beating a world war drum, to new and emerging dangerous diseases and ongoing viral variants, and even the constant doomsday analysis on Covid-19, like the research findings on long Covid mingling with heart disease and strokes, and, and, and …

Our tender hearts are in peril and what kind of repercussion is this having on our collective soul?

Parents of young children were taken on a bleak journey in the winter of 2022, just before the holidays, with three viruses that could send your babies to the emergency room: new Covid-19 variants, the flu, and RSV.

I keep asking myself – when will this stop? When can we release ourselves from chronic fight or flight mode? When can we breathe again and settle into a less threatening reality?

If you follow astrology, you might feel compelled to claim having an answer to this paradox. I’m sure there’s plenty written in the stars that align with all of this chaos – energetically speaking.

As a mother, navigating through life with all of this is painful, scary and overwhelming. It’s hard enough to bring a child into the world and have to put your heart, duty and every last effort toward raising good humans. But, everything about the pandemic and trying to manage life beyond it has put all kinds of burdens and obstacles in the way of everyone, but especially on working moms. Data supports this, as an unprecedented number of working moms fled the workforce to support the fragile family household system with little to no choice due to the patriarchal structure that has never truly supported working moms. Worse is the emotional toil all of this has placed on mothers.

The reality is that far too many working mothers have devolved into a burnout crisis.

It’s interesting to take a look back on the past couple of years, well into the pandemic, to examine what has happened to working mothers. I think this is an important exercise because as we cycle through another Women’s History Month, I can’t help but to ask how are we doing? How are we really doing?

According to Pew Research Center, the coronavirus pandemic has created new challenges and reinforced existing ones for many working mothers in the United States.

According to a Pew Research Center October 2020 survey, “among working parents with children under age 18 at home, mothers were generally more likely than fathers to say that, since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, they faced a variety of professional challenges.”

“Earlier this year, about half of working parents said the coronavirus outbreak had made it difficult to handle child care responsibilities, and moms were especially likely to report this problem. Around six-in-ten moms (58%) said this had been at least somewhat difficult in recent weeks, compared with 43% of working dads, according to a February 2022 survey of working parents with children younger than 12 at home.” (Pew Research Center).

 According to Rutgers Today, “In 2020, women with school-age children definitely experienced a ‘COVID motherhood penalty,’ said Rutgers-New Brunswick professor Yana Rodgers, as evidenced by growing gender gaps in employment/population ratios and working hours.”

The trends continued to be unfavorable for working moms.

“Working mothers have suffered greatly during this pandemic. Many left the workforce or put advancements on hold while educating/caring for remote students or struggling to find childcare. According to new research by the National Women’s Law Center, post-pandemic job recovery has been slower for women, with over a million men joining the labor force last month compared to only 39,000 women.” (Rutgers Today).

While Rogers predicted last year that, ultimately, “COVID-19 may shift social mores and workplace policies that positively impact working women in the long run,” the imbalances for working mom had serious effects, namely burnout.

Based on a report by McKinsey & Company, “… while the COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all in innumerable ways, the impact has been especially acute for women. Mothers of young children experienced burnout more often, for instance, and were more likely to have considered leaving their careers compared to fathers of young children. They also assumed more of the household responsibilities during the pandemic period.”

Earlier in that year, The McKinsey Podcast reported on the state of burnout for working women. Senior partners and leaders Alexis Krivkovich and Lareina Yee joined host Lucia Rahilly, global editorial director, to discuss some of the startling and hopeful results recently released in the Women in the Workplace 2021 report.  As part of their research, their team interviewed a variety of women across corporate America on the topic of burnout. This podcast is not just a great assessment about working mothers, but for intersectional women, including women of color and LGBTQ+ women.

The research shows that the burnout gap between women and men has almost doubled since last year’s report. Why are so many women so tired?

According to Yee, “Women are hanging on. And that is probably the most blunt and simple way to put it. Forty-two percent of women report being burned out. So a little under half of your population of women are burned out. And that’s where we stand today.” 

