The Topline: Working Parents Making It Work

I'm a busy working parent, just like you, with a long to-do list, and a short attention span.

I know we have some of the same struggles going on in our homes right now.

I also know many of you have solved similar problems with brilliant solutions and ideas, and I always learn something from my sessions at a’parently.

So, I’ve decided to serve up parent expertise to my audiences more directly. I’ll feature working parents via a weekly Q&A session that I’ll share here on my blog.

I first sat down to talk with Rachel Beck, PHR and Benefits Analyst at Arapahoe County in Colorado, outside Denver. She has a 7th-grade daughter and a 5th-grade son, both enrolled in online school for the fall of 2020.

How have your children impacted your career?

Rachel: Getting ahead at work always seemed to require something extra, like working late on a project, or spending a weekend fulfilling the needs of a team. While I could do my job and I loved it, I had to draw the line at the “extras” so I could be at daycare pickup or school events. That made me feel left behind more than once. 

What conditions do you feel like you need around you, to be your most creative?

Rachel: I'm most creative when it's clean and quiet, and pristine, which doesn't come often with kids around. Now that the kids are older, it’s getting a little easier to maintain.

What is one tip that you would give working parents right now?

Rachel: I think grace—grace for yourself, hopefully grace from your employer, grace with kids. [Kids] have a lot of emotions, and they're going to come out sideways at you because you're the safe place. I think that just taking those deep breaths in between assignments, or cups of coffee, or shots of tequila or whatever you have to do to get through the day, it's just going to be grace for everybody all around.

Please react to this statistic: 65% of childcare responsibilities are shouldered by working mothers versus 35% shouldered by working fathers.

Rachel: I think it's more, right? At least for me and my circle of friends, those who I've talked to about it, I was scrambling to figure it out [when lockdown started]. On Thursday I knew at work, things were starting to slow down and maybe shut down. And by Friday, school was shut down and the next week we had to figure out, "Okay, what are we doing for childcare?" And I don't know if it registered with my partner … I just automatically jumped into that role, because I think I've always had that role of primary figure-outer of those things.

Is there anything that you think I should ask the next person that I didn't ask you?

Rachel: What have you done for yourself lately? You could even sing it!