Can Moms Have It All? Breadwinner Moms Don’t Have a Choice

The pride we’re supposed to feel as women who “do it all” is just a salve for the wounds inflicted when we try.

The day after my daughter was born in 2013, I sat in a hospital bed recovering from my second c-section. Instead of marveling at her perfect eyebrows or examining the lips I recognized from months of ultrasounds, I was frantically searching for stories to pitch my then contract job. I sat with my computer perched on the table that held a tray of untouched food and scrolled, until I landed on a New York Times article that read,” The Triumph of the Working Mother.”

I laughed. 

“A new Pew Research Center survey finds that the public remains of two minds about the gains mothers have made in the workplace,” the research read. “Most recognize the clear economic benefits to families, but many voice concerns about the toll that having a working mother may take on children or even marriage.” Not a single mention about what it was doing to mothers themselves in the study, but a deep dive into how their choices were affecting their marriages and kids. One particular piece of the research stood out;  79% of Americans rejected the idea that women should return to their traditional gender roles, but 51% of those same survey respondents said children were better off if a mother was home and didn’t hold a job. 

How do you reconcile that math? 

The study was called “Breadwinner Moms,” and it incited an abundance of think pieces at the time. “Fifty years ago, Betty Friedan made a startling prediction in her controversial best seller, The Feminine Mystique,” historian and author Stephanie Coontz wrote, in the NYT editorial. “If American housewives would embark on lifelong careers, she claimed, they would be happier and healthier, their marriages would be more satisfying, and their children would thrive.”

I looked over at my reflection in the window; greasy hair, hospital gown drooping, an IV stuck in my arm. I was a working mother. And I was about to write an easily digestible recap of the Pew research the NYT article was based on. Was I writing it to convince mothers out there that being a working mom was indeed triumphant? Or was I writing it to convince mothers that becoming a working mother was a trap that would ultimately lead to being all the things; mother, provider, maid, head of household, and ceaselessly exhausted? I can’t remember which angle I landed on. I’m not sure that it matters. Because at the time, I didn’t realize the discussion wasn’t meant for me: a woman who had to work. I was the primary breadwinner for my family—and for the forty percent of us who hold that role, the working mom debate isn’t a debate at all; it's a choice that's already been made for us.

I’ve spent over a decade writing about parenting. I was called a “mommy blogger” for most of those years, even though my accurate title for the lion’s share of that time was Executive Editor. I’ve written thousands and thousands of words about mom wars, breastfeeding, formula feeding, the mental load, gentle parenting, sleep training, not sleep training, yelling at your kids, not yelling at your kids, letting babies cry it out, the importance of play, the evils of screens, the revelation that maybe screens aren’t that evil, making mom friends, not making mom friends, drinking wine, considering whether moms drink too much wine—the list goes on and on. 

And although I’ve written thousands of words about working while raising kids and enthusiastically mouthed Beyonce’s verse in Run the World more times than I can count (Strong enough to bear the children/Then get back to business), I’ve wondered on several occasions if the pride we’re supposed to feel as women who “do it all” is a salve for the wounds that are inflicted when we try.

My words and the career I’ve built matter to me, and there doesn’t exist a universe in which I believe all women should abandon work and be the sole caretaker of their kids. But years of research only serves to solidify one thing: women may be succeeding in growing as a percentage of breadwinners, but we’re no closer than we were decades ago at being supported in that endeavor. We only need to look at what happened during the pandemic to understand that no matter how many gains we make, we will still ultimately not just be responsible for what happens with our children in the home, but also be considered responsible by the general public. 

It was a strange coincidence that a new round of Pew research was released at the end of January, the exact same day that I was laid off with no warning or safety net from a  parenting brand. I was in that place again that I found myself in a decade earlier; back to the fear and uncertainty I felt when I abandoned the idea of relaxing into healing in the hospital the day after my daughter was born. The study’s subhead read, “Mental health concerns top the list of worries for parents; most say being a parent is harder than they expected.” 

But is it really harder for everyone, or just moms? 

The new research shows that mothers feel judged more and worry more than fathers. Previous research paints a similarly daunting picture; moms are more likely to shoulder more of the caregiving and housekeeping load, and the pandemic only exacerbated this inequality of household labor. An earlier Pew study released in October 2022 analyzed a parent’s time spent directly caring for their kids between 2019 and 2020 and shone a light on how much extra stress the pandemic put on mothers. For full time working fathers, the time spent directly caring for their kids remained stable during that time—and also from 2020 to 2021. Full-time working mothers, however, saw an increase during the first year of the pandemic of over two hours per day: from an average of 5.0 to 7.1 hours. Two more hours to the already five hours they were spending in addition to their full time jobs. It’s tempting to feel like working moms must be exaggerating at the amount of time they spend…working—whether it’s on the job or for their families. But this study shows that there’s no exaggeration detected here. None.

I read a tweet a few months ago that made me think about this inequality in a different way. “Women are out here crushing it because they were raised to want the life their fathers have—but unfortunately the men were also raised to want the life their fathers have,” Dr. Jocelyn J. Fitzgerald wrote. “We all know the traditional role women play is not a good time.”

Jocelyn J. Fitzgerald MD @jfitzgeraldMD

Women are out here crushing it because they were raised to want the life their fathers have—but unfortunately the men were also raised to want the life their fathers have. We all know the traditional role women play is not a good time

In order to work full time and be a mother, you have to make peace with many things; the most disturbing being the increasing validation that yes, we are doing it all—without any overwhelming societal support to make it doable. A common refrain is that working mothers often feel like they’re failing both their kids and their jobs. 

But a more popular refrain should be that we’re the ones being failed—from every angle.