“One in three women, and 60 percent of mothers with young children … spend five or more hours a day on housework and caregiving. Five hours a day is at least another half-time job. And COVID-19 sort of stripped bare for us what was already under the surface and well understood by every working woman I know, which is how imbalanced those responsibilities outside the workplace are. Because these imbalances are not well recognized, and historically companies have not played a role in feeling a responsibility for that.” (The McKinsey Podcast).

The impact of the pandemic on working mothers has had such a profound effect, it’s a topic with long lists of journalism titles from a simple Google search. Now that American companies are trying to return to life before the pandemic, as if it never happened, there are harsh repercussions on mothers who have figured out balancing work and family in the couple years of remote work.

This year, Time Magazine reported, “As People Return to Offices, It’s Back to Misery for America’s Working Moms” with an ominous prediction: “Evidence suggests that the increase in companies enforcing return-to-office mandates may drive American mothers out of the workforce at a crucial moment.”

Think about this:

“I’ve talked to women who could hide their pregnant bellies from their coworkers, who wondered if their promotions might not have happened had bosses known sooner that they’d be out for maternity leave. Women who had morning sickness and could puke in the comfort of their own bathrooms. Women who didn’t have to decline meetings that began at 4:30, worried about the complicated math of train times and daycare pickup. Working from home, in short, allowed them to hide the evidence of the competing priority that is motherhood, which of course was good for their careers.” (Time Magazine).

The intensity of burnout is being felt now more than ever.

From an article published by Best Colleges, “burnout specialist Dr. Jaqueline Kerr identifies four chronic stressors that contribute to Working Mom Burnout and offers some actionable solutions. Working moms are dealing with four chronic stressors: parenting burnout, occupational burnout, barrier burnout, and crisis fatigue.“

“Kerr has made it her mission to save other working moms from the ravages of burnout.” There’s a lot to unpack in this article.

“According to the 2021 Women in the Workplace Report, the “burnout gap” between men and women has nearly doubled since 2020… with working moms are 28% more likely to experience burnout than working dads.” (Best Colleges).

“The Melbourne Institute discovered that working parents have experienced more mental distress since the start of COVID-19 than working professionals without children.” (Best Colleges).

“Women have always done a disproportionate amount of the unpaid labor at home,” said Kerr. “It starts from the very beginning, especially if the mother takes time off from work to be with the baby and the father doesn’t. She becomes the default manager of all the things: doctor’s appointments, childcare, schools, camps, playdates, medications, sleep, and eating schedules. Even if her partner shares responsibilities, it isn’t the same as managing that mental load. It’s a full-time job.” (Best Colleges).

“Mothers also bear the lion’s share of the family emotional load — a burden that got even heavier during the pandemic… The kids were distressed; normal boundaries went out the window. Working moms had to be emotionally present for struggling kids while simultaneously managing their own mental health and trying to excel in their jobs. Moms are exhausted.” (Best Colleges).

“Overwork, lack of autonomy, and lack of recognition contribute massively to burnout. Anyone can experience these things, but working moms are more likely to because they aren’t moving up the ranks,” accordion to Kerr.

“Companies often fail to value the unique skills mothers bring to the table. A really good example of that occurred during the pandemic, when women did a much better job of looking after the well-being of their teams. Employee well-being affects the bottom line, but only about 25% of companies reward that kind of work. Women are spending a lot of energy doing crucial but undervalued and under-rewarded work.”

Then, consider this:

“Childless women are 8.2 times more likely to be recommended for promotion than equally qualified mothers. … Mothers are recommended to start at significantly lower salaries than childless women, childless men, and fathers. … Mothers are perceived to be 12% less committed to their jobs and 10% less competent at those jobs than childless women. (By contrast, fathers are perceived to be 5% more committed to their jobs than childless men.”

Finally, and here’s the real clincher for me: with crisis fatigue on mothers, sending kids into a scary world produces perhaps the worst burnout.

