Motherhood penalty

When I returned to work four days a week at Australian Vogue when Arabella was seven months old, I had a plan. I had been granted something all mothers desperately plead for, yet not nearly enough are given: the elusive gift of flexibility. When we’re handed it, after much negotiation, we’re made to feel like we’re the luckiest woman alive when, frankly, it should be a human right. With flexibility, we’re also handed a pay cut, even though the reality is, we’ll still be logging on during those days when we’re at the park with our babies, and late at night. The work doesn’t stop and neither do we. I was to work three days in the office and one from home. Fridays off to spend quality time bonding with my baby. Best laid plans. In the beginning, it was fun. I’d get dressed up in real clothes, take my time to make a cup of tea in the kitchen with a work colleague, sit at my desk and feel like a grown-up with a proper job. The feeling of isolation went. I had an endless supply of adults to talk to and being at work felt like a mini-break; a holiday from the intense mental stimulation it took to rock a baby to sleep day in and day out. But then the logistical challenges started. I wanted to continue breastfeeding. After the guilt of giving birth at 34 weeks, breastfeeding was something I could do well. It felt like the runner up prize. The part I hadn’t got wrong. Growing a baby to term – fail. Breastfeeding – pass. In the office, there was nowhere for mothers to go to breastfeed. In hindsight I should have taken my top off and sat there pumping at my desk, to make a point.

‘How’s that deadline going? Also, I’m keeping a small human alive and I’m about to start leaking. Where can I milk myself?’ Being a mum also wasn’t deemed ‘cool’. This wasn’t Mother & Baby magazine, this was Vogue. But something inside me also changed. The runways filled with clothes I couldn’t afford, worn on models who were sizes I’d never be, felt suddenly trivial to me. I saw the magazine in a different light – and felt disconnected from a world I’d once loved so much. I’d felt such relief on maternity leave when I could put away my Gucci sample sale buys and live in a wardrobe of jeans and J.Crew T-shirts. This freedom was replaced with ‘What the fuck am I going to wear that makes me look like I’m definitely not a mum but, instead, someone who looks like she works at Vogue?’ How was I supposed to afford all these clothes? The cost of a baby makes a Hermès Birkin bag look cheap.

I didn’t feel like someone who worked at Vogue. The professional identity crisis hit hard. Who was I? What had happened to my seamless return-to-work plan? After the novelty wore off – those three days in the office were agony – I came face to face with the impossibilities of being a working mother in a system not set up for parents. I’d sit in long meetings wondering why we wasted so much time talking instead of doing. I worked quickly and efficiently, trying to fly through as much as I could before my hard finish at 5.30pm. Gone were the days where I could stay in the office until late into the night. I had another job now – a ‘mother of a job’ as author Christine Armstrong coined it – and needed to get to my next shift. The after-hour events were a logistical nightmare. Our nanny was the highest paid person in our household. I paid her so I could keep my career going. I’m painfully aware how wrong it is to automatically assume the cost of childcare should be equated to the woman’s salary.

It’s a collective responsibility, yet because women are seen as the traditional carers for children, the cost of childcare is often weighted against a woman’s salary – if she earns too little, then the expectation is that she’ll stay at home, I’m told time and again by women, ‘because it makes more sense financially’. Does it really? I’m also aware that the gender wage gap is mostly a penalty for bearing children – it’s the motherhood penalty. Having kids doesn’t affect men’s salaries. The woman takes the hit.

There’s also some evidence of a ‘fatherhood bonus’ in which men’s earnings increase. Long term, it’s disastrous for women’s careers and finances. The longer we stay out of the workforce, the harder it is to get back in. When we finally do get back in, our salaries are significantly lower than that of our male counterparts and, often, there’s a huge crisis of confidence. I know many highly accomplished women who have had children, stay at home and then spend years lacking the confidence to get back out there. In Australia, women are three times more likely to be working part-time than men. Many of these women are working mothers looking after children. The value of unpaid childcare work is around $345 billion,* which makes it almost three times larger than the financial and insurance sector combined. For every hour of unpaid care work done by men, women do one hour and 48 minutes. Pissed off yet? I am. In the office, I’d start moving objects around my desk at 5.20pm. It was my non-verbal attempt to communicate to my colleagues that I was about to exit. I’d leave in a hurry at 5.30pm only to fly through the door at 6pm to find my baby asleep and turn to see Guilty staring at me, asking why I’d only spent two hours with my child that day. ‘Bad mother,’ she’d say, and walk off.

I’d lie by Arabella’s cot at night, hoping she’d wake up, and at the first noise I’d get her up. Those were the nights she slept. The other mornings I’d wake to my alarm, delirious from the broken sleep. I’d somehow get myself out the door and try to act like I was the person I used to be, before I became a mother. I could do this. I had to do this. When I fell pregnant unexpectedly when Arabella was 10 months old, after a drunken evening where I assured my husband there was definitely no way I could get pregnant, I knew life needed to change. I had no idea just how much.

I walked into my boss’s office and started to cry. ‘I knew this was coming,’ she said, gently. She knew because she’d been there. She’d been given the job of her life – the editor of Harper’s BAZAAR – when her twin girls were toddlers. She knew how hard it was to make work work. You couldn’t have it all. Or do it all.

‘I’m pregnant,’ I told her. ‘Again.’

I could see the worry in her eyes – it was likely I would have a premature birth again. It was agreed that I’d take a longer maternity leave this time. ‘Take your time. Your job will be here when you come back.’ I never imagined I wouldn’t make it back. That as much as I was trying not to act like a mum, I was a mum. There was nowhere to hide.

I continued working, until at 23 weeks my cervix started shortening again. I was given the same instructions as before: go to hospital to have steroid shots and then go on bed rest. It was like someone had pressed the pause button on my life. I had a 1 year old who needed my attention and a growing baby – I didn’t bother to track if it was the size of a pea or an olive with our second. I was just desperate to hold onto it. I got onto Google. At 23 weeks, even with full resuscitation and intensive medical care, the chance of your baby surviving is small. Breathe. At 28 weeks, the survival rate for your baby jumps to 80 to 90 per cent. My anxiety went through the roof. I had to get to 28 weeks. Please, please, please.

This is an edited extract from Best Laid Plans by Georgie Abay, out now from Affirm Press. From former deputy editor of Australian Vogue, author and podcaster Georgie Abay, Best Laid Plans is an honest and frank look at how life often plays out like trying to walk in a straight line after ten margaritas!