The last several months have been unusual, to say the least! For those of that are working, its very likely our work environments are very different from earlier in the year. Working moms who relied on the public and private school systems to provide not on an education to their children but also childcare have been thrust into remote work situations on top of overseeing their children’s schooling. This unexpected homeschooling is affecting how, and when, working moms are able to ...
Working mothers have been especially hard-hit by the pandemic. In addition to balancing their work responsibilities from home – many working remotely for the first time – they are also having to serve as school mistresses and child-care providers, pushing many to the edge of burnout…and beyond. What’s a working mother to do? Read on for 5 ways to prevent or arrest burn-out …
What is burnout? The World Health Organization (WHO) defines burnout as chronic workplace ...
“Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.” Benjamin Franklin
I love Benjamin Franklin and look often to his wisdom for insights; the quote above is one which I find appropriate for what we are going through right now. It causes me to think not about the big things that are missing from our lives during this time, but the small things.
At lot has been written about preserving ...
Many working mothers I talk to tell the same story….the morning alarm comes way too early! It seems that with their busy days at work, their busy nights with their families, and their busy lives, they never seem to get enough sleep. Hitting the snooze button for an extra 10 minutes in the morning is so very tempting, and something they often find themselves taking advantage of.
Sleep experts report that hitting that snooze button on the alarm can actually do more harm than good[i]. ...
When I was researching depression in children of mothers who work, every mother I talked to worried that working might be negatively impacting their children’s development. They worried that they should be spending more time with their kids and they felt guilty that they weren’t. During that research, I found that kids of working mothers actually had pretty high well-being. These kids were experiencing real-time benefits as a result of their mothers’ working. I tried to make the case that ...
I have long had a passion for the plight of working mothers. You may think my choice of language too bold, but having been a working mother for thirty years, and a single working mother for six of those years, I understand how difficult the situation facing many working mothers can be. From my own experience and from talking with working mothers, I know they often sacrifice their own well-being to their efforts to provide the best they can for their family. But a burned-out, unhappy working ...
Working mothers take everything they do seriously because they care. They care about their work and they care about their families (and generally not in that order), creating stress and guilt for them. This stress can make them tired, moody, anxious, and sometimes even depressed. How can working mothers reduce the negative impacts of this stress … and not sacrifice the incredibly important and rare resource of time? One concept that holds promise is mindfulness.
When we think of ...
How it all began….
I have long had a passion for the plight of working mothers. You may think my choice of language too bold, but having been a working mother for thirty years, and a single working mother for six of those years, I understand how difficult the situation facing many working mothers can be. From my own experience and from talking with working mothers, I know they often sacrifice their own well-being to their efforts to provide the best they can for their family. But a ...
As a student in Martin Seligman’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at Penn (lovingly referred to as “MAPP”), I was in awe of him. When he singled me out one afternoon in October 2016 by responding to a question I raised with “someone really should investigate that”, I knew he had thrown down the gauntlet. My question was whether there was a correlation between depression in adolescents and their mothers working outside the home.
I had been one of those – a mother ...