  • “It’s always been tough to send our kids out into the world. But since March 2020, it’s been excruciating: Waiting to understand how the pandemic would impact children, waiting for them to get access to vaccines, and waiting to learn what long-term effects a COVID-19 infection might have on their developing bodies. There’s still so much we don’t know.”
  • “Pandemic stress has been chronic,” said Kerr. “We’ve undergone constantly changing recommendations, constantly changing norms. Uncertainty is something human beings cope with very poorly. Uncertainty about threats to our children is a major source of fear and stress.”
  • On top of the invisible but ever-present danger of COVID-19, we are also coping with a school shooting epidemic. “As a result, ‘out there’ — away from Mom’s watchful eye — has become more threatening than ever. Moms are tasked with determining what precautions will keep their families safe in a scary world — an impossible burden,” said Kerr.
  • “It’s important to realize that as a white mother, I have a certain level of fear for my children. It’s constant; it’s distracting. But that intense surge of fear that we all experienced in the aftermath of Uvalde is very real at all times for Black mothers. Statistically, the chances that their children will be victims of gun violence are much higher. Crisis fatigue is a daily reality for those moms even in ‘normal times’ — an added layer of emotional exhaustion, a terrible strain.”

Crisis fatigue is the worst cause for burnout because there is no control over the outcomes and there is no fix or solution.

“Some things we can’t just fix without collective action, collective political will. But empathy can be very powerful, so take a moment to recognize that people you know are living this reality all the time,” said Kerr. “Being seen means a lot.”

So, what exactly is burnout and what does it effect your physical, mental and emotional wellbeing?

Psychology Today defines burnout as “a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Though it’s most often caused by problems at work, it can also appear in other areas of life, such as parenting, caretaking, or romantic relationships.”

The root of burnout, according to Psychology Today, is “the cynicism, depression, and lethargy that are characteristic of burnout most often occur when a person is not in control of how a job is carried out, at work or at home, or is asked to complete tasks that conflict with their sense of self. … Equally pressing is working toward a goal that doesn’t resonate, or when a person lacks support. If a person doesn’t tailor responsibilities to match a true calling, or at least take a break once in a while, they could face burnout—as well as the mountain of mental and physical health problems that often come along with it, including headaches, fatigue, heartburn, and other gastrointestinal symptoms, as well as increased potential for alcohol, drug, or food misuse.”

How can you tell if you’re burned out? According to Psychology Today:

“Physical and mental exhaustion, a sense of dread about work, and frequent feelings of cynicism, anger, or irritability are key signs of burnout. Those in helping professions (such as doctors) may notice dwindling compassion toward those in their care. Feeling like you can no longer do your job effectively may also signal burnout.”

And how do you tell the difference between burnout and stress? Psychology Today differentiates the two:

“By definition, burnout is an extended period of stress that feels as though it cannot be ameliorated. If stress is short-lived or tied to a specific goal, it is most likely not harmful. If the stress feels never-ending and comes with feelings of emptiness, apathy, and hopelessness, it may be indicative of burnout.”

As we have learned from the pandemic, jobs are clearly not the only source for burnout. Psychology Today addresses non-work related burnout:

  • “Parents, partners, and non-professional caregivers can also experience endless exhaustion, feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities, or secretly believe that they have failed at their role. These forms of burnout are referred to as parental burnout, relationship burnout, and caregiver burnout respectively.”
  • “Non-work burnout, however, is less well-known than that caused by career stress. Stereotypes and stigma—particularly related to parenting—can make those suffering from non-work-related burnout feel as if they are to blame for their challenges. As a result, they often hide their struggles from others.” 
  • “But burnout, in any form, can have severe consequences if left untreated. Discussing it openly—either with a spouse, family members, friends, or a therapist—is often the first step to addressing its symptoms, getting needed help, and avoiding negative outcomes.”

Burnout is a scary thing to sit with, as it can have harmful outcomes. But the overwhelming feeling of helplessness is what is seemingly impossible to resolve without taking drastic measures.

As I navigate my own burnout, I am constantly dealing with a heavier anxiety on top of my usual health and wellness challenges, including managing autoimmune diseases and hormonal imbalance. I have had stress from my bout with Covid-19 last year, including strange abdominal cramping and pain, sending me to the hospital, and worry around heart health, with unusual symptoms that were likely stomach related – issues I had never had before the pandemic. The constant worry for my child’s safety is ongoing (see crisis fatigue above).

While the world continues to move forward and attempt to return to the quality of normalcy prior to the pandemic, I am stunned by the regression. I thought events like a global pandemic would change people and society for the better. But, remember when World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. How naive – or, worse, what a misguided and dangerous campaign slogan for war. I am looking at all of this through a lens of my own burnout, so it goes without saying that I don’t harbor a sensibility of much hope. Instead, I see the world through dark glasses: one that simply cannot and will not learn from history or its mistakes and tragedies. Humans are flawed, for certain. But, perhaps the worst flaw is our collective inability to truly grow and change. History repeats itself over and over again. Cynical, sure. But, when well-intentioned, peace loving people have no control over what’s at stake, say, as what is going on in Ukraine and what’s bubbling in the South China Sea, it’s pointless to have faith in humanity at all.

The burden of burnout rests on all of us. It’s a collective illness we all share in some way, we are all responsible for it. Ignoring harm done to others is the basis of burnout onto others. We blame institutions, corporate greed. political opposition for what’s wrong with society. But, people are what’s wrong with society. People. Those perceived as good and bad. All people. We are all contributing to the out-of-balance destruction of humans and humanity. Until the collective consciousness evolves to another level of compassion and human connection – a we are all in this together consciousness – life on earth, the human experience, will continue to churn out pain, suffering, anger, resentment, jealousy, greed, and so on. You can’t point your finger at the ones you desire to blame. Pointing your finger points equally to yourself.

Women’s History Month. It’s kind of sham. It’s fine to take a moment to reflect on women in history. The truth is that women have always held a far more important role in human history than they were ever credited for, so, it’s imbalanced to simply highlight the work of some distinguished and revered contributors to society like Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman and Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The work of women goes deeper than those who have excelled in accomplished vocations. What about valuing the work of women at home? What about taking on greater consideration for women’s healthcare and wellbeing? What about applauding women for driving ideals like compassion, collaboration and community in our society? We don’t have to clap hands for women who have made history, but elevate women for having always contributed to the human story.

We have a lot of work to do to appropriately appreciate and better care for women. One way to elevate women this month is to address this dangerous burnout issue for working moms. It may not seem like much to childless individuals or top male executives or our political leaders – anyone who’s not a working mom. But everyone is touched by this burnout crisis. Raising good humans is a critically important job; giving women the space to succeed at work and at home is not asking for much. And yet it may be one of the most critically important issues facing humanity today.

Resources:

+ “Working moms in the U.S. have faced challenges on multiple fronts during the pandemic” by Katherine Schaeffer for Pew Research Center, May 6, 2022.

+ “”COVID Motherhood Penalty” Set Working Moms Back” by Lisa Intrabartola for Rutgers Today, February 14, 2022.

+ “Parent, employee, all of the above? Eight working mothers on the realities of post-pandemic life” edited by Justine Jablonska for McKinsey & Company, May 6, 2022.

+ “The state of burnout for women in the workplace” from The McKinsey Podcast with host Lucia Rahilly, January 4, 2022.

+ “As People Return to Offices, It’s Back to Misery for America’s Working Moms” by Alana Semuels for Time Magazine, February 2, 2023.

+ “Working Moms Have a Burnout Problem” by Meg Embry for Best Colleges, June 29, 2022.

+ “Burnout” according to Psychology Today



Who Takes Care of the Mamas When the Mamas Take Care of Everyone Else?

leahjorgensen

I never really thought about this until I was caring for my sick nearly three-year-old little boy and I inevitably got sick, myself.

Before I became a mother, there was nothing I hated more than getting sick – specifically getting congested. I don’t do well with congestion. I have a deviated septum and whenever I find myself unable to breathe, well, I get anxious.

I’ve been in the most relaxing situations – massage therapy appointments – where the simple tweaking of my lymphatic system would lead to immediate heavy congestion that would not only ruin my appointment, but, the anxiety I would get about not being able to breathe would force me to have to get up, request extra pillows to elevate my head, or leave. Acupuncture appointments were even worse because I’d be stuck, pun intended, with needles in me while dealing with an anxiety attack from treatment induced congestion. At least the congestion would immediately clear up as soon as I’d get off the treatment table.

Luckily, I didn’t get sick all that often. But, when I did it was like a short unintentional vacation in Hell. I love to elaborate on this because it’s really that awful for me. For the first two days of a virus or allergy attack I struggle to breathe out of my nose and out of mouth, and the only way I can catch some relief to breathe is by getting better and getting spotty relief from an over-the-counter decongestant.

Either way, when I lived by myself I learned how to manage my congestion and the hell that came with the anxiety of not being able to breathe. I would sometimes go into survival mode and work through totally sleepless nights of trying to cleanse and open up my clogged sinuses. This often left me feeling like Sisyphus. Luckily, I rarely got sick and mostly suffered through occasional seasonal allergies.

Things took a crazy turn after I had my little boy. We were blessed to have a healthy baby who never got sick during his first two years. But by the time he was nearing three, he had two back-to-back colds in October and then again in November. He wasn’t even in daycare. This was a particularly stressful time because of the pandemic. Both times he got sick, I got sick. And, if I was anxious about getting congested before Covid-19, my anxiety certainly piqued with cold and flu season, pre-flu shot and Covid booster shot.

I had decided to extend nursing during the pandemic so that my little one could benefit from my two Covid-19 vaccines and the follow up booster shot. Antibodies are passed on through breastmilk. The nearness and closeness left mama more vulnerable to whatever viruses he would pick up.

Of course, kiddos in daycare pick up and bring home all kinds of germs. Parents would always say that’s the key to building a child’s healthy immune system. But let’s be clear about something. Catching these colds doesn’t just mean boosting his immune system. It also means taking down mama. I know some dads and other family members might share in the sickness cycle. But, mama is always the target when it comes to sick little ones.

This isn’t a post about why it’s harder to be a mom than it is to be a dad. Someone else can debate that. But there is a difference here. My husband never gets sick. Is it because his immune system is stronger than mine? I already mentioned before having my son I rarely got sick – so dad’s immune system shouldn’t be stronger than mine! We both endured sleep deprivation during the first couple years, but, I continued to have interrupted sleep while I continued nursing. So, aside from differences in sleep hygiene, could it be that I’m in closer proximity to my child and, therefore, I’m more vulnerable to his sneezing and coughing getting me sick? Maybe.

But, I think there’s something else going on.

I don’t have scientific evidence to support this very speculative statement I’m about to make. It just makes sense to me. I believe the process of enduring pregnancy and labor makes a mother more vulnerable in her postpartum existence for years to come. I know this isn’t true for everyone. But, I suspect a lot of mamas would agree. Your body has been through so much. By the time your child is in the virus cycle, probably depending on when daycare or preschool happens, you may have not fully recovered or even healed from the experience. For some women it can take years to fully recover and heal from pregnancy and labor. And it takes years to get passed the exhaustion that comes with growing a baby, delivering and baby and recovering from that delivery. While dealing with the exhaustion that comes from your pregnancy, birthing and healing experience, there’s even more exhaustion coming at you from now taking care of your baby with a sleep deprivation period that just feels impossible to withstand. For many mothers that sleep deprivation continues through the toddler and pre-school phase. There are many reasons for this, depending on what’s going on at home with sleep training, whether or not you’re still nursing, and just how your body is recovering from a long period of interrupted sleep rhythms.

But, I want to back up before the exhaustion part and continue with the postpartum recovery part. While it takes just six weeks for your uterus to shrink back to its normal size, your body had other things to reconcile – like when it moved your organs around to fit your baby. The abdominal muscles and connective tissue have a long way to go to heal completely. I was one of those lucky mothers with abs that never fully recovered resulting in what’s called diastasis recti, which is a condition where there’s a big gap between ab muscles that should have realigned after separating during gestation. It gets even better – around this gap you get a pooch in your belly with fat and excess skin hanging out. Physical therapy can help, and some moms might opt for cosmetic surgery. But there is no cure for this condition. Three years postpartum, I hired a personal trainer to help me build my abs back up, recondition my pelvic floor and try to tighten things as much as possible.

Moms who have had a traumatic birth experience, birth injury, emergency c-section, etc., are likely to have a longer recovery time. I had a c-section after 40 hours of labor, and 4 hours of pushing. Trauma is relative to each mother; I definitely experienced trauma during the c-section. It added an extra heavy load on an already painful recovery experience.

Good nutrition is often more challenging for new moms – not just food choices, but how often you eat and whether you overeat or undereat.

So your body is at work for a long time rebuilding and recovering from so many things. And moms are often bad with self care during the first few years of bringing up baby.

These physiological conditions certainly affect a mother’s ability to ward of viruses that come her way.

As for the start of my child’s cold/flu virus cycle last year, I found myself miserably sick with his first two colds, and then significantly worse with the third cold in November. We took several Covid tests that came out negative. It was just par for the toddler/preschooler course. Not for my husband, though. He was healthy the whole time.

By February last year, my little guy got Covid from the rapidly spreading Omicron variant, and, I of course got it, too. My husband did not.

Since then it has been a long season of viruses and allergies coming in and out of our lives. In November of 2022, we were facing an uptick in Covid cases and new variants, a terrible flu season ahead and the rapidly spreading RSV pathogen sending many children and elderly adults into hospitals. It’s been exhausting. It’s one thing to have to deal with normal cold and flu viruses that are expected to infect your young child every other week. The emerging dangerous viruses that were coursing through our communities were scary. And it is taxing trying to navigate symptoms that are all so similar. It has been stressful wondering if the latest symptoms are the run of the mill colds that little kids must go through, or if it’s one of the more sinister viruses lurking around.

With this very steady, continuous cycle of sickness in our home, I find myself more exhausted. I continue to pick up whatever my child has, and my anxiety is in overdrive from not wanting to get sick and deal with what feels like collapsed breathing over and over again, to real worries about my child’s safety and what’s infecting us each time.

My husband is great. He helps take care of our little guy whenever he’s sick. I get most of the duty when he’s home sick during the workday; I’m an entrepreneur and can put my work on hold most days in a way that my husband cannot. But, when I get sick, there’s not much to be done for me. I’m usually still caring for our little guy and then I suffer through the nights. I cannot sleep when I’m congested. So, I recline on the sofa downstairs, sip on hot herbal tea and honey all through the night, and try to manage my anxiety and read or write. Eventually, I might doze off for a couple hours.

All of this is to pause for a moment and put a spotlight on moms during a challenging time of parenting. I know there are dads and other caregivers who do the same and endure getting sick, as well. But I want to take a moment to acknowledge how difficult it is for moms who find themselves postpartum two or three years and still struggling.

No one tells you about how often you will get sick once you have a baby, and for how many years. No one tells you exactly how long it will likely take to fully recover from pregnancy and childbirth because it’s different for everyone. No one tells you that your body will never be the same, that clothes will never fit you the same (I finally purged all of my stylish clothes pre-baby), or that you will never feel the same in your body. Some of your joints, like your hips, will forever feel stiff or sticky; your abs might never re-align; your pelvic floor might be a broken mess for years to come.

And no one tells you that you’ll be exhausted for so many years. I don’t know any moms of toddlers/preschoolers who are fully rested with excellent sleep hygiene, who really look refreshed.

I look around and I feel connected to these women who are in this same season of motherhood. We dress the same. We have the same look in our tired but bright eyes. There is a fullness that doesn’t go away after having a baby. All the exercise in the world cannot erase that fullness in the face, in the hips and belly.

When you fall ill to the latest virus, you go through a kind of battle because you’re having to armor up and care for your child no matter how you feel. You care for your child with the fierce attention of a mama bear, even when you are about to collapse. And you wonder if your immune system will ever protect you again.